It’s easy to think of chicken wings as a snappy-quick snack. Order some at a bar and, poof, they arrive, hot from the fryer, golden bubbly-brown, and probably slicked in buttery, spicy Buffalo sauce. Wings have a way of entertaining us as we angle for good bites, lick sauce from our fingers and go in for another. If there’s a game on TV, I might not even notice.
Because wings have so little meat, you might think they would be fast to make at home. But restaurants wield their fryers in ways that are hard to re-create. To make wings with juicy, tender meat and lots of shattery skin, you need to play a longer game — a hands-off one that can tap Buffalo sauce, sure, but many other coatings, too.
Wings contain the same elements, and challenges, as any other part of the chicken: Fat that needs rendering and meat that needs cooking without drying out. A wing, however, has a lot more fat to meat than, say, a thigh. As with other chicken parts, we desire crisp skin and cooked-through, succulent meat — a balance that’s easily achieved with a few tricks.
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J. Kenji López-Alt, the always-hungry food scientist, has tips for that up his sleeve. In his investigation for Serious Eats, he discovered that a coating of baking powder and salt will raise the pH of the skin and promote the browning and crisping of the skin. We know that dried skin has a better chance of becoming crispy skin, and patting it down with towels is a good start, but that’s a lot of skin to get bone-dry.
Instead, shower the chicken with salt and baking powder and leave it uncovered while the oven heats or, better yet, for an hour on your counter or in the fridge up to overnight. The salt will draw out moisture from the skin, season the meat and lock in its juiciness.
Judy Rodgers, who made her name at of Zuni Cafe in San Francisco, was famous for salting early, also known as dry-brining. She was known to season meat and poultry (and even some vegetables) days before cooking. There are numerous roast chicken recipes, but hers, with only salt, pepper and hard-stem herbs such as rosemary and thyme, is one of the most famous. It recommends dry-brining the chicken up to three days in advance and roasting it — without oil — in a very hot oven.
With dry-brined, baking powder-coated wings, you don’t need the fryer to get the sought-after texture. Instead, follow Rodgers’s roast chicken technique and choose a method with high, even heat: an oven or a grill with the lid, which traps the direct heat, circulating it around your food (like an oven).
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That great crackle you just created on those wings can be taken even further: Sprinkle the wings with more crunchy crispiness in any number of combinations: sesame seeds (and a little sesame oil to stick), lemon zest and dried oregano, cracked black pepper and grated Parmesan, red pepper flakes and toasted coconut, or za’atar. (That said, I’ve also found them delicious with just a squeeze of lemon or lime.)
The wings will be ready in the same amount of time as if you roasted chicken thighs — but, unlike with the latter, the wings let you eat dinner with your hands. Let the games begin.
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