Grilling chicken wings just right requires careful planning from start to finish. Trust
us, there are lots of grilling pitfalls that can ruin chicken wings. But while these mistakes
are easy to make when grilling wings, with just a little effort, they are also easy to
avoid.
Instead of oiling the grill to keep your chicken wings from sticking to it, what you actually
want to do is oil the wings. Not a ton of oil, mind you, because the wings already have
plenty of fat in them and adding too much oil could prevent them from crisping up, but
a thin layer of oil will do the trick and even help the food cook more evenly.
The main reason not to oil the grill is that the oil will reach its smoking point faster
than if you oil the food itself, which means you'll end up with more potentially cancer-causing
char. Having a thin layer of high-heat oil on the grill is fine if you're not going to
be using high heat, but wings are probably going to need high heat, so you're better
off just cleaning your grill and leaving it clean before you throw on the meat.
Experts recommend, however, oiling your grill if you don't know if there's oil on your food
already. The only other reason to oil the grill and not the food is if your wings are
pre-seasoned and you don't want to mess up the seasonings on the skin.
What you don't want to do when grilling is create excess char. None of us need cancer,
but we all know that the best parts of a juicy chicken wing are the crispy outer bits. That
means making sure the temperature isn't too high, but is high enough to create that crunchy,
gently blackened outside and tender inside. Because the worst thing would be to end up
with burnt wings.
You especially don't want excess char with chicken wings because they're already so fatty
that when that fat drips, it'll create extra polyaromatic hydrocarbons, which are also
carcinogenic.
So the trick is to find the balance between high enough heat for crispy skin, but low
enough so the wing cooks all the way through and there's ideally less cancer in your future.
Most barbecue gurus will tell you that you want your meat dry before putting it on the
grill. But what about marinated chicken wings?
It probably won't make the biggest difference if your meat is damp if you're using fairly
high heat, but to avoid disappointment, the easiest solution is to use a dry rub or a
dry brine instead. Even if marinating meat doesn't negatively affect the exterior of
the wings, it can make it mushy.
It also doesn't infuse the meat as much as a rub applied far enough in advance. Since
marinades are often oil-based and meat has a lot of water in it, the marinade has a hard
time getting deep inside it. That's not the end of the world for chicken wings, which
aren't that big, but you don't really need to be adding a ton of excess oil to your fatty
wings anyway. A lot of it will just drip out through the grill grates, which is a waste
of your marinating efforts.
So if you really love teriyaki sauce, it's best to add it part way through cooking instead.
Or if your marinade is incredibly liquid-y, you might just have to be okay with less crispy
wings. Definitely avoid marinades with a lot of sugar, though, or they'll burn quickly
under direct heat.
Salting meat in advance is how you infuse flavor. You don't want to over-salt, especially
if you're going to be adding sauce or dipping the wings in something salty -– but if you're
a wing purist, toss on some seasonings and then throw your chicken wings back in the
fridge until you're ready to grill them.
You can do the same with a dry rub, which is a blend of spices sprinkled on meat. If
you actually rub it, you can end up with more spice on your hands than the meat, but go
for it. These rubs could range from paprika and black pepper to curry blends or cayenne-based
hot wing rubs.
You know how this one goes. You walk away from whatever you're cooking without setting
a timer. And 20 minutes later, your wings are burnt.
So whatever recipe you're making, whether it's your own or someone else's, get a timer
going -- preferably a loud one. It's a little bit of effort for a big reward. And if that
doesn't convince you, think about the flip side: If you don't do it and you end up burning
your chicken wings, you're wasting time and money.
Most ovens have timers, but so does your phone. There's no need to buy a little egg timer
or, say, a cute Mozart timer for your kitchen.
If your wings are soggy or burnt, barbecue sauce isn't going to save you. It's not going
to swing in like Falcon or Captain America and make everything okay. If you overcooked
your chicken or ended up with mushy skin, you're on your own, which might even mean
your wings aren't worth eating.
That also goes for hot sauce, teriyaki sauce, ketchup, honey-mustard sauce, ranch or whatever
else you think might be a good idea when you're in a chicken wing-related pickle.
Needless to say, don't mess up those wings in the first place and you won't feel like
you need to cover up a problem that can't be fixed.
"Tell you what, I'll go turn the fryers back on and throw some wings in for you.
"Hey, thanks Helen. Tommy likey. Tommy want wingy."
The safe internal temperature for cooked chicken wings is 165 Fahrenheit according to the USDA,
so the best plan is to get your meat to the tiniest bit below that, because unless you
live in an ice house, they're going to keep cooking inside after you take them off the
grill. That should result in the ideal temperature of 165 Fahrenheit.
Wings don't retain heat like larger pieces of meat, though, so don't dip much lower than
165 Fahrenheit. Then again, some people like the texture of the meat when it's a little
more well done, so feel free to cook them to a slightly higher temperature if that's
you.
Now, you might think your wings are cooked through because they're charred and crispy
on the outside, but if you used high heat, there's a chance they're not cooked through
in the middle. The larger your wings, the more likely that is.
Just because restaurants that sell chicken wings often use low-quality chicken, that
doesn't mean you should. In fact, grilling chicken wings at home is an opportunity to
buy better chicken.
Wings are a relatively inexpensive piece of meat compared to chicken breasts, so long
as you don't wait until the Saturday before the Super Bowl to buy them. If you can afford
it, go for free-range, organic chicken, or at least something that didn't lead to a chicken
having an unhealthy life in a feedlot.
FYI, only chicken labeled "raised without antibiotics" were actually raised without
them. Even organic chickens can be given antibiotics before coming out of the egg or on their very
first day outside of the egg.
And whether you can afford higher quality or more expensive chicken or not, remember
to save those bones for stock. Chicken wings are the perfect opportunity to create your
own homemade broth for soups and basically everything that needs some extra flavor.
"Baby, you got a stew going."
Yes, you can cook frozen meat directly on the grill without thawing it in advance from
wings to thighs to breasts –- but you might not end up with the juiciest results and your
cooking time is going to be a lot longer. The heat can cause the outsides of the chicken
to burn before the wings cook all the way through.
If you really want to cook them from frozen, it's best to cook the wings gently over indirect
heat first, to make sure the insides get almost cooked through –- use that handy meat thermometer
here –- then move them to direct heat to finish. They may take double the time versus
cooking in 20 minutes for fresh or thawed wings. But be careful not to go too low with
the temperature or you could end up with food poisoning.
The safest way to cook frozen chicken wings is to thaw them fully first in the fridge
overnight. And make sure the heat isn't too low in your grill.
This might sound silly, because who's not going to turn their wings? But it's an easy
one to mess up if you're preoccupied with your backyard BBQ party. You leave the wings
a little too long and they've cooked so much on one side that if you turn them over they'll
be bone dry.
This is another example of one of those times when you should use a timer. The point of
a grilled chicken wing is usually to have a consistently crispy outside. You're not
usually aiming for one that's charred on one side and soft and gelatinous on the other.
The good news is that with all the fat in chicken wings, you don't even have to worry
about turning them too often. A lot of recipes say to turn the wings occasionally, which
seems like a safe bet unless you're a true chicken wing gourmet who'll die without perfect
grill marks. So set that timer multiple times and reap the rewards.
If you leave the lid open on a barbecue grill, you'll lose all the heat. It's fine to open
it to turn, flip or rotate the meat, but you set that temperature to where it needs to
be for a reason, and the worst thing would be to end up with undercooked chicken.
Keeping the grill closed also helps the chicken cook all the way through instead of just being
cooked on the outside from the flicks of flame that jump up through the grill.
The second worst thing would be to waste all that gas or charcoal and also have to wait
an extra hour for your chicken wings to be ready. Yes, the wings will eventually cook
if you leave the lid off, but that's not very efficient. Do you really want to wait twice
as long for your wings for no good reason?
So keep a lid on it.
You only need to do a major cleaning on your barbecue once a year, but you do need to brush
it clean regularly. When you brush it, though, is a matter of contention. Some experts say
to do it after cooking, once the grill has cooled a little, but Weber says you should
preheat your grill well and then scrape it immediately before cooking, because the preheating
gets rid of a lot of what's left anyway, making your work easier.
Either way, you definitely do want to brush it or wipe it before cooking something else
on it. Otherwise, you'll have gross black bits sticking to your food. Besides being
unattractive, it can make you sick.
The reason you don't do a major cleanup every time is that you want some of that blackened
grease to stick around on the sides of the barbecue and add flavor, but food residue
should definitely be burned and scraped off before cooking something else. And be careful
about using wire brushes, which can end up in your meal and potentially cause serious
harm.
The number one mistake people make when grilling chicken wings is probably adding a sugary
sauce too soon and having it burn. If you add a sugary sauce –- or any sauce -– too
soon, it can wreck your chicken wings. The sugar will burn quickly, which is why you
should add it just a little before the end.
"Hey, what's on this corn, BBQ sauce?"
"Sam, it's blood."
Adding any sauce too soon can also keep the chicken wings from crisping up, which defeats
the purpose of grilling them. If you wanted gelatinous wings, you could have just baked
them or -– heaven forbid -– boiled them.
So don't slather on the barbecue sauce or honey-garlic until your well-chosen recipe
tells you to do so, generally anywhere from two to five minutes before they're done. Or
dip the chicken wings in sauce after cooking or toss them directly in the sauce after cooking
for full immersion, but make sure to serve them right away before the skin softens and
the meat cools.
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