Woodfire Chicken Wings: Wet Brine vs Dry Brine Battle!!

Welcome back to Dad Got This 🍗🔥 Today we’re putting chicken wings to the ultimate test… Wet Brine vs Dry Brine on the Woodfire grill. Which one comes out crispier? Which one stays juicier? We’re running the experiment step by step.

Here’s what went down:
👉 Made a 5% wet brine with salt, pepper, and basil
👉 Split a batch of Publix BOGO wings into wet brine and dry brine groups
👉 Let them rest for 24 hours
👉 Cooked them up in the Woodfire with pecan pellets, duck fat spray, and a sprinkle of Dad Dust (onion, garlic, and MSG)
👉 Flipped, crisped, and tested the results side by side
The verdict? Dry brine brings the crunch, wet brine brings the juice. Both delicious, but one clearly takes the crispy crown 👑

And because no wing session is complete without sauce, we whipped up a quick buffalo mix with butter and homemade mango habanero hot sauce 🌶️🥭
Smoky. Crispy. Juicy. Spicy. These wings had it all.
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Hello and welcome to Dad Got This where answer the tough questions like what’s better, wet brine or dry brine for your chicken wings if you’re going to cook them on the Ninja woodf fire and why did the chicken cross the playground? Second one’s easy to get to the other slide. [Music] That’s right. Today we’re going to cook up some chicken wings. These chicken wings. But to do it, we have to go back a day. Why do we have to go back a day? Cuz we are doing an experiment. We are going to test wet brining versus dry brining to see if one of them makes a better chicken wing. So, let’s make a brine. Get yourself a bowl. Get yourself a scale. It is a lot easier to do this with a scale. I have mine set to grams. In this, I have four cups of water. That came out to be 873 g. We’re going to make a 5% brine solution. So, we have to do some math. 87 87 40 40 43 1/2 gram would be 5%. So we’re going to add 43 and a2 g of salt. Pretty close. Now we’re just going to add some other stuff. I’m going to add some cracked pepper and some garlic, which I’m just going to crush up a little bit because I have it. Little bit of fresh basil. Now, you just want to mix this up until the salt dissolves. These are some chicken wings that were BOGO at my local Publix. That’s what inspired this day. We’re going to take these wings. They’re not split. Let’s split them up. Breaking down a chicken wing is super easy. Grab it, pull it to the side, cut it, and you can just kind of break it. And you’ll see where the little spot where the two bones meet. Chop it right there. That’s it. And then for this little guy, right there. You can save these for chicken stock or you can just get rid of them. [Music] We ended up with six and six. We’re going to take half of these wings, put them in this bag, and then we’re going to pour all of our brine over it. Refrigerate for 24 hours. For the other half, we’re going to dry brine them, which is literally just coating them in salt, sticking them in a refrigerator uncovered, overnight, or for 24 hours or however long you are brining. So, we’re going to go ahead and stick these guys on a wire rimmed rack. Doesn’t matter which way’s up because you’re going to end up flipping them. No particular amount. You just want to give them a nice little coating. Give them a flip and hit up the other side. I’m going to go stick these in my dryager, which is what I just used to put any uncovered meats in. It’s just easier for me that way. And I’ll see you guys tomorrow. It is the next morning. It has not been 24 hours. It’s been pretty much overnight. And these wings that were dry brined have no visible salt. A little bit of moisture on some of them, but they look quite dry. We are just going to give them an additional pat dry. The reason I’m doing the dry thing is moisture is the enemy when you are trying to get something crispy. The more time you take to get rid of the moisture, the more heat you use for that, the less time you’re actually using to crisp the skin. So, we’re just going to flip these over real quick. And if you don’t have a special fridge for meat, that’s fine. Just stick them in your regular fridge, uncovered. It’s safe, I think. Or pop a little cover on them. Whatever you feel like doing. There are our dry brined wings. Let’s get our wet brine wings out of their brine. I will say these boys definitely feel plumper. And then we’re going to do our best to dry them off. I like to kind of sandwich them here in between the paper towels. Give the paper towels a flip. Pull that one off. I already got the concepts of an ultimate wing version moving in my mind due to this. I’m thinking like you wet brine them first, dry them off, and then just stick them in the fridge overnight to then dry the skin out. And then you’d get the benefits of the wet brine juiciness and the crispiness of the skin. But I’m getting ahead of myself. I don’t even know if that’s a thing. Let’s find out. One last dab here to get these as dry as I can. At this point, they look pretty good. So, don’t overcrowd the Woodfires air fry basket. I’m only going to cook half of each. At this point, there is a visual difference between the two. White and like a yellowish color on the dry brine. So, we’re going to put the dry brine closer to me, which are already getting a little bit wet from the moisture out here in the air. We’ll give everybody one more final dry and then we’ll put these guys over here. And I’m going to spray them with some duck fat. Never done this one before, so I’m excited to see how it comes out. And the only flavoring I’m going to add since I already have salt is a little bit of dad dust. Dad dust is 50% granulated onion, 50% granulated garlic with some MSG. If you want the recipe, link in description or dad dust. At this point, we are ready to set up the wood fire. Grab your hopper and fill it with pellets. Give it the dad shake. The dad chick either compacts the pellets and makes it burn better, separates the pellets and makes it burn better, or does absolutely nothing and just makes me feel like it makes it burn better. Still do it every time. We’re going to turn this on to air crisp or turn on woodfire. We are going to go to 375. And I don’t know, I’m setting it for an hour. It’s not going to need that. Now, I’m just going to throw these in during the heat up process. That kind of slow build of heat should help them kind of cook through internally while we get our crispy skin. I don’t worry about the smoke taste being too heavy from the smoke. The smok and peon pellets that I’m using have never had a problem doing this method. [Applause] My plan for this is to just go ahead and cook them and flip them every 15 minutes and just maybe spray them with some more duck fat until I get an awesome crispy looking exterior. Then I’ll check the tent. We’ll do that. Let’s Let’s do I’m just going to go do that. Why did I tell you I’m going to I’m just going to go do it. After the first 15 minutes, there really wasn’t much going on. So, I flipped them, sprayed them with a little duck fat, and closed them back off. Went another 15 minutes. After that 15 minutes, now we’re starting to get some color. More duck fat, more flipping, close them off, and get them ready for their next cook. But I decided to go for ultra crispiness and I turned it up to 450 and took the wings out and set them to the side for about 5 minutes. Then I let them go for another 10 minutes. And this is what I was welcomed with when I opened the grill. Perfectly looking crispy wings. And I got to say, these are some good looking wings. Nice looking crispy skin, great color on them. Great. These are the dry brine. Let’s give them a try. M crispy. Tasty solid wing. Wet. Juicier, but definitely not as crispy. Let’s try a flap. Oh, that is crispy. Try the crispiest flap on the wet brine side. Yeah, definitely not as crispy. I wouldn’t call them mushy, but definitely not as crispy. I might need to adjust my cooking method with these. maybe cook them even hotter to get them crispier. But overall, to achieve a super crispy skin, I would recommend dry brining. Now, I think I’m going to have to try the wet then dry brine technique. So, stay tuned for that video. But these are wings. While we’re here, let’s whip up a quick buffalo sauce. In this bowl is four tablespoons of butter, unsalted and melted. And we’re just going to put in a little bit of hot sauce. This is some mango. Mango. Mango habanero hot sauce I make myself from peppers we grow ourselves. You can use any hot sauce you want. A good buffalo sauce is usually just hot sauce and butter. Let’s take one of these crispy boys. Don’t get in there. I love wings. Oh, that’s just a fantastic wing. Smoky, crispy, tender. Got some punch from my hot sauce. Love it. I hope you enjoyed that and you learned something. I sure did. And if you are enjoying this channel and this content, please do the likey subscribe thing. YouTube loves it when you leave a like. I love it when you leave a comment. I answer just about every comment in my comment section. If you are really enjoying this, please consider becoming a member. Members get 24-hour early access to videos, producer credits, shoutouts, sometimes they even get extended cuts of videos. But if you can’t, please subscribing would be enough. So, with all that out of the way, I guess there’s only one question left to answer. Why did the chicken get kicked off the basketball team? Too many fowls. Dad may tell horrible dad jokes. Answer existential questions about wings on the ninja woodfire. But one thing dad will never do is an outro. So that’s it. Bye. This is the part where I thank all of my members. You guys are the absolute best. Thank you so much for your support and rock on. I don’t know why I said rock on, but rock on. [Music]