How To Make Crispy Buffalo Chicken Wings

Crispy chicken wings are a game day essential. Perfectly seasoned, extra crunchy, and guaranteed to disappear fast!

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Here’s what a buffalo wing should look like. And this is what it should sound like. We’ll start by brining our chicken by combining some baking soda, potato starch, and salt into a nice big bowl. Now, I’ll give it a nice quick mini whisk to make sure everything’s fully combined. Then, optionally, toss some gloves on. And then, add in your wings. I’m sure at some point in this video, we’re going to debate whether wings are better than drums. And I know I might be in the minority here, but I’ve always liked the drums a lot better. I’ll explain later. For now, go ahead and mix those wings up. Your goal is to mix them as fully as possible in this flowery mixture. I even like to pick them up and almost press this into them just a little bit to make sure they’re fully fully coated. What this step here is going to do is dry the wings out as much as possible to give you that paper thin-like shatter when you go and bite into them. Once they’re fully and evenly coated like this, go ahead and lay them down onto a wire rack line baking sheet. You can lay them however you want here as long as they’re not touching each other because the goal is to get full air circulation around these wings. Once they look something like this, go ahead and toss them in the fridge for between 6 and 24 hours to make sure the skin gets as dry as possible. While our wings are drying out in the fridge, we’ll go ahead and make our dipping sauces. I couldn’t decide between ranch or blue cheese since everybody seems to argue which one’s better. So, we’re going to make both. Starting with the ranch. Fresh herbs are a must. First up, we’ve got dill, which we’ll chop nice and fine like this. You basically want to make it as small as you possibly can. It’s one of my favorite herbs in the kitchen by far. And then we’ve got our chives. Fun fact, if you ever have sour cream and onion flavored things, this is probably the onion flavor that’s in there. Just like with the dill, we want to chop this up as fine as we possibly can. At the restaurant I worked at during college, the first thing I had to do every time I showed up in the kitchen was chop chives just like this for about an hour. So, I’m not really sure if I love it or hate it. Now, to finish this up, I’m going to add in some mayonnaise. And if you don’t like mayonnaise, don’t be freaked out. It’s literally just eggs and oil. Then some sour cream. A little buttermilk. That’ll give some nice acidity. Then a little onion powder. And then I’ll grate in a few cloves of garlic. As an optional substitute here, you’re welcome to use some garlic powder instead. And to finish, a pinch of salt and some fresh cracked pepper. And after a quick mix, your ranch should look something like this. And if you want it a little thinner, just add a splash of water. We’ll cover this up and toss it in the fridge so we can move on to our blue cheese. The blue cheese dressing is much simpler to make. You start with a bit of sour cream, then some mayonnaise. As you can see, the bases are very similar. Then our buttermilk, a few cloves of finely grated garlic, a little sprinkle of salt, and the most important part, our blue cheese. I will say though, there’s an art to how you add in that blue cheese. You want it nice and crumbly and almost sort of mashed into that dressing. The goal here is a nice creamy sauce with pops of that blue cheese. We don’t just want all the chunks sitting at the bottom. As you can see, I’m almost mashing and crumbling some of this between my fingers to make sure we get all sorts of different sizes and textures, but more importantly, so that it floats in that sauce. As I mix this up, I’m going to occasionally mash against the edge of my bowl to spread some of that blue cheese through the mixture here. That way, some of that cheese will become part of the sauce while other parts stay chunky for texture. Now, our sauces are done, so I’ll cover this, toss it in the fridge, and we can cook. Once my sauces are in the fridge, I’m going to go ahead and prep my frying oil. You’ll want to use a nice heavy bottomed pot for this, something safe and sturdy here. It’s also going to be really important to use an instant read thermometer to make sure we’re constantly monitoring that oil temp. And now just let this heat up while you go and grab your wings. Our wings have been resting in the fridge and already to the touch are quite dry, which means we’re hopefully going to get that very crispy skin. To fry, we want our oil temp sitting somewhere between 300 and 320° F. And once we get there, we’re going to go ahead and fry in batches. For now, I’ll do just six of our wings at a time. A general rule of thumb when frying is to make sure there’s visible space between every item in your pan that you’re trying to fry. Too close together and they may not crisp up. We’re cooking our wings in two different stages. We can call them the cooking stage and the crisping stage. The first stage here, the cooking stage, is going to cook that meat all the way through without browning our chicken wings. That way, when we go to turn up the heat later, we can get a nice golden brown crust on the outside without worrying so much what’s happening on the inside. For now, we’re going to cook these for about 6 minutes. And I like to move them around constantly as I cook so nothing sticks to the bottom of our pan. You should be constantly adjusting your heat the whole time here to make sure your temperature stays between that range of 300 and 320 Fahrenheit. By now, our wings should be just about cooked through. So, I’ll go ahead and lay them off to the side where we can let some of that oil drain off while we cook the rest of our wings. As you can see, I’ve separated it between the flats and the drums. I don’t want any of these flats touching my drums, the best part of the wings. Very important is right when they hit the oil, make sure you give it a little stir, just like you do if you were making pasta, so that nothing sticks. And remember, whenever you add cold food to hot oil, that oil temperature is going to drop fast. So, make sure you’re compensating for it by changing that temperature as you go. You see those nice crispy lumps that we’re starting to develop on these wings here. That is what’s going to turn into that ultra shattering crisp later when we go to do that second fry. These are also done now. And before our second fry, we’ll let these rest off to the side while we go to make our buffalo sauce. The buffalo sauce is very easy to put together. We start with a bit of Frank’s Red Hot Classic and delicious. Then we’ll go in with some butter, some honey. That sweetness is going to balance out all that spice we just added. Then to finish, some paprika and some cayenne pepper. Oh, and don’t forget about your garlic powder. And now over medium or medium low heat, you’ll want to whisk until everything melts together into one sauce. Sometimes buffalo sauce can split. But if it looks like this is happening, don’t panic and simply whisk for about 15 to 20 seconds really hard until it comes back together. Once your sauce is done, go ahead and shift that off to the side. And while we let that oil heat up for the second round of frying, I’ll quickly show you how to make a buffalo dry rub, just in case you prefer a dry rub over a classic sauce. The dry rub is easy. All you do is combine some onion powder, garlic powder, a little brown sugar, some nutritional yeast, cayenne pepper, a bit of dry mustard, some buttermilk powder for that vinegar flavor and tanginess, and a nice sprinkle of paprika. And after a quick whisk to make sure everything’s evenly combined, this will give you that same buffalo flavor using only dry ingredients. By now, our oil should be up at that higher temperature, somewhere between 375 and 400° F, which means we’re ready to get these nice and crispy. Don’t worry too much about timing. Really your focus is getting that beautiful golden brown crust on the outside of each wing because they’re already cooked and we’re really just going for that crispy golden brown color. Now you can add in all the wings at once this time. And as long as you continue to move them around as they cook so they’re not constantly touching, there shouldn’t be any issues. Once your wings start to look beautiful, golden brown and crispy like this, you can start pulling them off the heat to rest. Just wait until you hear that first crunch sound because I’m willing to bet these are going to be the crispiest wings you’ve ever seen. Here’s the important test of whether your wings are crispy enough. That’s an A+. To coat them in our sauce, I’ll pour that buffalo sauce over the wings. If you went for the dry rub, you’ll use that here instead. And then we toss. As for our sauces, we have both blue cheese and ranch. And a lot of people have a hard time picking which one, so that’s why I like to mix them both together. I know it sounds a little crazy, but if you’ve never tried it, just try it one time. You can get mad at me at the comments down below if you really don’t like it, but just trust me on this one. You can plate these wings however you want. But carrot sticks and celery sticks are a must. Aside from the fact that they look nice, they’ll cool that heat and give a really nice contrast in temperature as you eat those wings. So, they’re not only classic, but also important for that flavor and experience. I wish I could have some of you over for a wing party. Oh, I forgot to explain why drums are better than flats. [Music]