Lately I've really been craving chicken wings. Since I don't think I've grilled them before (I know we've done slow-cooker and oven wings) I decided to make some on the pellet smoker. My wife gave me a day this week and we picked up the chicken. Here's how it went.
Btw yes I know all the grilling posts involve using the smoker. They're generally the 'big-ticket' items worthy of writing about. I'll likely do something with charcoal grilling soon.
Moving on, I needed to decide on a recipe and waited til day of, which luckily didn't cause any problems. My first thought on anything grilling is always amazingribs.com. Meathead has a few wing options, like these Asian-style sauce wings and some buffalo wings I'll need to try eventually, but I wanted something crispy and sauceless so the search continued.
Next I stumbled upon this recipe for a dry rub. You put the wings on the grill and smoke for 2 hours, and that's pretty much it. It's perfectly simple. We had a little over three pounds of chicken so the amounts were halved. After applying the rub, the wings need to be refrigerated for at least an hour before going on the grill (don't leave raw meat out before cooking!), so I needed to start in the early afternoon.
What you need:
3 lbs chicken wings
A big kitchen knife
Cutting board
2 gallon plastic bags
1 tbsp olive oil
1 tbsp chili powder
1 tbsp smoked paprika (or regular)
1/2 tsp cumin
1/2 tsp onion powder
1/2 tsp garlic powder
1 tsp kosher salt
1+1/2 tsp ground black pepper
~1/2 tsp cayenne pepper (optional)
Steps:
1. ~2pm: Separate the 'drumettes' and 'wingettes.' Lop off the 'tips' too while you're at it. You need to find the joints and press down hard. It gets easier after doing it once.
2. Spread out the separated wings and pat them dry.
3. Make the rub by combining the spices. I made two equal mixtures because I knew all the wings wouldn't fit inside a single plastic bag.
Note - I mixed the oil with the spices at this step, and would try another method next time to more evenly distribute it. Brush it on?
4. Put half the wings in each plastic bag and pour the rub mix in. Shake each bag and try to distribute the rub as evenly as possible.
5. Stick the two bags in the fridge.
6. ~330pm: Start the grill, then set to 250 after preheating.
7. ~4pm: Take the wings out of the fridge and put them on the grill, spacing them out. Leave them for 2 hours. No need to turn.
8. ~6pm: Take the wings off, wait 10 minutes before serving and eating.
The starting point recipe says to ramp up the heat at the end, to 400+. I didn't do this because our grill doesn't get to higher temps quickly, plus after two hours they were already crispy enough. It's why I chose 250 instead of 200 at the outset. I ended up removing half the tips right before they went on the grill, for comparisons sake, and next time I'll do them all. There isn't any meat there and they just steal some of the rub. If you do leave them though, they're easily separated with your hands when eating.
Doing this was a total success. The wings were easy to make, if you plan accordingly, and the meat was all tender and delicious. The drumettes had a bit of a smoky kick, since they got more of the chili powder heavy rub, which worked out great as I typically eat those and my wife prefers the wingettes. I'll definitely be doing this again. Chef's kiss
If you don't have a pellet smoker I think you could do this on a gas grill. You'd need to get some smoking wood and decide how you're going to utilize it. Get your grill to an appropriate temp and monitor it so it stays there. Most likely they won't turn out quite as good as on a pellet smoker, but it seems very doable.
That's all for today. Adios!
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