Is there anything better than crispy, saucy, fall-off-the-bone chicken wings? The kind that get deep fried and served up by the dozen at your favorite sports bar? I sure didn't think so. Which is why, when I was asked to develop a recipe for Basically Buffalo Wings, I truly never imagined being able to recreate anything nearly as delicious at home. I thought the deck was stacked against me.
They were going to be baked chicken wings for sure—I am the kind of person who would rather chop 1,000 tear-jerking onions than deep fry anything at home. The grease splattering around on your favorite shirt and/or cat, the smell that doesn’t go away for days, and after all of that you have to figure out how to properly dispose of a vat of hot oil. No. Thanks.
But after consulting a ton of recipes for baked chicken wings and lots and lots of testing, I proved myself wrong. With a little technique, I was able to make a version of Buffalo wings that required no frying but were every bit as satisfying as the restaurant wings I know and love. Baking the chicken on a wire rack set in a sheet pan helped a lot—it helped to keep hot air circulating around the wings, which crisped them more evenly without having to flip them halfway through. And starting the wings at a low temperature—which allowed fat in the chicken skin to render out and surface moisture to evaporate—before blasting them at a higher temperature was the one-two punch they needed to really get cracklin'. But it was the addition of one very unusual ingredient that really made the difference: baking soda. Regular old baking soda! Incorporating just a half teaspoon of the stuff into the mixture of kosher salt, garlic powder, and onion powder that I tossed the wings with before baking pushed them over the edge, yielding chicken skin that was uniformly browned and crunchy. Weird, right?
