Game day ready: BBQ tips for smoked and grilled chicken wings

Never make bad wings again. This week’s BBQ Tips podcast shares how to properly make smoked and grilled chicken wings from start to finish.

It’s actually been a pretty calm week for me. I didn’t have any competitions this past week. I don’t have any this weekend.

I didn’t have to travel anywhere, which was actually good news because that means I got to spend more time at home behind the grill, more time behind the computer, developing new recipes.

Later in today’s episode, I’m going to touch on a really cool project that I’ve been working on that you can actually be a part of. So stay tuned for that.

But first we’ve got to talk Super Bowl. The Super Bowl teams are set. The game is going to be held in Las Vegas, my hometown, on Feb. 11, 2024.

Throughout today’s episode, I’m going to throw a few poll questions at you, and I want you guys to answer in the comments below. The first question is definitely Super Bowl related.

How to save money on wings

Because the Super Bowl is coming up. This week’s episode is all about chicken wings.

I’m going to share how you can save enough money on chicken wings so that you can get yourself a free six pack.

Here in Las Vegas, chicken wings cost $4.99 a pound, if you buy them as whole wings. I know things are a little bit more expensive here. They may be cheaper where you live.

But if I buy the pre-cut wingettes and drumettes, those are $6.99 a pound. That’s a $2 difference. So if I were to buy 5 pounds of wings for my big game day party, that’s ten bucks.

That’s a free six pack right there.

So if you have the time where you can buy the whole chicken wings and break them down yourself, you’re going to save yourself $2 a pound, maybe a dollar a pound, depending on where you live.

But still, that’s money savings back in your pocket. So you can invest that into something else for your fun game day party.

Parts of a whole chicken wing.

There are actually three sections. You’ve got the drumette, the wingette (or the flap or flat) as some people call it, and then the little wing tip,

To separate those three portions, you’re going to look for the joints. So basically where the flat and the drum are connected. It’s in the shape of a V, so if you kind of separate that V and spread it out, you can even bend it all the way in half and hear the little crack, that’s going to break that joint.

Then you just take your knife, run it right between that joint and you’ll cut off the little drumette.

Then you’re left with the flat and the little wing tip. You don’t want to barbecue that wing tip. There’s like, no meat on it. You want to go ahead and cut that off.

Same thing. It’s shaped like a V, just kind of bend it. Run your knife right between the joint, and you’ll separate that wing tip from that wingette. And now you’ve got your drumettes. You’ve got your wingettes and you’ve got your wing tips.

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Seasoning Wings

Before we talk about how to cook wings, let’s talk about how to season wings.

I have a dry rub recipe on my website specifically for wings.

My secret ingredient is just a little bit of celery seed because buffalo wings and celery go perfectly together. So why not add just a little pop of that celery flavor to the wing itself?

Otherwise you can use a combination of kosher salt, pepper and garlic. Or if you want to do some really fun fusion wings, add some different herbs and spices from different areas of the world.

No matter how you cook your chicken wings. It’s really important that you dry the skins. If you don’t, they could end up soggy, which is not a good chicken wing. So I always take mine out of the packaging.

Don’t wash them. You don’t want to add more moisture to them.

Instead, I just pat them dry with the paper towel, and then I add my rub. For the best flavor, it’s actually best to leave them in the refrigerator uncovered with the rub for a few hours or even overnight.

That’s going to help dry out the skins. And it’s also going to help the flavors kind of brine that chicken meat.

All right. So your wings are seasoned and now it’s time to throw them on the grill. You’ve got a couple options. We can either smoke them a little bit slow and low, or we can cook them hot and fast.

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How to smoke chicken wings

So for smoking chicken wings, I like to smoke them at 225F degrees. I like to use hickory, apple, cherry or sometimes pecan word or pellets. Once you get your smoker set to to 225F, you put your seasoned wings in a single layer on the grill.

There is no need to flip them. I just put them skin side up and then I let them smoke for about 60 to 90 minutes. You want the internal temperature to reach 155F degrees.

Once they reach that 155F internal mark, you’ve got a couple of options.

If your party is ready to get going, go ahead and crank your heat on your grill up to 425F. Then you want to grill your wings for about 2 to 4 minutes per side until that skin gets nice and crispy.

If you’re not ready for your party yet, take them off the smoker after they hit 155F. Let them cool for a little while on the counter, then store them in the refrigerator.

Then when it’s party time, pull them out of the refrigerator and then all you have to do is just grill them over high heat.

They’re already cooked. They’re already smoked, so you’re just adding that crispiness and heating them back up. So that’s a super plan if you want to have smoked wings done in advance to be ready for your party.

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How to grill chicken wings

Let’s talk about hot and fast wings. This is actually my preferred way for cooking wings because you still get a little bit of that smoky flavor, but you get your skins crispy right away and it takes about half the time.

So I’m going to talk about different grills because each grill is a little bit different in how the wings cook.

I tested this all last week. I’ve got like 30 girls in my backyard and I tested it on, I don’t know, five or six different grills to just see how each one reacted with the recipe that I shared on my website.

Pellet grilled wings

Now, let’s start with the pellet grill. You want to set your pellet grill to 350 to 375F, you’re going to be cooking over indirect heat.

The good news is pellet grills are always indirect heat because they’ve got that metal deflector plate that goes over the fire pot.

When I grill wings on my pellet grill, I like to cook them on the upper rack. That gives me true indirect heat.

Now, a pellet grill is indirect heat because it has the deflector plate. I get it. However, there are hot spots in a pellet grill.

When you look inside of your grill, you take the grill grate out, you take the deflector plate out, there’s probably another heat protector over the fire pot. You take that out, then you’re going to see where your fire pot is.

This is where the auger is turning the pellets into the flame source to where it’s actually creating the heat and creating the smoke.

Well, wherever that fire pot is, that’s going to be the hottest part of your grill.grate.

So if you put your wings on your grill on the lower rack and some of them are over that fire pot area, those are going to cook a lot faster. But if you put them on the upper rack, if you have one, they’re going to cook a lot more even.

So, if you don’t have an upper rack, figure out where your fire pot is and then cook them away from the fire pot. If you have an upper rack, go ahead and use that.

Just simply put them on the grill skin side up and then let them cook for about an hour. The final internal temperature that I like to cook too, is 195 to 205F.

Technically, chicken wings are done at 165F and you can eat them. They’re safe to eat at that point. But I find that the meat is juiciest and the skin is crispiest when I cook them to 195 to 205F.

The flats will cook a little bit faster because they generally weigh about one ounce while the drums weigh about 1.5 ounces. You can take the flats off earlier if you want, or just cook them all at the same time. That’s what I tend to do because I don’t mind if my flats are cooked a little bit further

Once your wings reach that temperature, you can take them off the grill, eat them right away, or toss them in some sauce, which we’ll talk about a little bit later. But first, we’re going to move on to the next grill.

Charcoal grilled wings

Let’s move onto wings on a charcoal grill. This is where things get a little bit nuanced because there are so many styles of charcoal grills.

You’ve got your kettle grill. You’ve got a ceramic cooker like a Big Green Egg, a Primo or a Kamado Joe. You’ve got the gravity fed charcoal or an offset smoker.

Because of this, you get a lot of fluctuation of where the indirect heat is. So I still want you to set your grill to 350F.

We’re going to do indirect cooking. So again, kettle grill, you’ll light your coals, you get them ashed over. You have a couple of options. You can either push your coals to one side of the grill and place the wings on the opposite side where there’s no coals underneath.

Or, you can use the method where you put the coals in the center and then you have a ring of wings around the outside. Again, no coals underneath them or you can have an elevated rack with your kettle grill.

You’re going to need to adjust the bottom vent and the top vent.

You can monitor the internal temperature of your charcoal grill with either a built-in thermometer that’s usually in the dome of the lid, or you can use something like a Thermoworks Smoke.

That’s where you stick the thermometer probe on the grill grate. There’s an ambient temperature clip, and then you use your digital device to measure the temperature and get it set by adjusting those vents.

The thing about cooking wings on a kettle grill is even though it’s 350F and even though it’s indirect heat, that heat is a little bit more forceful than on, let’s say, my Masterbuilt, where the charcoal is off to the side where I can use an elevated rack that’s inside the grill.

So it’s still 350F, but it’s not as intense of a 350F, if that makes any sense.

Same thing with like a Big Green Egg or Kamado. You’ve got your coals in the bottom. You have a grate you have your diffuser plate, your ceramic plate, the grate on top.

That ceramic plate is going to help deflect that charcoal heat. So your temperature of the chamber is going to be 350F, but it’s still a little more intense because the meat is closer to the coals.

Because of that, this is what’s going to make you a pitmaster versus just a backyard griller. This is where the temperature of your meat is so important.

While I say set the temperature of the grill for 350F, things are going to fluctuate a little bit. Don’t get so focused on the recipe says one hour or that the temperature says 350F.

What you need to focus on is the final temperature of your chicken wing.

So no matter what type of charcoal grill you have, I want you to set the grill temperature for 350F.

Put the wings on the grill over indirect heat, and then I want you to check the temperature after 30 minutes. Go ahead and probe them with your digital meat thermometer.

Check the skin, feel if it feels crispy. It’s possible, that they’ll be ready after 30 minutes. If they’re not, set your timer for 15 more minutes. Let them cook some more. Go back out there, probe them again.

On my Masterbuilt, it takes my chicken wings about an hour to reach the final temperature that I want them to. On a kettle grill, it’s going to be a little bit faster. On a different type of charcoal grilll, it might be a little bit faster, it might be a little bit longer.

So don’t get so focused on the one hour time. Again, focus on the 350 to 375F temperature of your grill, making sure it’s indirect heat and then focus on that final temp, and your wings are going to be awesome.

Gas grilled wings

Lastly, I want to talk about chicken wings on a gas grill. So that’s possible, too. But we still need the indirect cooking zone. So to do that, hopefully you have a gas grill that has multiple burners.

You want to turn at least one burner on. If you have three burners, that’s ideal because you can turn on the side burners and leave the middle burner off.

Then you place your wings over that indirect heat, which is the area where the burners off.

Or what my preference is, is if your grill has a warming rack, that kind of pops up in the back, place your wings along that. That is 100 percent indirect heat because you’re not by the burners themselves.

Gas grills are so different. Some gas grills I have that are the high-end models, if I put it on low, I’m lucky If I can get my grill down to 350F. Other gas grills that don’t have as much BTUs that are a little bit maybe less expensive, I can crank it to medium, medium-high heat and get 350F.

So there’s going to be a lot of variation. So again, don’t always just look at what the recipe says.

If the recipe says put it to medium, that might not be perfect for your gas grill. So instead rely on that thermometer in the dome of the lid or use a thermometer like the Thermoworks Smoke that I mentioned.

Now, with a gas grill, when I put all my burners on low, I have a Weber Genesis that I cooked these on the other day, all three burners were on low. I had my wings on the upper rack. They only took 30 minutes to cook. On the pellet grill, they took an hour. On my Masterbuilt, they took an hour.

On my gas grill, still at 350F, they only took 30 minutes. That is the nuance of barbecue. Don’t rely on the time. Rely on the temperature. And you got this.

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How to sauce wings

When it comes to saucing your wings, you want to do it immediately off the grill. Make sure that your sauce is warm so you don’t cool down your chicken wings.

Put your sauce in a bowl. Add those hot, fresh grilled wings, give them a toss and serve them on your platter.

Carrot sticks, celery, chips, french fries, whatever else you want. You can serve some dipping sauce that matches the sauce that you use, or you can serve some ranch dressing or blue cheese dressing.

All right. That wrap things up for wings. As I promised at the top of the show, I wanted to touch on a project that I’m working on that is really exciting.

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How to become a part owner of FYR

So I work with a lot of grill companies and fortunately with many of those companies, I have great partnerships where I have a voice and they come to me for my opinions and my advice as they develop products or as they adapt products.

You now have the chance to be a voice for a grill company. It doesn’t matter how many followers you have. It doesn’t matter how many competitions you’ve won.

If you want to be a part of this company, all you need to do is go to wefunder.com/FYR.

This company is actually founded by Derek Wolf from Over the Fire Cooking.

He has founded this company from the ground up. It’s this grassroots level. There are 20 or so of us who are content creators, barbecue pitmasters, restaurant owners, etc., who are founders in this company.

We’ve invested in this company because we believe in the products that he is creating – that actually we are creating together.

There’s a new charcoal chimney, there’s some new animal fats, but there’s also a brand new grill. It’s a portable grill that’s unlike any grill that’s on the market because we as barbecuers, as as content creators have put our voice forward to explain the things that we thought would be really cool in a grill.

It is still under production. And as part of that, we actually need additional capital investment in order to make this thing come to life.

That’s where you come in. That’s where you can be part owner of FYR.

If you go to that Wefunder page, you can choose the investment that you want to make.

It’s not quite like Kickstarter where you invest in a product and once it comes to life, that product gets shipped to you. Instead, you invest in the product. The product comes to life, it gets shipped to you, but you’re also part owner. So as the company succeeds, you succeed.

I just wanted to make sure that you guys had the opportunity to be a part of it because it’s a really cool thing that I’m proud to be a part of.

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Thank you so much for tuning into this week’s BBQ Tips Podcast. I hope that’s really going to help you out with your chicken wing game.

If not, if you still have more questions, shoot me a DM, leave me a comment. I’m happy to help you. I’m here to help you. I look forward to reading the answers to all your poll questions in the comments.

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Tune into more of my BBQ Tips podcasts or scroll around the website for even more helpful BBQ Tips.

Chicken Wings Recipes

How to grill chicken wings on a gas grill

Grilled Lemon Pepper Chicken Wings

Smoked Pastrami Chicken Wings

Chicken Wings on a Pellet Grill

Homemade Dry Rub for Chicken Wings

Perfectly Smoked Chicken Wings