Grilled Chicken Wings
Our preparation for the Super Bowl continues with a bar food classic, chicken wings. These wings are dressed down a bit from the breaded, sauce-coated flats and drumettes of your local sports bar. Rather than breading and saucing them up, we took advantage of a brief stop in the rain to cook them on the barbecue instead! The result is a wing that’s got just the right balance of crisp skin, moist inside, and delicious flavour.
The goal for our marinades was to complement our blue cheese dip (the recipe for that is here too!). After a lot of deliberation we settled on two options: classic honey garlic and more adventurous apple honey. In true sports bar style, we chopped up some carrots and celery to scoop up the extra dip.
Grilling the wings gives a great crispy skin without the hassle (and calories) of breading and/or deep frying. I find it also keeps more of the wings’ moisture inside, meaning the sauce isn’t as dominant. The downside is it requires a fine line between a barbecue that’s too cold, which won’t crisp up the skin, and too hot, where the oil in the wings will flare up and burn your food. This is definitely something to keep an eye on while it cooks!
Both wings turned out well, but there’s still room for improvement! The honey garlic were my favourite of the two, but lacked some earthiness in the flavour to balance out the tang from the marinade. I think adding a bit more soy sauce, or maybe some green onions, would help. The apple butter sauce was very good, but too thick to get an even coating on the wings. This one will take some adaptation too, maybe replacing the apples with apple juice. Read the recipes below and let us know what you think!
- 24 full wings (48 halves)
- 20 minutes + marinating
- 15 minutes
Ingredients
- 24 unsplit chicken wings, or 48 split
Honey Garlic Marinade - 1/4 cup lemon juice
- 1/4 cup honey
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 2 tbsp soy sauce
- 4 cloves garlic, smashed
- Salt and pepper
Apple Garlic Marinade - 1/4 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1/4 cup honey
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- Salt and pepper
Apple Honey Sauce - 2 granny smith apples, peeled and finely chopped
- 1/2 cup apple cider vinegar
- 1/2 cup honey
Blue Cheese Dip - 1/2 cup blue cheese
- 1/2 cup sour cream
- 1/4 cup mayonnaise
- 1 tsp lemon juice
Directions
- Marinate the wings in one of the marinade options for at least two hours, up to overnight
- Pre-heat your barbecue to 400F. Make sure the grates are clean to prevent sticking
- Place the wings over direct medium heat and cook until they reach and internal temperature of 165F, about 10 minutes, turning halfway through.
- Coat the apple honey wings in sauce just before removing them from the barbecue
Apple Honey Sauce
- Cook the apples in some butter, stirring often, until their moisture is released and they begin to brown, about 10 minutes.
- Add the honey and apple cider vinegar. Stir to combine and break up the pieces of apple
- Cook until the sauce browns and losses its vinegary bite. If it’s too thick, dilute it with some water
Blue Cheese Dip
- Combine the ingredients, stirring well to break up chunks of blue cheese. Adjust the amount of sour cream and mayo to taste.
More delicious recipes
This is one of the many fantastic recipes available on this blog