Since I bought the smoker (discussed at some length here), we’ve been making an effort to try every possible food item in it. I’ve smoked the standards – pork shoulder, ribs, beef brisket, turkey – as well as some more nontraditional foods like whole apples and mussels.
On Thursday, my husband and I were kind of brainstorming about a trip to Costco when he brought up the idea of cooking up a bunch of chicken wings. Traditionally, buffalo wings are deep-fried. I don’t do a lot of frying for a number of reasons, so he suggested I try smoking them instead.
During my Friday afternoon trip to Costco (which was packed with people) I picked up one of the big vacuum-packed packages of chicken wings:
Each of the six packets is six whole wings. The entire mess weighs just over ten pounds.
Now, there are three parts to a chicken wing. They’re referred to by various names. In buffalo wing parlance, the two meaty parts are the drum and the flat. In addition, there is a third segment, generally called the “tip,” which isn’t served. Tips have very little meat on them, and are largely bone, skin, and tendon. Tips are awesome for making stock, so if you make your own chicken stock (or want to start – it’s very easy), save the tips.
Breaking down a wing is relatively simple, although it can require some elbow grease. I generally make a deep cut in the flesh above the joint and then flex it until the bones separate, then cut any additional muscle, tendon, or skin holding it together. Be careful when cutting around the bones, as chicken bones are fairly fragile and you don’t want to end up with a sliver or splinter of bone stabbing you in the hand (or in the mouth while eating later).
Here is one pack of wings, laid out on a cutting board. I put down some paper towels to pat off the surface of the wing, then cleared away the towels and got to work.
Here’s what the flat and drum look like when they’re broken down:
So, get to work!
And that’s what ten pounds of chicken wings look after breaking them down. The bowl on the right is the tips, which I dumped into a Snapware container:
This went in the freezer. There’s already a picked-over rotisserie chicken carcass in there. I usually wait until I get a big pile of bones, enough to half-fill my stock pot, before I make stock. Bones are better than meat for making stock; a really good stock should be highly gelatinous, and gelatin is found in bones and cartilage.
Unlike most of my other smoker recipes, these wings did not undergo any sort of rub, marination, brining, or cure. I wanted them to pick up lots of smoky flavor and the flavor of the sauce, and that was it.
My husband took over the sauce-making duties, because he was the most excited about this aspect. He made a traditional buffalo sauce and then built some other sauces from it. He melted a pound of butter and mixed it with a bottle of Frank’s Red Hot for the base. Then he used this basic sauce and added honey to one batch, Sweet Baby Ray’s barbecue sauce to another, and garlic powder (with a dash of sugar) to a third. My personal favorite is the honey one – it has a really nice smooth consistency and a great flavor, and the sweetness helps cut the heat a little bit.
Once the smoker was hot, I loaded in the wings:
The metal bowl on top is about a cup of mesquite chips, soaked in bourbon. I used plain water in the steam tray and kept the top vent closed.
One of the weaknesses of this smoker is that its maximum temperature is 275°F. This is simply not hot enough for a really nice, crunchy wing. I decided to solve this by pulling the wings before they were completely done and tossing them in a 375° oven for a few minutes until they crisped up a bit.
After about two hours in the smoker, we pulled the wings out. Some of the ones on the side closest to the heating element had browned and crisped up nicely, so I pulled those aside and we used them to test sauces.
Pulling the wings out of the smoker:
The rest went on two jelly roll pans, spread out in a single layer, skin side up. These went into the oven.
I can’t really get a good photo of what the browned, crisped wings looked like coming out of the oven. It took about 10-15 minutes to get them crunchy. If you like them with a lot of crunch, leave them in longer, but remember that you’re risking drying them out.
Here they are spun up in the four sauces:
Plain ones are in the metal pan, getting ready to go into the sauce. Clockwise from top left are the traditional with garlic added, plain traditional, barbecue sauce and traditional, and honey and traditional. All pretty tasty, in my opinion, though I filled my plate with the honey ones.
I had forgotten to buy celery, so we plated up with some baby carrots and ranch dressing. The purists will tell you that buffalo wings should be served with bleu cheese dressing, but frankly, I hate the stuff. Then again, I never claimed to be a purist; after all, these wings are smoked, which I’m pretty sure no wing place in Buffalo would do.
