These tasty wings are a mash-up of two great recipes from work, a baked chicken wing recipe from my friends at Cook’s Country, and a killer sauce developed by my CI teammate Andrea Geary for incredible Korean Fried Chicken Wings. I had a hankering for Andrea’s wings last weekend, only to discover that I didn’t have enough oil to properly fry them when I set to work, and so did a quick pivot and dug up the baked wing recipe rather than venture out in the cold for frying oil.
Were they absolutely as good as Andrea’s original recipe for fried Korean awesomeness? No. There really is no substitute for frying when you’re looking to deliver super crispy wings, but the baked recipe did the job well enough and her sublime wing sauce dressed them up in spicy style. To get crispy chicken wings without frying, the Cook’s Country team found a way to dry out the skin. Baking powder was their secret weapon; it helps break down the proteins within the skin, and aids in browning. After you toss the wings with baking powder and salt, you start them cooking in a low oven to render their fat, then crank the oven to finish roasting the wings and crisping the skin.