Baked Hot Honey Bourbon Barbecue Chicken Wings Recipe

The whole saucy wing thing may have started at the Anchor Bar where Buffalo wings were born, but over the past six decades, wing flavors have gone way beyond the original combo of Frank's RedHot and butter. Buffalo Wild Wings sauces range from mild lemon pepper to fiery mango habanero, while the Wingstop flavor range includes Hawaiian and hot honey. In this recipe, developer Kara Barrett glazes her wings with a bourbon-spiked barbecue sauce that's super-sweet with a slight hint of heat from hot honey.

As Barrett tells us, "BBQ wings are always a hit and perfect for football season," and notes of this recipe, "These are pretty easy and go from the tray to the serving tray without much fuss or time. I've been making a lot of wings lately and that little baste and broil at the end really give them a satisfying finish." It doesn't take much time to put this recipe together so it makes for a fairly low-effort contribution to a watch party or tailgate. The fact that the wings are baked also means they're a lot less messy to cook than deep-fried wings would be, nor do they require firing up an outdoor grill in inclement weather. Pair them with soft pretzels, sausage balls, and loaded potato skins for the perfect gameday spread, and don't forget to save some whiskey to make a Kentucky bourbon butter cake for dessert.

For this recipe, you'll need a few pounds of chicken wings. Barrett cooks them whole, but you could use just the flats and drummettes if you prefer. The sauce is made with tomato paste, hot honey, maple syrup, bourbon, red wine vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, smoked paprika, salt, and pepper.

Sprinkle the wings with 1 teaspoon of kosher salt and set them aside. Refrigerate uncovered until ready to bake, up to 24 hours.

In a saucepan on medium heat, bring the tomato paste, hot honey, maple syrup, bourbon, vinegar, Worcestershire sauce, paprika, ¾ teaspoon salt, and pepper to a gentle simmer.

Stir occasionally for 10-15 minutes until thickened.

Preheat the oven to 375 F.

Bake the wings for 40 minutes.

Add the sauce to a mixing bowl.

Toss the hot wings with the finished sauce.

Turn the oven up to broil.

Broil the wings for 7 to 10 minutes.

Baste the finished wings with the remaining sauce.

Serve the wings warm and optionally garnish with fresh herbs or micro greens.

If you like your wings as crispy as possible (and who doesn't?), the best way to achieve this is to start with the wings facing skin-side down, then turn them over halfway through the cooking time (this goes for both the baking and broiling stages of this recipe). Yet another way to attain maximum crispness is to place them on a wire rack inside your baking pan. Broiling the wings isn't strictly necessary for the crisping process, but the extra heat will help to deepen the flavor of the glaze.

To prepare this dish ahead of time, salt the wings and leave them uncovered in your refrigerator for up to two days (the USDA advises against keeping them there any longer without cooking). The salt helps to draw any moisture out of the meat, which will also help with the crisping. You can prepare the sauce ahead of time as well, although you'll need to warm it up before you apply it to the baked wings. You should also take the wings out of the fridge as you preheat the oven so they can take the chill off before you cook them,

The sauce in this recipe is very tasty just as it is, so much so that you may even want to use it for chicken breasts, ribs, and salmon as well as wings. Even so, you can treat it as a template and tweak the individual components to make it into something even more to your liking. As this sauce is on the sweet side, you may wish to cut down on the honey or maple syrup or even omit one of these ingredients altogether. Another way to counteract all of the sweetness is to add something savory like soy sauce, additional Worcestershire, or garlic powder and onion powder.

You can also play around with the heat level in this barbecue sauce. While the hot honey adds a hint of spice, you can swap it out for regular honey if you want a milder sauce. If you do want a spicy sauce but have no hot honey on hand, you can also DIY this ingredient by mixing plain honey with crushed red pepper and/or a Louisiana-style hot sauce like Frank's RedHot.