Smoked Chicken Wings: a Thermal Trick for Crisp Skin
Smoked chicken wings, following the method from HeyGrillHey.com
Sauces with a Thai sweet chili sauce
Equipment
Ingredients
For the WIngs
- 5 lb chicken wings
- 1 1/2 Tbsp baking powder
- 1 tsp salt
For the Sauce
- 12 oz Thai sweet chili sauce Mae Ploy, for instance
- 3 oz fish sauce
- 3 oz fresh lime juice (from about 5 limes)
- 8 Tbsp butter, cut into pieces (optional)
- sriracha, sambal oelek, or other chili sauce to taste (to add more heat if you want it)
Instructions
- Up to one day in advance, toss the wings with the baking powder and the salt. (A gallon bag works well for this, but so does a large bowl.)
- Heat your smoker to 250°F (121°C).
- Place the wings in the smoker so that they don't overlap. Smoke them at 250°F (121°C) for 30 minutes. Use a timer like Extra Big & Loud to time the cook.
During this time, prepare the sauce
- If omitting the butter, simply combine the sauce ingredients in a bowl and whisk them together.
- If using the butter, warm the other ingredients gently in a pot over low heat, monitoring the temperature of the sauce with Thermapen ONE. When it reaches 110°F (43°C) pull it from heat and stir the cut-up butter into the sauce.
- Finish the wings
- When the timer goes off, increase the heat of your smoker to 425°F (218°C).
- Insert the probes from Smoke X4 into two large wings on opposite sides of the grill.
- Set the high-temp alarm to 175°F (79°C) and cook until the alarm sounds.
- When the high alarm sounds, verify the temp in several wings (or all of them!) using your Thermapen.
- Remove the wings from heat and toss with the sauce. (You won't need all the sauce. Save it, refrigerated, for later.)
- Serve. You could also hit these with a showering of chopped cilantro and/or chopped peanuts and it would be amazing.
