I came across a recipe on the FacePlace, posted by a cousin-in-law, for slow cooker chicken wings in a Sriracha, lime juice, and honey sauce. It looked good, and I saved the recipe, developed by Donna Elick at The Slow Roasted Italian, but I wasn’t feeling the love for slow cooking the wings and then transferring them to a broiler pan. Why bother, when I have a pretty darned fantastic way to wrangle chicken wings?
If I made my wings the way I always did, but used the sauce, how would it work?
Nicely, but I did have a couple of issues.
My first experiment with the sauce was over baked boneless, skinless chicken breast halves. I had thought the Sriracha, lime juice, and honey would be a nice flavor profile to go with my stir fried broccoli and ‘shrooms; and, it wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t too, too good, either. Nice bit of heat but it needed a little sumpin’ sumpin’.
Of course! It needed to be cooked hot and fast, so that the sauce could caramelize just a bit. And… it needed a dipping sauce.
INGREDIENTS
Chicken:
•10-12 chicken wings (I used drumettes)*
•1 tsp black pepper
•1 tsp Aleppo pepper
•1/4 tsp garlic powder
•1/4 tsp onion powder
•1/2 tsp celery salt
•1/2 tsp sea salt
•2 tsp veggie oil
•2 tsp flour
Baking Sauce:
•3/4 cup honey
•2 tbsp unsalted butter, melted
•1/4 cup fresh lime juice
•3/4 cup Sriracha sauce
Dipping Sauce:
•Good blue cheese dressing (like Marie’s), or, you can use this recipe.
*I used two packages of chicken drumettes from the market, and generally find that it works best to make one batch of the flour, seasoning blend, and oil for each package. If you use a ‘family size’ tray of wings, divide the tray into two and use one batch of the flour, seasonings, and oil for each half.
Heat oven to 400° and apply cooking spray to a rack set into a foil lined baking pan.
Combine the flour with the seasonings in a gallon sized zipper bag, then rinse the wings and add to the bag. Shake to coat a bit, then add the oil and shake again, until the wings are more or less evenly seasoned.
Arrange the wings in a single layer on the prepared rack, then repeat the rinsing, seasoning, shaking and coating process with the remaining wings – you can reuse the bag at this point, but will want to prepare individual blends of seasonings and measures of oil for each dozen wings or so.
When you’ve seasoned all the wings, discard the zipper bag and pop the baking pan into the oven for 40 to 50 minutes.
Whisk the Sriracha and honey sauce together in a large mixing bowl, then add the baked chicken wings and toss to coat.
Return the wings to the baking rack, drizzling with a bit more of the Sriracha sauce, and return to the oven for another 15 minutes, until the wings are browned and nicely caramelized.
Because Rich hadn’t been too fond of my first attempt with the baked Sriracha and honey chicken breasts, I hedged my bets with this batch and made one packet (half the wings) with the Sriracha and honey sauce, and one packet with my own Sherry Peppers Sauce, which is one of his favorite wing recipes. As it happened, I needn’t have worried; the honey, lime, and Sriracha combination; cooked hot and fast and served with that good blue cheese dressing was a winner!
And will be coming soon to our holiday feasting tables.