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Just in time for Super Sunday! Everyone will love these smoky Buffalo wings.
Buffalo Made Better: Smoky Buffalo Wings
There’s no need to do any research to determine that the most popular flavor of chicken wings is Buffalo.
The originals are good enough, but did you ever think you could improve on perfection? I was willing to try! What was the worst that could happen–that I’d have to eat all the wings and not serve them to anyone? Since I love chicken wings above all else, that was a pretty easy decision.
All I did was add a couple of favorite flavors and took the edge off the sourness. It’s still Buffalo wings, but better! Now they’re smoky Buffalo wings.
Chipotle Makes Smoke
I love the flavor of chipotle. It adds so much to the flavor of most things!
In this recipe, I replaced some of the regular hot sauce with a chipotle-flavored hot sauce. Not much, but enough to give the sauce a bit of smoky flavor.
Now if you don’t have that variety of hot sauce on hand, you won’t be sorry for buying a bottle. Trust me on that! However, if you have canned chipotles in the cupboard, then mash a couple of them up really well so they’re almost like a sauce and use that.
Naked Or Dusted
Prepare your wings as you usually do. I either do them in my air fryer or the oven. Sometimes I do deep fry, but my deep fryer is in a place where I’d have to move some stuff to get to it, so…yep, you guessed it. I don’t use it much now.
I will opt for a conventional oven when I have a lot of wings and don’t want to air fry endless batches. These wings pictured here I did in my oven. I have a convection oven, but the time and temp I’m giving in the recipe card is for a regular oven for simplicity sake. For air frying you can use my Easy Air Fryer Wings recipe as a guide.
OK–it’s up to you whether to cook your wings with nothing on them or dusted with flour or baking powder. When I’m using a sauce that should cling to the wings, I always dust with a bit of flour. I find that Wondra gravy flour works really well because you can just shake it from the can. There’s no messy bags and tossing involved. The dusting is just a personal preference.
The Recipe
Smoky Buffalo Wings
Ingredients
- 2 lbs chicken wings
- 2 tbs olive oil
- 2 tbs flour optional
Sauce:
- 1/3 cup butter melted
- 1/2 cup hot sauce
- 1/4 cup Chipotle hot sauce
- 1 clove garlic pressed
- 1 tsp sugar
Instructions
- For whole wings, separate at the joints and discard wing tip. Place olive oil in a large bowl or plastic bag, add wings and toss to coat. Dust with flour if using.
- Preheat oven to 450F/225C.
- Line a large baking sheet with foil and spray with non-stick spray. Spread wings on prepared pan and bake for 30 minutes, turning midway.
- Mix all sauce ingredients in a large bowl. Add the cooked wings and toss to coat.
- Air Fryer—you will probably have to cook in batches, so place one batch in the fryer and cook for 30 minutes turning midway through the cooking. Since the temps don’t go up to what I cook them in in the oven, use the highest temperature your air fryer can attain.
