My husband and I love chicken wings. They’re one of our favorite game day foods, served alongside a good chip and dip. Ah, sporting events, remember those? Football, basketball, tennis, golf, you name it. If it involves a ball and requires one to keep score, this family is there! Insert heavy sigh. Being die-hard sport fans means we’re currently suffering withdrawals that no amount of classic reruns can assuage. (Thanks anyway ESPN.) I kid you not, it’s so bad around here, I think we could get into a good log-rolling competition!

In the past, we’ve always ordered out to get our chicken wing fix, but one advantage of sheltering in place has been the opportunity to try new recipes, and I’ve been finetuning my own homemade wing recipe—sans deep frying. We seldom if ever fry anymore and I wanted a healthier version, so to the drawing board I went, and if I must say so myself, after a couple of tries, my beloved farmer was raving over my wings! I’ll walk you through my procedure. 

Shellie’s Homemade Chicken Wings

Ingredients:

1 bag frozen chicken wings

Olive oil cooking spray

Lemon pepper seasoning (Substitute any of your favorite flavors!)

Preheat your oven to 400 degrees. Meanwhile, place your chicken wings in a large pot of water over a high heat. Make sure the water covers your wings. Bring this to a boil, turn it down to medium where it continues to slightly roll, and cook for fifteen minutes. You’re basically parboiling your frozen wings to give them a head start.  

Once you’ve boiled your wings, remove them and drain them on paper towels. You want to get them good and dry so your seasonings will stick. After patting your wings dry, place them on a wire rack over a broiler pan (a cookie sheet will also work). Space them at least an inch or so apart. The trick is to make sure the air can get to all sides so they will get as crispy as possible. This is important since you aren’t deep frying. 

Spray your wings with a light coating of cooking spray (again, it will help them crisp) and season well with lemon pepper seasoning. On my last batch I did one half lemon-pepper and I brushed the other half with barbecue sauce. The flavor options are endless here. You could go with hot sauce, Buffalo sauce, sweet and sour sauce. Experiment with your family’s favorites. 

Cook for twenty minutes on one side. Turn wings. Season again and cook another twenty minutes. Turn the oven up to broil and get those little babies and crispy as you’d like! That’s it! Serve with a good chip and dip, and beat your husband in a game of Scrabble. I’ll cheer you on from here!