3-Day Chicken Wing Gauntlet

When the grocer has a buy one pack of chicken wings, get two free – you buy ’em. Now I was going into the weekend having all the chicken I needed, I needed to perfect the cook. I was going to try a couple of different things, and see what worked. I do this for you, not me. For you pellet smokers – recipe below on how to get that bite-through skin

---

Recipe

---

The Prep Table

Whether or not you’re drums or flats, you all are whole wings people. But because the majority of places do the drum/flat thing, so are we. Don’t need them tips, so get rid of those too.

Throw the wings in a ziploc with a heavy dusting of baking powder. Toss ’em around and make sure they’re well coated. I took ’em out of the bag and laid them out on a plate to dry up in that refrigerator air. I also decided to throw a coat of my Bird seasoning on there. Once the preparation is done and the bird is drying, let’s get that smoker fired up.

---

The Process

So of the three cooks I did, I did a preseasoning of the bird rub, a preseason of a brown sugar BBQ rub, and a post-season Bird. The preseasoning – what I call post-baking powder dust and into the fridge – wasn’t necessary. For my rub, it got kinda soupy, so I’d say just throw the rub on it before you throw it on the smoker.

The brown sugar rub? Nah. By far my least favorite. Don’t over complicate it with a dense, heavy, sugary rub. Still ate ’em though, but that’s not the point.

So this venture called for a RecTeq XTREME SMOKE (180F degrees) for 20 minutes. Once it grabbed smoke, dial it up to 275F for 25 minutes. Pulled ’em off, cranked the temp up to finish it off at 425F. This produced a great bite through bird. My Internal temp got to 140F before I pulled ’em off, and then when my IT got to 170ish, I ate.

These meaty bastards threw things for a loop. Same method as above, except I switched out the rub. After the 180F-275F timeframe, I was at 180F already. They cooled a bit before my 425 finish, but the bite was the same, meat was juicy – but that rub kinda sucked. Wasn’t a fan of the sugar.

Usually I save the finish photos for The Result but I’m showing you how much I didn’t like the sugar rub. I sauced and tossed with a hot sauce to give a tell that sugar to calm it down a bit. This made it better.

---

The Result

Day three was just going to keep ’em on the grates from 180F for twenty minutes and dial it right up to 475 and let the temperature do its thing. Day three also featured the Bird rub to no surprise – but I applied the rub just before they hit the grates (as opposed to after the baking powder dust)

So what was the right way to do it? All of ’em were good, one of ’em was great. The recipe below will detail what I call the best of the three. But in short:
Trim the bird. Powder the bird. Let it fridge chill for an hour or so.
Smoker to 180F. Season the bird. Grates for 20min.
Crank to 275F with bird on the grates until IT is about 145F-ish.
Remove bird and foil tent. Crank again to 475F. Put the bird back on until IT is 180F, flipping once.
Sauce? Sparingly. Don’t drench, but if you have a good rub, you don’t need any. Put a splash on the plate and just swipe and bite.

---

The Recipe