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I have cooked a LOT of chicken wings on my Char-Broil Big Easy. It’s my favorite way to cook wings, other than deep frying. The Big Easy cooks wings so easily and quickly. I usually finish off the wings over a hot grill to get a bit of a crunch on the skin. Well, no more. Crispy wings on the Char-Broil Big Easy are fantastic!
Now I can get delicious, tender, moist, crunchy wings on the Big Easy without grilling them afterwards. These crispy wings are fantastic. I won’t do wings any other way again, and that includes deep frying. This is it, the way to do wings.
Dry Skin Means Crispy Skin
The key to getting the wings crispy is to dry out the skin so that takes on a good crunch under the high heat of the Big Easy. If you don’t have a Big Easy, you should get one. Until then, you can also make these crispy wings in the oven.
I used my Wingin’ator 3000 basket when I cooked up these wings so that I can cook more at once than I could with the basket that comes with the Big Easy. You can also pick up a bunk bed basket (see the link below) that doubles the amount of room you’ll have for cooking wings. You don’t want to crowd the wings into the cooker or they won’t cook evenly.
Try my wicked sticky Big Easy wings and my Yard Bird wings for something crazy messy instead.
Love your Big Easy as much I love mine? Check out my Big Easy Add-Ons page and my free Big Easy eCookbook!
Crispy Wings on the Char-Broil Big Easy
Ingredients
- 4 pounds chicken wings separated
- 2 tablespoons baking powder
- ¾ teaspoon kosher salt
- Your favorite wing sauce and dipping sauce
Instructions
- Rinse the wings and pat them very dry with paper towels.
- Place on a sheet pan or plate and cover with more paper towels. Refrigerate for 2 hours to further dry out the skin.
- Preheat oven to 250 F.
- Transfer wings to a resealable baggie or container. Add in the baking powder and salt. Seal, and shake or toss to coat well.
- Spray a baking rack with the non-stick spray and put it over a baking sheet that is lined with foil.
- Place wings onto rack but do not crowd them.
- Bake for 30 minutes. While baking, fire up your Big Easy.
For the Big Easy
- Transfer wings to the Big Easy and cook another 10-20 minutes or until done.
For the oven
- Increase the oven temperature to 425 F and continue baking for another 20 or so minutes or until done.
Serving
- Toss wings in your favorite sauce and serve with your favorite dipping sauce.
Nutrition
Nutritional values are approximate.
So you just do the baking powder salt thing for a couple hours or do you just rinse and pat dry? And is the cook time still only 30 minutes?
Hi Charlie. You definitely don’t want to rinse them after applying the ‘batter’, which sets for 2 hours first. Bake for 30 minutes then remove to a hot and ready Big Easy for another 10-20 minutes (you’ll want to test them with a thermometer) until done. Sauce and devour!
Regards,
Mike
Thanks for the reply Mike! Just curious, but did you bother to try this without the oven step just to see how they’d turn out?
I’ve not tried it without the oven step. The oven cook is at a much lower temperature. I’d be worried that the coating would dry out and maybe even burn at the higher Big Easy temperature for that amount of time. Might be worth trying, but I’d be paranoid enough to not try it with a lot of wings in case things go sideways.
Mike
I’ll try it next time I make wings in my big easy. I have two of those bunk baskets and can do three levels at a time. I usually end up cooking for close to an hour with the lid on for the last 10 or 15 minutes.
But I need bigger wings to start with so I usually have to buy my wings from a reliable source. I’ve put wings on there which were smaller and they shriveled up to almost nothing and were terrible. But the ones I get from restaurant depot are awesome and cook almost perfectly. Would like to try this baking soda method and see what happens. For me, the skin can never be too crispy when it comes to wings. As long as the whole thing doesn’t dry out.
It’s also hard to take a reliable temperature of a wing which is why I usually cook longer. I’ll try for 30-40 minutes next time and tear one open and see how they are.
How high is the cook temperature on the Big Easy for that portion of the cooking? Is it all the way up?
Hi Tim. My Big Easy model has just one temperature: On. Yours has two. I believe High on yours equals On on mine. Once you do it once you’ll have a feel for the time as long as conditions don’t change drastically.
Regards,
Mike