Baked Spicy Chicken Wings

For Football Days or Any Days!

We LOVE chicken wings at our house, but we bake ours in the oven in our own secret sauce! Mixing just about everything but the kitchen sink – salsa, Louisiana hot sauce, soy sauce, brown sugar, and even some Worcestershire, this has been a favorite recipe for years. And, of course, we dip them in our homemade yogurt blue cheese dressing! Even if it is a bit of an odd football season, your family, friends, and teammates will love these tidbits!

Spicy Chicken Wings for Football Days or Any Days!

For the most part, when you think of spicy wings, you think of Buffalo wings. That is because it was at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York that this dish was invented. 

It all began on October 30, 1964, when bar owner Teressa Bellissimo was faced with feeding her son and his friends a late-night snack. It seems she had an excess of chicken wings on hand, so she fried them up, dipped them in a hot ‘n sassy chili-butter sauce, and proceeded to serve them with celery and bleu cheese dressing to cut the heat. The wings were an instant hit and now, if you can believe it, July 29 is officially National Chicken Wing Day! 

The bar serves up more than 70 thousand pounds of chicken each month and is on the “must-do” list for travelers passing through upstate New York. 

Our wings are inspired by the original Buffalo Wings, but we like to think this version is a bit healthier because the wings are baked rather than fried, and the butter is omitted. 

We bake them in a 375⁰ F oven for about 2 hours, and they come out nice and crunchy and perfectly browned! If you save a little of the marinade, you can heat it and serve it as extra sauce, too. Be sure to use a well-loved pan. Your pan will be very messy once the wings are cooked, but don’t worry, simply soak with hot water and forget about it until the morning. Then it will clean up nicely! 

Spicy Chicken Wings for Football Days or Any Days!

Ingredients

Wings

• ▢ 48 party chicken wings include both drummettes and wings

Wing Marinade

• ▢ 1/4 cup vinaigrette or Italian salad dressing
• ▢ 1/2 cup Louisiana Hot Sauce
• ▢ 1/2 cup medium-hot salsa
• ▢ 1-2 tablespoons medium ‘hot’ sauce such as La Victoria’s
• ▢ 1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce can add more or less this to desired heat
• ▢ 1/4 cup Worcestershire sauce
• ▢ 1/2 cup Soy sauce
• ▢ 1 tablespoon brown sugar
• ▢ 1 teaspoon paprika
• ▢ 1/4-1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper depending on your heat tolerance
• ▢ 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lemon juice
• ▢ 3-4 grinds of freshly cracked pepper

Instructions

• Place wings in an airtight container. Mix all of the marinade ingredients in a jar or plastic container and shake well. Pour all but 1/2 cup of the marinade over wings. Marinate in the refrigerator for several hours, shaking or turning occasionally to make sure all wings get marinated. Save the reserved marinade for extra dipping sauce.
• Prepare a large roasting pan by generously spraying with your favorite cooking spray. Lay the wings, along with the marinade, out in the baking pan. Bake in a 375⁰ F oven for 2 hours. After about an hour of baking, you will see them beginning to brown and starting to get crispy on the edges. Stay the course, after the full two hours they will be perfect! Serve with homemade or store-bought blue cheese or creamy feta dressing, celery and carrot sticks, and fresh raw string beans.