Sweet and Spicy Asian Baked Fried Chicken Wings

These sweet and spicy sticky wings are delicious, crispy and even baked! Oh me oh my, these little wing dings are to die for! The salty, sweet, and spicy combination will have your taste buds in a frenzy! They also require a secret technique to make them. If you’re new to the oven fried crispy wings movement, I’ll let you in on a little secret…they’re awesome! With these baked crispy wings you won’t even miss the fried ones (okay, that’s a little far, lol).

Now, I loathe food lies, you know, bait and switch foods. Let me explain (Kevin Hart voice)! So, I have a problem with foods like “cheesy kale chips” made with nutritional yeast. Um, nutritional yeast isn’t the same as cheese, darn it! I like kale chips but save the nutritional yeast, it taste terrible to me.

I don’t like sugar alternatives. I don’t like “cauliflower crust pizza” or gluten-free pizza crust. Now, I understand that some unfortunate souls have food allergies and sensitivities. All I’m saying is that those alternatives are generally not for me – they usually taste nothing like what they are substituted for. I’d rather eat fatty, sweet or otherwise unhealthy foods in moderation than to eat their substitutes with cute names.

Despite everything you’ve just read above, none of it is written in stone.  There are exceptions to the rule for me. These crispy sticky wings are one of those exceptions! The point in that rant was to say that these crispy oven baked wings are good taste and textural substitute for fried wings. They aren’t an exact 1 to 1 substitute for fried wings but I love them and I am a fried food freak.

Anyway, we found out how to make crispy oven wings from Nagi over at recipetineats.com who got the technique from Cooks Illustrated. So this isn’t revolutionary, but if you happen to know about our site and not those others we are glad to have been able to introduce you to this cooking technique.

So let’s jump into how it’s done.

So just how do we make the wings crispy? Drumroll please!

Baking Powder.

That’s right! Baking powder is the secret magic of these crispy wings.

First, pat the chicken wings dry with paper towel.

Next, put the wings in a large bowl and sprinkle with baking powder.

Then, spray the top of a broil pan with pam or other nonstick spray. Line the bottom of the pan with foil.

Preheat the oven to 250 degrees. Bake the wings for 30 minutes.

This is how the wings will look after baking at 250 degrees for 30 minutes.

Then turn the heat up to 425 degrees. Bake for 40 minutes. Rotate the pan halfway through for even baking.

This is how the wings will look after baking at 425 degrees for 40 minutes.

Make the sauce (see recipe).

Toss wings in sauce.

Enjoy!