Baked Buffalo Chicken Wings: Easy, Mess-Free Recipe

Buffalo Wings were born in a restaurant where they were cooked in a deep fryer and eaten at the bar. Considering the history behind this classic American bar snack, it seems impossible to make great wings at home. Right? Wrong! But how?

Sure, you could follow the textbook method of deep frying wings before smothering them in sauce but that’s not necessarily the best option at home. While it’s easy to throw wings in the corner deep fryer and soak them in a deep metal mixing bowl for service in restaurant kitchens, it’s a messy challenge for the average home cook.

If you happen to have a deep fryer in your kitchen, you could hypothetically deep fry wings on the stove but then you’d have to deal with a splattering mess, frying temperatures, big pots and oil disposal – not an ideal situation for eating the American food favorite at home.

Using an oven to cook wings totally makes sense conceptually. But how can you bake wings in an oven that taste great without making a big mess? After wondering about that for a while, we rolled up our sleeves and figured it out. Now we’re showing you how to do it too.

The secret lies in blanching before baking which dries the wings, allowing them to brown and keeping them relatively splatter free. The key to producing crisp, browned wings in the oven is to make sure they’re dry. If you place wings directly into a hot oven without following our method, the skin will splatter and make a major mess.

Other recipes, like the one by Kenji at Serious Eats, have attempted to do this with all manner of coatings like flour and baking soda as well as with methods like keeping the wings in the refrigerator overnight to dry them.

While those methods are certainly effective, they’re not always clean. They’re also time and space consuming. We think Kenji was on the right track but may have missed one of the best drying tricks that we learned from his recent book, The Wok.

In his prolific cookbook, Kenji relies on a counterintuitive method of using boiling hot water to dry tofu before pan frying it in oil. That hot water has the effect of heating and then more rapidly evaporating water on the protein’s surface. We wondered if the same thing could be done to the skin on chicken wings. And, as we found after testing our recipe a few times, yes it can.

Hey, Chinese chefs perform a similar technique when they prepare Peking Duck, dunking and soaking the birds in a boiling solution. Why wouldn’t the same technique work on chicken wings?

Using this approach, we blanch our chicken wings in well salted water. A minute does the trick without actually cooking the wings. We then place the wings on a wire rack over the sink to allow them to dry thoroughly. The technique works. Another option is to cook the wings in an air fryer but that’s another method for another recipe.

The ingredient list for our oven baked Buffalo Wings is simple:

Ingredient quantities are detailed in the printable recipe card below.

Much of our recipe’s flavor comes from the Frank’s RedHot Sauce. While some brave people will eat these hot wings on their own, most people will want to dip them into a cooling, creamy blue cheese or ranch dressing. We prefer blue cheese (more on that later).

We typically buy whole chicken wings. We then use a sharp chef’s knife to separate the drumettes and flats from the tips of the wings.

Pro Tip
You can buy separated wings if you’re looking to save time or simply prefer not having to separate the wings yourself.

We don’t know if the original cooks who formulated the original wings recipes at Buffalo’s Anchor Bar used Frank’s RedHot Sauce. Over time, this particular piquant sauce has become a standard Buffalo Wings ingredient both at Buffalo restaurants and around the globe.

You could alternatively use Tabasco or Crystal if that’s what you have in your pantry. However, in our opinion, those two sauces are too hot and tangy for this recipe.

Discover the best hot sauces in America.

Butter adds clingy, fatty, shiny magic to Buffalo Wing sauce.

Pro Tip
It’s important not to allow the butter to curdle when you cook the hot sauce. It may separate a little but that’s ok.

Some people consider Ken’s blue cheese dressing to be the standard Buffalo Wings dip. But, in reality, you can use any creamy dressing. We like eating oven Buffalo-style baked chicken wings with blue cheese dressing.

We make blue cheese dressing at home with roquefort cheese, yogurt, sour cream and skim milk. The savory dressing provides a cooling contrast to the wing sauce. Plus, it tastes really good.

Check out our wedge salad recipe to learn how we make blue cheese dressing at home.

Celery and carrots provide a nice complement to rich and fatty wings. The crunchy vegetables also taste great when dipped into blue cheese dressing.

Boil the wings for one minute (no more, no less).

You don’t want to cook the wings. You just want to tighten and permeate the moist skin.

After precisely one minute, move the wings to a wire cooling rack over a sink or other water basin.

Pro Tip
It’s important that all the water drains from the wings so that they’re completely dry.

Next, place the cooling rack over a sheet pan lined with foil.

Pro Tip
Using foil, while optional, makes the cleanup easier.

Allow the wings to dry for 5 to 10 minutes.

Then, just to be sure, use a paper towel to dry the wings a little bit more. (This step is optional)

Place the wire rack, with the wings still on it, over a sheet pan and into a preheated 430°F/220°C convection oven.

Bake for 30 to 35 minutes.

Once you’ve flipped the wings, it’s time to make the wing sauce.

Our wing sauce is one of the simplest sauces to construct. We use a one-to-one ratio of salted butter and hot sauce. That’s it. We don’t add any vinegar since Original Frank’s hot sauce provides the right amount of acidity.

Dump the baked wings into a medium to large metal mixing bowl. Gradually pour the wing sauce over the wings and toss the wings until the they’re coated.

Pro Tip
If tossing the wings is difficult with your equipment, you could alternatively mix them with a large spoon.

Serve the coated wings with blue cheese dressing on the side along with carrots and celery.

Your guests will likely be amazed and ask you how made tasty Buffalo Wings without using a deep fryer. Unless you spill the beans, you’ll be the only one who knows how easy this recipe is to follow and execute.

Did you make this recipe? If so, please rate it below.