These crispy baked chicken wings come out of the oven juicy and tender with crisp, golden skin. Cleanup is easy, and they are game day perfect, but easy enough for a weeknight.
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Holly’s Recipe Highlights
Chicken wings are the real MVP, no gathering is complete without them!
- Why Make It: It’s a big batch of crispy baked chicken wings with less mess than frying, and more room than an air fryer.
- Flavor: A savory, lightly seasoned base that pairs well with any wing sauce.
- Technique: Dry the wings well to cook with less moisture, coat, and chill uncovered in the fridge. Bake hot on a wire rack, with an optional broil for extra crispiness.
- Time-Saving Tip: Buy pre-split wings, line the pan with foil, and use a pre-made wing sauce to save time.
- Serving Suggestions: Serve dry with dips and dressings, or toss in your favorite sauce right before serving.
Ingredients for Crispy Wings
- Chicken Wings: Use evenly sized split wings that can be found in the meat section or at a butcher. Thaw fully and pat very dry for the best crisp!
- Coating: A simple crispy coating and some salt and pepper are all you need for the basic recipe, but feel free to mix in other seasonings to the flour coating. If using a salty seasoning blend, like powdered ranch dressing or taco seasoning, cut back on the seasoned salt so the wings don’t taste overly salty.
- Baking Powder: It’s the secret restaurant trick for crispy skin, but be sure to use baking powder, not baking soda, and distribute it evenly over the wings.
How to Bake Crispy Chicken Wings
- Pat wings dry.
- Whisk together the coating ingredients (full recipe below), and toss with wings.
- Place on a foil-lined pan and refrigerate for 30 minutes (or up to 4 hours).
- Once wings are chilled and fully coated, toss them in oil, then bake.
Once the wings are baked, serve them plain as salt and pepper wings, or toss with your favorite sauce. Add a dip like homemade ranch or blue cheese dressing for serving.
Storage, Freezing, Reheating
Let leftover chicken wings cool all the way, then store them in an airtight container in the refrigerator for 3 to 4 days. For longer storage, freeze and use the baked wings within 4 months, so they keep their best quality.
To bring back that crisp bite, reheat them on a rack in the oven at 375°F to 400°F or air fry in a single layer until hot. For the best results, warm the wings first, then toss them with sauce right before serving.
Game Day Wing Spread
Did you make these crispy chicken wings? Leave a comment and rating below!
Ingredients
- 1½ pounds chicken wings split and tips removed, about 18 wings
- 1 tablespoon all-purpose flour
- 1 teaspoon baking powder
- ½ teaspoon seasoned salt
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
Instructions
- Pat wings dry with a paper towel.
- Prepare a pan by lining with foil and placing a baking rack on it. Spray the rack with cooking spray.
- Combine flour, baking powder, salt and pepper. Toss with wings and place on prepared pan. Refrigerate 30 minutes (or up to 4 hours) uncovered.
- Preheat oven to 425°F.
- Toss wings with olive oil in a bowl (ensuring there are no dry spots of flour) and return back to the prepared pan.
- Bake wings 20 minutes, flip and bake an additional 15 minutes. If your wings are smoking, remove the foil and add new foil. Cook until crisp and broil 1 minute each side if desired.
- Toss with sauce or serve with dips.
Notes
- Pat the wings dry, moisture makes them steam (not crisp).
- Don’t skip the resting period, this allows them to dry out and to draw moisture from the skin.
- Toss with olive oil for a little bit of crisp without the deep fry.
- Place on a rack on your baking pan, this allows air to circulate all around the wings.
- Line the pan with foil for easy clean up. If the pan begins to smoke from the drippings, add a new sheet of foil on top of the old foil.
- For an extra-crisp, put the baked wings under the broiler for about 2 minutes until the skins start to become golden brown.
Nutrition Information
Nutrition information provided is an estimate and will vary based on cooking methods and brands of ingredients used.
Course Appetizer, Chicken, Party Food, Snack
Cuisine American© SpendWithPennies.com. Content and photographs are copyright protected. Sharing of this recipe is both encouraged and appreciated. Copying and/or pasting full recipes to any social media is strictly prohibited. Please view my photo use policy here.
We love these wings! Easy to fix! I have to bake a little longer than they say, but they’re really good!
What!!? I can actually make wings that are almost as good as in a restaurant!!?? These turned out so good! And so much cheaper than at a restaurant! We used sweet chili sauce, bbq sauce and another hot sauce for coating the wings. I will definitely use this regularly!
I would give this ten stars if I could. It came out crispy and so closed to fried chicken. My husband loved it. I added my own seasonings, but otherwise followed the directions to a T. Really make sure that chicken is dry. This is a winner.
I followed recipe exactly
except did not have the extra time to put the wings in the fridge for 30 minutes
prior to cooking. They came out pale and not crispy. What did I do wrong?
Refrigerating the wings does help them to dry out a bit and helps them to crisp better. If you’d like to crisp them more, you can broil them a bit on each side.
I ALWAYS come back for this recipe when making wings.
I made these wings exactly as the recipe calls states. My husband is a huge fan of wings and says these are the BEST crispy wings he has ever had. They are actually crispy. My son has requested them this weekend. I think people need to remember that there are so many things that can change the outcome of a recipe….oven temp (they aren’t all calibrated correctly!), oil amount, sauce amount, etc. This recipe worked great for me!
Best oven baked wings I have ever eaten
So happy to hear that, Tracey!
This wings definitely are not “actually crispy”. I followed the recipe exactly, and made sure to dry the wings and such so they were crispy. They came out of the oven very gooey after the full cooking time. I transferred some to the air fryer and continued the rest in the oven for even longer. They eventually got slightly crispy so that they were edible in the air fryer. Overall, this site has good recipes but I would avoid this one in the future.
Sorry this recipe didn’t turn out quit as expected for you, Belle!
Once again, an outstanding and simple recipe that didn’t disappoint! Never made chicken wings before because of the deep frying. Was going to do air fryer but didn’t want to do multiple batches. The flavor, crispiness and appearance was spot on. Your times were perfect and the wings were done to perfection. After completion, I tossed in a few different sauces but have to say that Jean Pierre’s “Amazing Baked Chicken Wing” sauce was my favorite. It is a sweet/spicy Asian inspired and flavorful sauce. I used your dry rub recipe and baking technique with his sauce only. Yum. BTW, is there an easier way to clean up without scrubbing all those racks? Clean up was my least favorite part, but worth it in the end. Thanks again Holly for pumping out these fine recipes!
So happy you enjoyed this recipe. Unfortunately if there is, we haven’t found it yet. Definitely put down tin foil to help make cleaning up the pan easy but the racks we just let soak and then scrub clean.
Thanks for sharing. Because my wings were roasters and were quite large I added 10 extra min. to the cooking time. Turned out great.
Didn’t work. Wings were not crispy at all. I followed the instructions exactly, let them sit in the refrigerator for an hour and they came out soggy. I ended up turning the air fryer on for 8 additional minutes to get a tiny bit of crust.
I am so sorry this recipe didn’t work as expected for you, Bill! I am not sure if this helps but the wings need to be patted completely dry as the moisture in them will cause them to steam and not crisp up. I am glad you were able to still enjoy them!