Impress Your Football Party By Making Wings From Scratch

Wings are always so good at restaurants, and it's a little intimidating to think about trying to get our sauce at home to coat the wings just right.  How can homemade wings possibly turn out that good?  There's a big secret and we're about to spill it.

Some of us might have passed the naked wings in the freezer section of the grocery store for years before we finally got brave enough to buy them and try making wings at home.  It turns out, it's not that hard.  And it's probably cheaper too.

The secret is in the basting at the end.  I'll explain.

To make wings at home, the simplest thing is to do this:

Buy a bag of frozen wings

Buy a bottle of your favorite sauce

Toss everything in a bag and seal it up

Let the wings marinate overnight.

Make sure you save a cup or so of the marinade and set it aside, so you can brush more on the wings when they come out of the oven.  Put the wings on a baking pan and bake at 375 degrees for about 30 minutes.  Baste the wings every ten minutes with the extra marinade, and bake for another 30 minutes, or until the chicken is done (no longer pink in the middle).  The basting at the end makes them wet and good, and extra saucy.

I've been making homemade wings for a few years now, and I love that I'm one hundred percent certain that they're not fried, there's no excess butter, and the sauce passes the test for okay sodium levels.  If you want to go all out with a high fat/high everything sauce you totally can, and if that doesn't fit with the rest of your life goals, you don't have to.  The point is, tweak, perfect, and make it yours, and the process is easier than you think.  Homemade wings are good and they're usually cheaper than restaurant wings, and you don't have to leave a tip.

This is a huge weekend for football!  Texas A&M plays Clemson tomorrow at 2:30, Texas plays LSU tomorrow night at 6:30, and the Dallas Cowboys play the NY Giants Sunday at 3:25 pm.  Then we've got the Texans and Saints on Monday night football.  It's wing season!