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These chili lime chicken wings come together with minimal ingredients, and follow the instructions will give you the CRISPIEST BAKED chicken wings you have ever had! These baked wings are the perfect appetizer, snack or finger food. Made with a chili sauce that gives a subtle heat, balanced with a bit of sweetness thanks to adding honey, and a burst of fresh citrus from using fresh lime juice and zest, these wings are FULL of flavor. Set these out at your next party and watch as they disappear!
Chili Lime Chicken Wings
I love how these can be a meal or an appetizer. A party food, game day food, or I can serve them with some cilantro lime cauliflower rice and consider it dinner. The flavor combo of chili and lime is one of my favorites! So adding it to some baked chicken wings just seemed like the next logical step.
How to make Chili Lime Chicken Wings:
These baked chicken wings are crispy and loaded with flavor, but they are so simple to make!
- Prepare the chicken by patting the chicken wings dry with paper towels. The drier the better. Then sprinkle with a mixture of baking powder, salt and pepper.
- Cover a baking sheet with foil and place a wire rack on top. This helps air circulate under the wings while baking. Ensuring crispy skin all around.
- IF you want to take things a step further you could stop at this point, cover the wings with some plastic wrap, store in the refrigerator overnight and bake the wings the next day. This ensures that there is NO excess moisture on the wings.
- Bake the wings at a high temperature of 450. Bake for 20 minutes. Flip the wings and bake for another 15 minutes.
- While the wings are baking prepare the sauce: chili garlic sauce, lime zest, lime juice, honey, and melted butter. If the butter won’t mix well, simple heat the mixture briefly in a microwave or in a pot on the stovetop. Just enough to get the butter to melt completely and mix in.
- After the wings have baked for the first 35 minutes, remove from the oven, brush with the chili lime sauce.
- Bake the wings again for another 15 minutes. Remove the wings from the oven, allow to cool several minutes prior to serving.
How to make crispy oven baked wings:
There’s a few things we’re doing with this recipe to ensure we’re getting the crispiest wings possible from the oven.
- Drying the chicken wings completely. Patting them dry with paper towels before adding the dry ingredients helps the skin bake nice and crisp.
- Use baking powder. This helps dry out the skin even more, helping to make it thin and crispy as it bakes.
- Bake at a high heat. This gets the chicken cooking immediately, and it helps to get the crispy skin, and the browning that makes these wings look amazing!
- Use a wire rack on top of a baking sheet, this helps the air circulate all around the chicken as it bakes, and the grease drips down below.
How long to bake chicken wings:
Wings and drumettes can bake in the oven at 450 degrees in about 50 minutes. IF you prefer a bit less crispy skin and less browning you can take them out at 45 minutes. The chicken will be fully cooked.
I like to bake my chicken wings on two levels in my oven. I start baking on a lower rack, and after I add the sauce to the wings I move them to a top rack next to the heating element. This helps the sauce and the wings brown just a bit more before I take them out. You could also broil the wings for 5 minutes to get that same desired browning effect.
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Chili Lime Chicken Wings
Ingredients
- 4 pounds chicken wings and drumettes
- 4 tsp baking powder
- 2 tsp salt
- 1 tsp black pepper
Chili Lime Sauce
- 3 tbsp chili garlic sauce
- 2 tbsp melted butter
- 2 tbsp honey
- 1 tsp lime zest 1 reg lime
- 2 tbsp fresh lime juice 1 reg lime
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 450℉. Line large baking sheet with foil and place wire rack on top. Set aside.
- Dry chicken wings and drumettes with paper towels. Get the chicken as dry as possible.
- Add baking powder, salt and pepper to a large bowl. Mix together. Add the chicken and coat the chicken in the baking powder mixture.
- Lay the chicken on a baking sheet lined with foil and topped with a wire rack. Make sure the chicken is not touching.
- Bake chicken for 20 minutes. Flip the chicken over using tongs or forks and bake again for 15 more minutes.
- While the chicken is baking prepare the sauce. Combine the chili garlic sauce, honey, melted butter, and lime juice and zest in a small bowl. Stir together. If the butter won't mix, heat the sauce in the microwave or in a saucepan briefly just until combined.
- After the chicken has baked, remove from the oven and brush with the sauce.
- Cook the chicken for an additional 15 minutes with the sauce on. Remove from the oven and serve.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
What type of chili lime sauce do you use?
The ingredients for the Chili Lime Sauce are in the recipe card.
What dip did you use for these? It looks like ranch, but I wonder if baja sauce like you’d put on fish tacos works. I’m going to make these tonight and would love to know which one you think would work better.
I used some Homemade Ranch dressing for these wings. I’m sure a Baja sauce would be great too though!