Trying Famous Chicken Wing Recipes + Photos

• I made chicken wings using recipes from celebrity chefs Guy Fieri, Ina Garten, and Sunny Anderson.
• Each recipe had a similar wing sauce made with butter, spices, and a few other ingredients.
• Sunny Anderson’s recipe made the best wings that had a crunchy, deep-fried texture.

Super Bowl Sunday is around the corner, and I think we can all agree that any sports-themed party needs good bites, especially a great chicken wing.

To find my new go-to chicken wings, I tried recipes from celebrity chefs Guy Fieri, Ina Garten, and Sunny Anderson.

It didn’t surprise me that Fieri’s recipe had more ingredients than the others

Fieri’s recipe calls for a dry rub with cumin, black and white pepper, dry mustard, cayenne pepper, and garlic.

After I patted the wings dry, I tossed them with the spice mixture and let them sit in the fridge for an hour.

I preheated the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

I baked the wings for 50 minutes, turning them halfway

While the wings were baking, I made Fieri’s wing sauce. I combined lime juice, vinegar, Crystal hot sauce, some of the dry rub mix, jalapeno, garlic, and olive oil.

After heating the mixture in a saucepan, I let it cool and tossed the wings with the sauce.

You could definitely taste the jalapeno and zing from the lime juice

These wings were super tasty, but not for the faint of heart.

They packed a good punch thanks to the minced jalapeno peppers and hot sauce, but the lime juice rounded out the taste.

The chicken itself wasn’t as juicy as I would have liked, though the wings were extremely flavorful.

The next recipe I tried was Garten’s, which was the most straightforward

Garten’s sauce recipe was simple: combine melted butter, hot sauce, cayenne pepper, and salt.

I brushed the wings with the mixture and cooked under the broiler about three inches below the heat for eight minutes.

After that, I turned them over, re-brushed the wings, and broiled them for four more minutes.

My wings didn’t turn out great, but Garten’s dip was awesome

These wings were super juicy but didn’t get very crispy or golden brown, even after leaving them in the oven for longer.

The sauce didn’t completely coat the wings and the flavor was underwhelming.

However, Garten’s recipe also included a dipping sauce made with blue cheese, mayonnaise, sour cream, milk, Worcestershire, salt, and pepper.

The sauce was addictive, with a savory taste from the Worcestershire and no overly blue-cheesy flavor other chicken-wing dips usually have.

Though I didn’t like the wings, I’d make the dip again.

The last recipe I made was Anderson’s, which felt most labor-intensive

For Anderson’s recipe, I coated the wings in flour, cayenne, salt, and pepper and let them sit for an hour in the mixture to dry out.

Her recipe required a deep fryer, which I substituted with a pan filled with hot oil

To “deep fry” these wings, I heated up oil in a pan and cooked them for about 25 minutes, flipping halfway.

I didn’t have a ton of oil, so I made do with about a third of a 24-ounce bottle, hence needing to turn them halfway.

The wings came out surprisingly crispy, like real fried chicken.

I tried one before coating it in sauce and it was super flavorful from the flour-seasoning mixture and the deep-fried taste.

Anderson’s sauce was a simple mixture of lemon, basil, butter, and Frank’s wing sauce

I tossed the “deep-fried” wings in the Buffalo sauce and prepared the blue-cheese dip, which was very similar to Garten’s.

To make it, I combined blue cheese, sour cream, mayonnaise, buttermilk, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper.

This wing was my favorite thanks to the crispiness of the deep-fried skin

I couldn’t stop eating these deep-fried wings.

Though the breading and dipping sauce weren’t unusual, the texture and juiciness of the wings made this recipe a winner.

Each recipe was tasty, but Anderson’s wings are my top choice

If I could, I’d take aspects from each recipe to make the ultimate chicken wing. I’d use Anderson’s deep-frying method, Fieri’s spicy Buffalo-style sauce, and Garten’s blue-cheese dip.

I enjoyed the zing of Fieri’s Buffalo-style sauce and thought that Garten’s blue-cheese dip alone elevated her wing recipe.

Overall, Anderson had the best, crispy chicken wings. The Buffalo and dipping sauces weren’t unique, but they were flavorful and exactly what I wanted from a chicken wing.

Click to check out the other celebrity-chef recipes we’ve put head-to-head so far.