Wingin' It

I'm baaaaack! It's been a long time since I've last posted, and much longer than I initially realized. The past month has been a busy one, and crock-pot cooking took a backseat to travel, visits from friends, marathon running, marathon recovery and other fun weekend activities. I'd be lying if I said I didn't anticipate getting distracted and falling off the Sunday crock-pot dinner wagon, especially because we seemed to have had a rather busy October and November. Aside from the holidays, we don't have any travel plans for the foreseeable future, so I feel like I've finally caught up with the wagon and am trying to get back on for the long haul.

A few weeks ago we made wings in the crock-pot, more as an afternoon snack than an actual dinner, but they turned out so well I've been wanting to share the recipe. As you may recall, I don't really like spice, and as may be able to guess, Bart doesn't like food that's too sweet. I only made wings once before (and that didn't go so well...more to come on that), so as I searched for different recipes for guidance I realized that almost all wings fell into one of those two categories - spicy or sweet. What I really wanted was a combination of both, so here's what we put together:

Ingredients:

• 1 bag of frozen chicken wings (about 2.5 - 3 pounds; Kroger calls them "Party Wings")
• 1 1/2 c barbecue sauce (I used Cattlemen's Kansas City Classic sauce, but would also love to try this with Sweet Baby Ray's Honey Barbecue sauce)
• 1/4 c honey
• 2 tsp honey mustard
• 2 tsp Worcestershire sauce
• 2-3 tsp Sriracha 
• Salt & pepper

Directions:

Place the frozen wings in the crock-pot (no need to thaw them) and sprinkle with salt and pepper, as desired. I prefer the bag of frozen wings to the refrigerated package of wings because in Kroger's case, the wings in the frozen bag were already separated into wing tip and drumstick. When we bought the refrigerated package previously, we had to separate the wings at the joint which was both tricky (unless you really know what you're doing) and gross.

In a medium-sized bowl, combine the remaining ingredients. Feel free to adjust the sweetness or spiciness depending on your preference. I gave the sauce a taste a few times as I was mixing it and loved how it tasted - a little sweet at first, followed by a little spice at the end.

Pour the sauce mixture over the wings in the crock-pot. Cover and cook on high for about 2 - 2.5 hours. I'd recommend checking on the wings after about an hour and rotating them to make sure all sides get covered in the sauce (this was necessary for me as the number of wings was a bit of a tight fit).

Serve and enjoy! 

I was really happy with how these wings turned out, especially after our first attempt at crock-pot wings that I mentioned earlier. We followed a different recipe (more of an Asian-inspired sauce), but the primary difference was how we cooked them. The first go-round, we actually made the wings on a weekday, so I put them in the crock-pot at lunch time and cooked them on low until we ate them, about 6 hours in total and way too long. After finishing the wings under a broiler for a few minutes, the meat was literally falling off the bone. While they tasted good, they weren't easy to eat.

Like that recipe, I've seen a lot of recipes that call for putting the wings in the oven under a broiler either before or after they cook in the crock-pot, but I wanted to try this attempt at wings without doing that, mostly because I was feeling lazy and thought they'd turn out just fine (which they did!).