Super Bowl recipes: The best at-home wings you can make

The biggest element of a Super Bowl party is the food, and there are so many different ways you can go with this. You can serve the hits, push the envelope, or try to tap into regional favorites of each city in the game to try and bring something something amazing.

Last year we went New Orleans themed in honor of the host city, which you can never really go wrong with — but for 2026 it’s time to get back to the roots of football food. When it comes to pizza, just order it. I know there are all manners of incredible home-made pizza out there, especially as people apt up their setups with outdoor pizza ovens — but you don’t want to be messing around trying to make a bunch of pies while guests are arriving. Therefore, the proclamation is to just get pizza from a your best local place.

The end.

Just kidding. A critical game day accompaniment for pizza are wings, and this is an area where you can do much, much better than delivery. Every second finished wings sit they get dramatically worse, making them inherently awful as a delivery or pickup food. Ideally you want them eaten as close to finish time as possible, and when it comes to at-home wings, Alton Brown is the god.

We’re talking specifically above oven baked wings, which over time have become my preferred method. Deep frying at home is a pain in the ass, and unless you have a good way to filter and re-use fry oil it’s a tremendous waste. I promise that since I’ve been making these wings I don’t miss deep fried wings at all, because these get just as crispy.

If you want the OG, pure Alton Brown wing then you can find his recipe here. I’m including my version, which makes a couple of small tweaks that I’ve found takes a legendary recipe and makes it even better.

Ingredients

• X pounds of raw chicken wings. Each pound yields 5-6 chicken wings (aim for 4-5 wings per person as a side dish)
• The below ratios are for 12 chicken wings. Proportion appropriately.
• 6 tablespoons unsalted butter
• 1/4 cup hot sauce of your choice
• 1 tsp Garlic powder
• 1/2 tsp white pepper
• 1/2 tsp kosher salt
• 1/4 tsp MSG

Method

Wings

1. Fill a large pot with 3 inches of water and place on the stove at a high heat
2. Place wings in a steamer basket (may needs to be done in two batches)
3. When water is boiling, place steamer basket in pot and steam wings for 10 minutes
4. Remove, pat dry, and place on a wire rack on top of a sheet pan
5. Cool for one hour
6. Preheat oven to 425 degrees
7. Spray wings with cooking spray
8. Place wings in oven, bake for 20 minutes
9. Remove from oven, turn each wing, return to oven
10. Bake for 20 minutes
11. Remove from oven and place wings in a bowl large enough to toss wings

Sauce

1. Melt butter in a small saucepan over low-medium heat
2. Add garlic powder, salt, white pepper and MSG to pan to infuse the butter (10 minutes)
3. Add hot sauce and whisk until warmed through and the sauce has emulsified
4. Pour into large bowl with wings, toss to coast

What makes these wings so special?

The biggest enemy of oven baked chicken rubberiness. This happens when the temperature isn’t high enough to render the fat in dark meat chicken, and this is complicated further when chicken wings are so small that there’s a real risk in overcooking the meat if you try and cook them too long to render out that fat. It’s for this reason friend chicken (extreme heat) or BBQ chicken (low and slow) are so good.

By steaming the wings ahead of the bake we render out some of the fat. Not enough to dry out the chicken, but enough to tighten up the wing. When we put them in the refrigerator it allows for the skin to dry out and harden up, giving us the shatteringly crispy exterior we’re looking for without setting off the smoke alarm or riskying getting burned with hot oil.

The sauce is about adding depth to a good thing. Traditional Buffalo Wings will always use Frank’s Red Hot, which is fine — but light on flavor. The addition of garlic for flavor, MSG for umami, and white pepper for bite helps round out whatever sauce you’re adding to the mix and giving this more of a backbone. It’s a way to make a store-bought sauce “yours,” so feel free to experiment a little. Like some sweetness? Add some honey. Want an Asian element? Gochujang, sesame oil, or miso go great with the hot sauce to add another element. This is your playground.

I promise that this simple method for making wings will change how you approach them as a food. They are easy to make, vastly cheaper than anything you can order in, and infinitely better unless you happen to live very close to a killer wing restaurant.

You will not regret making these wings on Super Bowl Sunday.