Wings!

Our household enjoyed grilled wings last night. It was a warm day, we were having a couple friends over, and we wanted something relatively light and easy. My dad has been making a butter sauced wing for as long as I can remember and he kindly gave me the recipe a few years ago. I can’t share that recipe or risk penalty of disownment, but I can say that a sauce of melted butter (or butter substitute in our case, Smart Balance Butter Blend is a fav) and your favorite seasoning combinations, is a very easy and tasty sauce…and still lower in sugar and calories than the traditional bottled BBQ sauce. The trick is to melt the butter, add the spices and then keep it warm until ready to baste the chicken.

Hubby and I have discovered a few tricks over time as we’ve tried to recreate what I will say is one of my dad’s specialties. First,  I always soak the wings in cold water for a few minutes, then wrap in paper towels and keep refrigerated until ready for use. The trick we have found with grilling wings is to remove the tips and keep the wing whole. The one time we left the tips on, they kept getting stuck in the grates and that was not fun for hubby.

We brush the wings with olive oil and then cook on the grill. We have always cooked the wings to near doneness before adding the sauce. My dad still grills on coals and chars his wings until they are on the border of being burnt. Hubby and I own a gas grill (I know sacrilege!) and we always get a nice crisp on the skin with a good amount of browning.

I will also share a neat experience I had with wings at a friend’s house. We were invited over to watch the playoffs one Sunday and the hosts were serving wings. They had split the wings into the drum and wing and cooked them in the oven until they were golden. Then each guest was given a Gladware container and told to choose from the array of sauces they had available. You could make your own sauce combination or just use one right out of the bottle. The wings were delicious, everyone got the flavor they wanted and clean-up was a snap! Thanks to the Fuller family for a neat and tasty entertaining idea!