Crispy Smoked 0-400 Chicken Wings on Pellet Grill (2024)

FAQs

Crispy Smoked 0-400 Chicken Wings on Pellet Grill? ›

Two-Zone Cooking: Grill the wings over indirect heat so they cook through without drying out, and then sear them over direct hot heat so they're delightfully crispy. Monitor Temperature: Monitor the temperature of the chicken wings so that they aren't overdone or undercooked.

Two-Zone Cooking: Grill the wings over indirect heat so they cook through without drying out, and then sear them over direct hot heat so they're delightfully crispy. Monitor Temperature: Monitor the temperature of the chicken wings so that they aren't overdone or undercooked.

Place the wings on your smoker, cold. Then, set your smoker to 400 degrees, close the lid, and set a timer for 30 minutes. After 30 minutes, flip the wings, close the lid, and then set another timer for 30 minutes. After an hour on your smoker, remove the wings and sauce them.

Set your Traeger (or other smoker) to 225 degrees Fahrenheit, and use cherry wood pellets. While the smoker is preheating, remove the wings from the marinade, shake off any excess, and dry rub with Traeger Chicken Rub. Smoke wings until the internal temperature reaches 160 degrees Fahrenheit, approximately one hour.

After smoking you will need to increase the heat to really crisp that skin. If you're using a pellet smoker, you can simply turn up the temperature. If your smoker can't jump up in temp quickly, your best bet may be to move the wings to a preheated oven.

Cook at Higher Temperatures

First and foremost, smoke your chicken at higher temperatures. The ideal temperature to cook your chicken should be around 275 °F – 320 °F (135 °C – 160 °C). As you start to decrease temperature beyond this threshold, the skin will become rubbery.

Use a ThermoPop, Thermapen or other thermometer to make sure that the correct finished temperature is achieved in the chicken. You are looking for 175-180°F. A great tool for checking the temperature on these is the Thermapen ONE which reads in 1 second or less!

You can also get a nice crust on chicken by starting it out in the oven: follow your recipe, or heat the oven to between 400° to 450°F, place a rack in the top third (the hottest part) of the oven, and slide a pan of chicken pieces in, skin side up. The skin will be crisp by the time the chicken is cooked through.

Baking soda is alkaline, so it raises the pH level of chicken skin, breaking down the peptide bonds and jumpstarting the browning process, meaning the wings got browner and crispier faster than they would on their own.

Smoke the wings for 2 hours. By this time the wings should have reached an internal temperature of 165°F. If they're slightly over 165, that's fine. Any internal temp up to 180°F means the wings will still be juicy and tender when cooked low and slow on the smoker.

How do you smoke chicken wings on a Camp Chef pellet grill? ›

You should smoke the chicken wings at 225 F degrees for an hour and then turn up the heat to 350 F degrees for the next 30 minutes to achieve the perfect crisp on the outside and soft tenderness on the inside.

Crispy Hack #1: Baking Powder

The kitchen science wizards at America's Test Kitchen and Serious Eats both found this worked best for them. This was the easiest of the hacks: Just toss the wings in a teaspoon each of salt and baking powder before baking.

Your pellet grill will impart more smoke flavor at a lower temp. Smoke these wings at 225° for about 30 minutes. Take your pellet grill temperature up to 350°F for the roasting step. This high temperature will crisp up the skin and render out the fat that's in the wings.

Air fryers make foods crispy by circulating air around them, so if there's no room for air to circulate, the wings aren't going to crisp up. That said, you may need to Air Fry in two batches. If some of the wings are bigger than others I like to group them by size so they're done at the same time.

Just place them on a cooling rack set over a baking sheet.

If you've ever seen a high-volume restaurant or fast-food chain kitchen in action, you'll notice that they keep deep-fried foods like crispy, fried chicken wings on perforated trays that act in much the same way as the cooling rack and baking sheet combination.