Although we all have our own favorite guilty pleasure foods, few things can compare to a huge plate of well-marinated chicken wings. For anyone who likes to get a little dirty while they’re eating, there’s something fun about actually using your hands to eat your food, dipping it in sauce and using plenty of napkins throughout the process. At the end of it all, you get to lick your fingers clean! Still, we usually think of the best chicken wings as only available in a store or with special equipment like a sauce spinner.
Fortunately, we’ve got a simple recipe for you today to make a one of these perfect meals right at home—and it couldn’t be easier to make. As always, we’re going to show you how to put your slow cooker to excellent use. Today, we’re making a delicious slow cooker version of buffalo drumsticks. Because of the slow cooking process, these things will absorb all the sauce and the meat will fall right off the bone when you’re done with them. Sound good? Let’s get started.
Here’s what you’ll need:
- 1 1/2 tablespoons of cornstarch
- 3 tablespoons of apple cider vinegar
- 1 cup of hot sauce (your choice)
- 3 tablespoons of honey
- 4 minced cloves of garlic
- 5 tablespoons of butter, diced into pieces
- 3 pounds of chicken drumsticks
- 1 1/2 teaspoons of salt
- 1 teaspoon of pepper
Here’s what you do:
1. To start, get out a small mixing bowl and add your cornstarch and apple cider vinegar. Be sure to whisk it together well into a slurry without any lumps left in it! When that’s done, pour it in your slow cooker and add hot sauce, honey, garlic and butter, stirring everything together.
2. With your sauce in the bottom of the cooker, add in your drumsticks and season them generously with salt and pepper. Once the drumsticks themselves are seasoned, mix them around in the wet sauces as well until they’re well-covered.
3. Once they’re ready, cover the slow cooker and let it cook on high for about three hours. After you open it up, check to make sure all the chicken looks well-cooked and that it’s just about fall-off-the-bone tender. If it all looks good, serve as they are with ranch or bleu cheese dressing!
4. As an added bonus, you can take these slow cooked drumsticks to the next level of crispiness and flavor as well. Once you’ve cooked them for three hours, pull out a baking sheet lined with aluminum foil. Throw the drumsticks down on it and drizzle them with additional sauce. Broil them in your oven for 15 minutes at 300 degrees to give them some extra crisp and then serve!
As you can see, restaurant-quality wings are not something that you actually need to go to a restaurant to get. The slow cooker method ensures that your meat will be cooked perfectly and well-coated in whatever sauce you may choose. Though the final broil in the oven brings them up to a crisp (for those who want that), these things also taste perfect right out of the slow cooker. While our recipe is exclusively for the classic buffalo flavored version of wings, feel free to experiment with your seasoning and let us know what you think!
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