Soy Garlic Chicken Wings

Baked crispy chicken wings coated in a garlicky, gingery soy sauce-based sauce are pretty addicting, not gonna lie. The best part is that they’re healthier than their deep-fried counterpart and are super easy to make!

Imagine having crispy chicken wings that aren’t greasy or heavy. You might just fall in love with baked chicken wings like I have. The best thing is you won’t have an oily mess on your stovetop to clean up afterwards!

I grew up eating soy garlic-flavoured chicken wings, so it’s a nostalgic flavour. However, in this recipe,  I made it crispier than my mom’s braised chicken wings. Who doesn’t like a little bit of crunch?

Equipment You’ll Need

• Tongs – This will be handy when tossing the chicken wings in sauce. It is a lot easier on the hands than chopsticks.
• Baking sheet
• Baking rack – You’ll want a rack that can withstand high temperatures of an oven.
• Large mixing bowl – For tossing the chicken wings.

Ingredients

• Chicken Wings – You can use chicken wings with tips attached still or the separated kind.
• Baking Powder – This is the key ingredient to crispy baked chicken wings! Do not substitute with baking soda.
• Kosher salt – This is to help enhance the flavour of the chicken wings and to help dry it out so it can brown more readily.
• Black pepper – I recommend using freshly ground black pepper since it has a stronger flavour than the pre-ground kind.
• Dark soy sauce – This will add a lot of colour and deeper flavour but less salt than light soy sauce.
• Light soy sauce – This will add a bit more salt and compensate for the lower sodium content of the dark soy sauce. 
• Garlic – The more finely you mince garlic, the more you will release its flavours.
• Ginger – The more finely you mince the ginger, the more potent the ginger flavour will be.
• Sugar – This is optional as it’s for balancing the salty and savoury flavours.
• Cornstarch – For thickening the sauce, so that it sticks to the chicken wings when we toss the wings with the sauce
• Water – We need cold water to hydrate the starch so that we can thicken the sauce.
• Oil – We need oil to grease the baking rack and to fry the garlic and ginger for the soy garlic sauce.
• Hoisin sauce – This is a sweet and salty sauce made with fermented soy bean paste and a hint of spice. It will also add some colour to the chicken wings here.

Ingredient Substitutions

• Kosher salt – You can use regular table salt as well, but use about half of the amount for kosher salt.
• Light & Dark Soy Sauce – You may use regular soy sauce as a substitute for both dark and light soy sauce. I’ve used both dark and light soy sauce to have better control over the colour and flavour. 
• Garlic – If you don’t have fresh garlic, you could substitute 3 cloves of garlic with 1/2 tsp garlic powder.
• Sugar – You may use other types of sugars like brown sugar or honey as a substitute.

How to make Baked Soy Garlic Chicken Wings

We’ll heat up the oven to 400ºF (204ºC). The oven will heat up in the meantime while we prepare the chicken wings.

You can pat dry the chicken wings with a paper towel to help them brown more easily in the oven. If you’re in a bit of a time crunch, you can skip this step.

In a large bowl, add kosher salt, black pepper and baking powder to the chicken wings and massage the seasonings onto the chicken wings to coat them well. We are setting the chicken wings up to become super crispy by applying baking powder and salt to the skin. I like to use gloved hands to rub the seasoning in since it’s easier than using utensils.

To help with clean-up later, line a baking tray with aluminum foil. Put the chicken wings on the baking rack, ensuring there is some space between the wings to allow the hot air to circulate. This will allow the wings to be cooked quickly and evenly. 

Let the chicken wings bake until they’re golden brown, which will take approximately 45 minutes. At the half-way point, flip the chicken wings so they brown evenly.

While chicken wings are baking, make the sauce. I like to do this during the last 20 minutes of baking, as I find it easier to toss the wings while the sauce is still warm. 

First, make the cornstarch slurry by mixing cornstarch with water in a small bowl.

Fry the aromatics (garlic and ginger).

Then, stir in the soy sauces, sugar, and hoisin sauce until well-combined.

If the cornstarch settled to the bottom of the bowl, give it a stir. While constantly stirring the sauce, add the cornstarch slurry and keep stirring until the sauce has thickened. We want the cornstarch to be well incorporated so that it thickens the sauce evenly. Once the sauce is thick, remove it from the heat.

After we’re done baking the chicken wings, remove them from the oven. To ensure we cook the chicken thoroughly, insert a digital thermometer at the thickest part of a drumette, while avoiding the bone. The final internal temperature should be 74ºC or 165ºF.

Toss the chicken wings in the sauce to coat them well. Now, you can serve your soy garlic chicken wings!

The Science Behind this Recipe

Baking Powder

What exactly is baking powder? It’s a mixture of sodium bicarbonate, cream of tartar and cornstarch. Applying baking powder to the skin of chicken wings helps to crisp it up. The high pH of baking powder causes proteins to break down. Then, these proteins loosen up more and can more easily participate in browning reactions on the skin. In addition, the sodium in the baking powder extracts moisture from the skin. All of this happens to create the crispy texture that we all love!

Cornstarch

We’ll mix cornstarch with water in the form of a slurry. This will make it easier to stir the cornstarch into the sauce. When we cook the cornstarch, the starch granules break and water enters them. The granules then swell, which results in a thickened liquid. The thicker liquid makes it easy for flavourful sauce ingredients to stick to the chicken wings. Without the thickened sauce, the flavours would drip to the bottom of the bowl. This way, you’ll have flavour in every bite!