Lemon Pepper Wings

Understand that the quality of these lemon pepper wings, when done right, is of professional quality.

It’s so damn easy to make this recipe, you have to try your hand at making them. It’s worth your toil in the kitchen to make these restaurant quality wings.

Let’s dive in!

Tools

See a list below of the tools you’ll need for this recipe, I’ll get to ingredients in the section following this one.

You’ll want a sharp knife and a cutting board in case you want to cut your whole chicken wings into party wings, but if you buy them pre-cut or like them whole then it’s unnecessary.

However, I can’t stress enough how useful the mixing bowls will be when making this recipe, I use them to season, dredge, and toss in sauce after I fry them.

Get yourself a nice pair of nesting stainless steel mixing bowls if you don’t have them already and you’ll see how incredibly versatile they are.

Seasoning

Since this recipe is for lemon pepper wings, you’ll need to procure lemon pepper seasoning!

The way I see it, you have two ways to do that:

1. Buy lemon pepper seasoning. (Easy option)
2. Make lemon pepper seasoning from scratch. (Fun option)

If you want to buy lemon pepper seasoning, I recommend buying it online since I’ve found prices to be a little bit cheaper by the ounce.

Check out the prices on this one here.

However, if you want to make some lemon pepper seasoning at home, which I highly recommend you do, then you’ll come out with a much fresher product.

I’ve already written a post on how to do that and you can find it below.

Either way you choose to go, you’ll be able to make this delicious lemon pepper wings recipe.

Frying

So for this lemon pepper wings recipe I decided to revert back to a standard frying plan.

Instead of double frying my chicken like I did in my last wing recipe, crispy garlic-parmesan wings, I decided to go for a standard single fry.

The reason behind this is because I want to try to get as close to wing joint quality wings as I can, and I have a theory.

My theory is that most wing joints have a lot of traffic, which necessitates them to be as efficient as possible with their choices and recipes.

Essentially, it’s Occam’s Razor of chicken wings, the simplest answer is probably correct!

This means that in order to reduce complexity, it makes sense that dropping wings into the fryer once and letting them sit for a predetermined amount of time is probably correct.

This also removes necessitating a place for half done wings to rest, removes potential for error on behalf of the fry cook if they forget which chicken is done and which is half done.

Essentially, a lot of potential for error is removed in the single fry system.

But how did it turn out, you might ask?

Incredible! It gave the chicken that oily (in a good way) taste that most wing places have.

It also helped the chicken “tighten up” and the skin pull taught across the meat.

This is what you want, because it helps with tearing off chicken chunks.

So, I deduced the following:

• Double fry for crisper skin, and more tender meat.
• Single fry for a tighter fry and a more authentic feel.

I imagine that double frying is the way to go if you want to impress someone with incredibly juicy chicken.

However, if you want that chicken wing joint flavor and mouthfeel for these lemon pepper wings, then single fry!

Flouring

I hate to admit it but I messed up by trying to mix my flouring in with all the wings at once.

It was short sighted and I’ll never do it again, here’s why.

When I poured my corn starch, baking powder, and all purpose flour into the bowl of seasoned chicken it immediately started to clump.

Clumping is not good when you’re breading chicken because it results in chicken with breading in some places and none in others!

In the future I’ve resolved to either using a bag to toss the flour with the chicken to coat it more evenly, or, primarily, simply dip the chicken into a separate bowl full of pre-mixed flour, starch, and baking powder and mixing it evenly across the chicken before frying.

This is where I missed the mark with these lemon pepper wings, and I hope you learn from my mistakes and avoid replicating them!

Sauce

There’s really not a lot to the sauce on this recipe, which I appreciate.

It’s classic and tasty and absolutely tickles your taste buds.

In fact, this wing sauce is the definition of what I would call “zippy” or “zingy”. It’s nicely balanced between fatty and acidic due to the butter and the lemon pepper along with the fresh squeezed lemon juice.

Believe me when I say I couldn’t put these lemon pepper wings down!

They couldn’t possibly get much better.

Or could they?

Sauce Improvements

I found two additional ingredients that will help improve these wings if you’re game to tread off traditional path for a second.

I personally like some spice in all of my food, so it isn’t uncommon for me to think of ways to add a little cayenne pepper into recipes here and there.

But I also acknowledge that these lemon pepper wings don’t need only heat, they need balanced flavor so as not to offset the delicate lemon pepper essence.

That’s why I suggest adding in the following two spices to your sauce an seasoning.

1. Cayenne Pepper
2. Granulated White Sugar

The sugar serves to offset the heat provided by the cayenne so the flavors don’t become overwhelmed by the spice.

We only want to add another layer of interest to our sauce, not change it entirely!

I think I hit the mark with this, and I hope you give it a try and love it too!

Leave a comment if you tried it and like it, I’d love to hear back from you.

Conclusion

In conclusion, these lemon pepper wings have some of the most incredible and zippy flavor I’ve ever had in wings before.

I have to admit I’m new to the lemon pepper game, but after making this recipe, I’m and advocate!

Give it a try and you won’t be disappointed.

If you have anything to add or want to point something out, leave it below in the comments! I’ll respond to you as quickly as I can.

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Last of all, have a great day!

Best,

C.J.