Griddle Wings Experiment: The Worst Way to Cook Chicken Wings?

Over a year ago we were given an electric griddle as a gift. It's great for making a bunch of things all at the same time. Pancakes, potato pancakes, or I mostly use it for frying bacon. My version is really easy to clean and my only complaint is the cold zones take up a big side of the griddle.

Since I got it, I've wanted to try and cook chicken wings on it. I don't know why, but I thought this would be a great new way to make a fried wing without deep frying. I don't know why it would, because I'm not crazy about pan fried wings, but a new toy is a new toy. Only it wasn't new. Or a toy.

I entered the Lord of the Wings Test Kitchen and went simple for the wings; I just seasoned the wings with salt and pepper and tossed them on the griddle. That's it.

They might have done well to have some oil, but I figured the fat in the wings would be enough to keep it lubricated, and the griddle is non-stick, and ya I didn't need it.

I kept the wings on the hottest side of the griddle, and we got a good cooking sizzle going on. I was cooking at the maximum heat to try and get the crispiest skin possible.

When the chicken skin browned, I flipped them over. The drums got 3 or 4 flips because there are basically 3-4 sides to try and get it all fried up.

At the midway of cooking these wings I started to go from excited to really skeptical about this cooking method. The joints still had lots of blood coming out, but the skin was fried up. I did not like how this was going.

One of the problems with cooking like this is that so much of the heat is lost. When you cook wings in an oven, or a BBQ, or the deep fryer, you are enveloping the wing with heat. But the griddle, you lose so much heat. I was cooking these for almost half an hour and finally decided to change things up. I grabbed a metal bowl and decided to cook the wings underneath.

This seemed to be working. The skin was staying crispy, but the inside was starting to get crisp.

When I thought they were done, I took them out and took a bite. Nope, still not done. This is why you cook by temperature and not time. Unfortunately my thermometer hasn't been working, so I couldn't. But you should.

So they went back under the metal bowl and cooked for like another 15 minutes.

The wings were still juicy looking and crispy. But it wasn't that appealing to look at. I mean, I think to the average person anyway.

Also, how tiny are those wings? It's hard to get good size fresh wings around here.

So the cook time was basically an hour plus a bit more. This took way too long. It was just too long. I did try the wing as is, and it was ok, but it was going to need sauce.

I threw together a quick and tasty sauce - margerine, hot sauce, chili flakes, worchestshire sauce, some spice, some garlic. This was tasty.

I poured that sauce all over the wings because that's what you do.

These still don't look so good.  More tossing and saucing needed.

Well these don't look that much better either. Bah!

This was the best looking wing of the bunch, then I stopped taking photos. Because I stopped caring. The wings were ok. The sauce was the highlight.

The actual wings were kind of crispy, and the wings remained kind of juicy, but it wasn't the best texture. I would not bother with this way of cooking wings ever again. Baking makes much better wings than this. When I bake wings, the skin is really crispy, the meat is tender, the bones pull apart nicely. This was tougher, not that crispy, and it took way longer to cook.

So I won't bother with an electric griddle again. Of all the ways I've tried cooking wings, this is the worst. The only way that would be worst is the microwave, but I won't do that to chicken.

#FAIL