The Best Way To Reheat Wings: 3 Styles For Success
Wings are delicious, no matter what type of sauce or rub you like them with. From BBQ to plain, wings are crispy, crunchy, moist, and oh-so-delicious.
What is not always delicious is wings that are reheated in the following days. For a long time, I couldn’t figure out how to reheat wings so they would actually taste good. I started tossing out any wings that I couldn’t finish on the first day, and I hate wasting food! I needed to find a way around this problem because I can’t always finish all my wings at once.
So, I learned some different ways to reheat wings, and let me tell you that these three ways of reheating wings are so much better than what you’ve been doing. Find the best way to reheat wings in this article, and give it a try!
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Why Is Reheating Wings Well So Important?
If you’ve ever eaten day-old, microwaved chicken wings, you know that they just aren’t tasty. The outside of the wing gets rubbery, the meat itself loses all moisture, and it just doesn't taste good.
Considering how delicious fresh chicken wings are, this is simply unacceptable!
There’s no reason that you should be eating rubbery chicken, and that’s why it’s so important to learn how to reheat chicken wings. I’m sharing three great methods today; all of them give you delicious reheated chicken wings that won’t make you want to toss the bunch.
Oven Reheating
The easiest way to reheat your chicken wings with success is to use your oven. I’ve found that this method works best for chicken wings that were originally oven baked, but you can try this method with fried chicken, too.
All you need is a pan, aluminum foil, and your oven!
- Cover a pan big enough to fit your chicken wings in foil, and then place the chicken wings on top of the pan.
- Put these into an oven that has been preheated to 350 degrees.
- After 15 minutes in the oven, you should see that the wings look golden brown and are ready to be enjoyed!
I like to spray my pan with a bit of nonstick baking spray before putting the wings on it to help them come up easily.
Another tip I have when using this method is to apply more sauce to the wings before reheating them. If you prepared the sauce at home or have some BBQ laying around, this is a great way to make sure the wings stay moist. Simply brush some sauce over the wings before the go into the oven, and you’ll be pleased with the results.
Saute Those Wings
My personal favorite way of reheating wings is to refry them in a saute pan! Seriously. It works! It may not be the best choice for your waistline, but I’ve found that this method gets fried chicken back to its former glory better than any other method.
If you have leftover fried chicken, this is the method I suggest trying.
All you need is a frying pan and a high-quality frying oil. Heat the pan up, and then add enough oil to have about a half inch around the bottom of the pan.
Carefully add the wings to the pan. Heat on both sides for at least two minutes. I recommend using a splatter guard to make sure that you don’t get any burns from flying oil!
Once the wings are done on each side, remove them from the oil and put them on a paper towel lined plate to suck up any excess oil.
Voila! You have crispy, delicious wings as fresh as they were on day one!
Toaster Oven
A small but strong appliance, a toaster oven is a great tool to have on hand when you want to reheat chicken wings. Because it works a lot like an oven, you’ll find that the wings you reheat stay moist and crispy far better than they do in other fast heating appliances such as the microwave.
Stick your wings on a piece of foil, and then put this in the toaster oven for five to ten minutes. I like to set my toaster oven to 350 degrees, and have found that this is an easy, efficient way to reheat wings if you don’t want to get a frying pan or your full oven going.
Like I mentioned in the oven section of this article, wings reheated in the oven taste even better if they have a sauce added to them! You can do this before or after cooking, but remember that the sauce will help to add some flavor that may have been lost when the wings were refrigerated.
Avoid The Microwave!
While I know it can be tempting to use the microwave to reheat your wings, I suggest avoiding this unless you have no other appliances available to use to reheat your wings.
Simply put, it is nearly impossible to reheat wings in the microwave in a way that will prevent them from getting soggy and rubbery. In fact, I’d rather eat cold chicken wings than microwave them!
That might sound a bit dramatic, but trust me when I say that the microwave is not a great option for reheating chicken wings. You’ll find more consistent success with the other reheating methods that I’ve mentioned today.
Reheat Your Wings Confidently
Do you feel like you can reheat wings confidently now? The best way to reheat wings doesn’t have to be complicated, it just has to taste good! These three methods are tried and true, so I hope they work for you.
Which method of reheating do you prefer to use when you’re working with leftover wings? Let me know what you think in the comments; I’d love to hear your opinions!
