Smoke roasting chicken wings on your pellet grill is an amazing, delicious and simple way to create a perfect pile of awesome treats.
Chicken wings have long been a part of the southern cooking tradition. In more recent history, wings have risen to the top of the party food chain for their simplicity and ease of preparation. They can be enjoyed with a simple spice mix or dipped in a multitude of sauces.
What is smoke roasting?
Before we start winging it — let’s spend a minute looking at the term smoke roasting. Wikipedia describes smoke roasting as any process that has the attributes of both roasting and smoking. Roasting is described as a cooking method that uses dry heat where hot air envelops the food, cooking it evenly on all sides with temperatures of at least 300 degrees.
The smoking descriptions are all over the map, but for the sake of this discussion, let’s just say that smoking involves food cooking over smoldering material at a lower temperature than roasting. Let just give this a number: Say 200 to 300 degrees.
Most folks out there in the live fire cooking world use smoke roasting to describe roasting with wood or charcoal. It’s safe to say they are not that far off base. I believe that true smoke roasting requires a bit more of combining the two methods. This is exactly what we’re going to do today. True smoke roasting of some chicken wings on you pellet grill!
Wings can be smoked whole or broken down into parts. I like to break mine down into three parts: the drumette, the flat and the tip. The tips can be kept for some nice chicken stock if you like.
Now go get yourself some wings and get that pellet grill started!
Pellet Grill Smoke Roasted Wings
Ingredients
- A dash of salt
- A dash of pepper
- Garlic mix (Consists of 4 parts Kosher salt, 2 parts restaurant grind black pepper, and 1 part granulated garlic)
Instructions
- Get your pellet smoker running and up to 225°F. Use whatever flavor wood pellets you enjoy.
- Load up your wings. This is the smoking part. Your pellet grill will impart more smoke flavor at a lower temp.
- Smoke these wings at 225° for about 30 minutes.
- Take your pellet grill temperature up to 350°F for the roasting step. This high temperature will crisp up the skin and render out the fat that’s in the wings. This step will take 30-50 minutes. I know that’s a wide gap but BBQ and grilling is more by temperature than time. You will want to cook these wings until they have an internal temperature of at least 165°f. I like to take my wings up to 170 to 180 degrees. The added temp really helps give a nice texture to the skin.
- As your wings start to approach your finish temperature be ready to take them off as they finish. There’s a good chance some will finish before others due to their inconsistent size.
- Place them in a pan and keep that covered in foil.
- Once done you wings are ready to enjoy as is or dressed up with a multitude of sauces. BBQ, teriyaki, Buffalo style and on and on. The only limit is your imagination.
Notes
Be sure you use a good instant read thermometer like a Themapen or thermopop from ThermoWorks!
**Affiliate links have been used in this post, which means I could make a small commission if any products are purchased. I only recommend products that I personally use and endorse. (Robyn)
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