I love wings. I love spicy in general. My wife, and co-blogger here, is new to wings in general. We started making ours a while back and just recently did I start experimenting with wing sauces, as in making my own. I suppose I should show you what my Sweet and Spicy hot wings look like, right?

Yeah, thats them one up close and personal on the right. Now, like I said, I like mine nice and spicy, Chris prefers hers with an over the counter sauce, so she goes with some Sweet Baby Ray’s Buffalo Sauce, which is actually pretty decent…but not what I was looking for. So I decided to try my own sauce.

Here’s the basic recipe (measurements are approximate…I kind of eyeball most of it.)

1/4 c. Louisiana Hot Sauce
1/4 c. Siracha Hot Sauce (aka Crazy Chicken)
1 stick unsalted butter
2 teaspoons liquid smoke
2 tablespoons honey
2 teaspoons Chipotle Pepper Flakes (can be omitted)
1 tablespoon ketchup
dash of pepper

Take the butter and melt in a pan with the 2 hot sauces and bring just to a boil and mix in the remaining ingredients. Simmer for a couple of minutes then remove from heat and let cool for 1/2 hour. You don’t really have to let it cool…but it will thicken and stick to the chicken better that way..in my opinion…plus you won’t burn your hands when you are tossing it with the chicken.

That recipe makes enough sauce for 12-18 wing pieces…depending on how well coated you make it.

Next, you are going to need to prep your wings. We normally buy our wings whole, that means splitting the wings. Once you’ve got your split wings put them in a glass bowl and pour between 1/4 to 1/2 of the sauce over the top. Then use your hands to toss the wings in the sauce. You could use tongs, however, I find that I get better coverage when using hands.

After they are coated its time to send them to the pan…since we bake our wings. Preheat your over to 400 and get out a cookie sheet and a sturdy cooling rack. You’re going to put the rack on top of the cookie sheet and arrange them about an inch apart. You might want to oil the cooling rack to make removing the wings easier.

Toss them in the over for about 20 minutes or so, until you can nick one of the “legs” to the bone and can see the chicken is fully cooked. Once they are out of the oven put the wings in a clean glass bowl and poor in the remaining sauce and toss. If serving on one plate feel free to pour the remaining sauce over the top. Then, garnish with celery and blue cheese dressing.

I realize that you don’t end up with that BRIGHT red color that a lot of people associate with wings in this recipe, but I think you’ll find it tasty. It blends a good amount of lip tingling heat, just the right amount in my opinion to just about bring a little sweat to your brow, but also a nice compliment of sweetness from the honey. The honey also helps then the sauce up a little bit, as it can tend to be a little then, especially if you use it before its had a chance to cool down.

On thing you might want to try, if you make this sauce is adding another 2 teaspoons of sugar to it to add just a little bit more sweet to the party. Much more and I think it would be too sweet, but you never know. Best part about cooking is the experimenting.

I hope you’ve enjoyed reading, and I hope that if you try this recipe you’ll let me know what you thought of it. As always, we appreciate feedback at PeaceLoveFood, so if you’ve got some thoughts for us, post away.

I’ll leave you with a shot of the final plate.