Best Chef Chicken Wing Recipe: Sunny Anderson; Better Than Ina Garten’s

• I made chicken wings using recipes from chefs Guy Fieri, Ina Garten, and Sunny Anderson.
• Each recipe had a fairly similar wing sauce made with butter, spices, and a few other ingredients.
• I found Sunny Anderson’s recipe made the best wings that would be perfect for Super Bowl Sunday.

Super Bowl Sunday is around the corner, and there’s no game-day bite quite like a good chicken wing.

Unsure of which recipe to follow, I turned to celebrity chefs Guy Fieri, Ina Garten, and Sunny Anderson.

Here’s how the wings turned out and which chef had my favorite game-day recipe. 

It didn’t surprise me that Fieri’s recipe had more ingredients than the others

Fieri’s recipe calls for a dry rub with cumin, black and white pepper, dry mustard, cayenne pepper, and garlic.

The ingredients list felt long, but I wasn’t surprised as I’d recently made his trash-can nachos — which were also quite in-depth. 

After I patted the wings dry, I tossed them with the spice mixture and let them sit in the fridge for an hour. I preheated the oven to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.

I baked the wings for 50 minutes, turning them halfway through the cook time

While the wings were baking, I made Fieri’s wing sauce. I combined lime juice, vinegar, Crystal hot sauce, some of the dry rub mix, jalapeño, garlic, and olive oil.

After heating the mixture in a saucepan, I let it cool and tossed the wings with the sauce.

I could definitely taste the jalapeño and lime juice

These wings were super tasty but not for the faint of heart. They packed a good punch thanks to the minced jalapeño and hot sauce, but the lime juice rounded out the taste.

The chicken itself wasn’t as juicy as I would’ve liked, though the wings were extremely flavorful. 

Next, I tried Garten’s straightforward wing recipe, which included a dipping sauce

Garten’s sauce recipe was simple: combine melted butter, hot sauce, cayenne pepper, and salt.

I brushed the wings with the mixture and cooked them under the broiler about 3 inches below the heat for eight minutes. After that, I turned the wings over, re-brushed them, and broiled them for four more minutes.

Garten’s recipe also included a dipping sauce made with blue cheese, mayonnaise, sour cream, milk, Worcestershire, salt, and pepper.

My wings didn’t turn out great, but Garten’s dip was awesome

These wings were super juicy but didn’t get very crispy or golden brown, even after leaving them in the oven for longer than the recipe stated. The sauce didn’t completely coat the wings, and the flavor of it was underwhelming.

Although I didn’t love the wings, I’d absolutely make the dip again.

It was addictive, with a savory taste from the Worcestershire and no overwhelmingly strong blue-cheese flavor that many chicken-wing dips have. 

The last recipe I made was Anderson’s, which felt the most labor-intensive

For Anderson’s recipe, I coated the wings in flour, cayenne, salt, and pepper and let them sit for an hour in the mixture to dry out.

I cooked my wings a little differently 

The recipe says to deep-fry the wings in a deep stockpot, but I was a little intimidated and low on oil, so I did a more shallow fry.

I heated up oil in a pan and cooked the wings for about 25 minutes, flipping them halfway.

The wings came out surprisingly crispy, like real fried chicken. I tried one before coating it in sauce and it was super flavorful from the flour-seasoning mixture and the deep-fried taste.

Anderson’s sauce was a simple mixture of lemon, basil, butter, and Frank’s wing sauce

I tossed the wings in the Buffalo sauce and prepared Anderson’s blue-cheese dip, which was very similar to Garten’s.

To make it, I combined blue cheese, sour cream, mayonnaise, buttermilk, lemon juice, garlic, salt, and pepper.

This wing was my favorite, thanks to the crispiness of the skin

I couldn’t stop eating these deep-fried wings. Although the breading and dipping sauce were not especially unique, the texture and juiciness of the wings made this recipe a winner.

Each recipe was tasty, but Anderson’s wings are my top choice

If I could, I’d take aspects from each chef’s recipe to make the ultimate chicken wing. I’d use my play on Anderson’s frying method, Fieri’s spicy Buffalo-style sauce, and Garten’s blue-cheese dip.

I enjoyed the zing of Fieri’s Buffalo-style sauce and thought that Garten’s dip alone elevated her wing recipe. However, if I had to pick a winner, I’d say Anderson’s recipe got me the best, crispiest chicken wings. They were classic, flavorful, and exactly what I wanted from a chicken wing.

Check out the other celebrity-chef recipes we’ve put head-to-head so far.

This story was originally published on February 8, 2022, and most recently updated on February 5, 2025.