Asian Chili Lime Wings

Crispy and saucy Asian chili lime wings that are baked in the oven, not deep fried! These addictive wings are the perfect game day appetizer or a finger lickin’ meal!

I. Love. Wings. It’s one of my all time favourite foods and something I order pretty frequently when I’m out for a casual dinner. I’ve probably tried the wings at every bar in downtown Toronto at this point! But one of my fave wing places to go to in high school was All Star Wings. It seemed like they had hundreds of flavours and it was always fun to dare each other to try some of their crazier flavours like “The H-Bomb” (Fun fact: don’t try it unless you want your mouth to be on fire for the rest of the night!). It was our original Hot Wing Challenge! And for those who like no heat wings, I highly recommend their “Cheesy where’s the beef?” flavour, it’s crispy wings drenched in gravy and cheese curds. Poutine wings! Sounds a little weird but it’s sooooo good.

Crispy Wings at Home!

While I love ordering wings when I’m out, I hate ordering them for takeout or delivery. They just end up a cold, soggy mess. Wings are meant to be eaten right away when they’re still crispy and freshly sauced! Obviously with the pandemic going on, I can’t go out and order these at a restaurant anymore so I just gotta make them myself! If you’re like me, a pot of burning hot oil terrifies you so deep frying is out of the question. I also haven’t quite jumped on the airfryer bandwagon yet (mostly because I don’t have the space for it in my tiny apartment kitchen but partly because I think tools like that is cheating :)), so my only option was to oven bake them. But I love crispy, saucy wings, not just saucy oven baked ones, so I experimented with a few methods and found the secret to the best crispy oven baked wings! Cornstarch!! Some recipes call for baking powder or baking soda but I found that these added a weird flavour to the wings, even when covered in sauce. Cornstarch, however, gives you extra crispy wings with a neutral flavour so you can sauce or season however you want! And you should baked the wings on an oiler wire rack so that it can crisp on both sides and this saves you from doing the halfway flip if you’re feeling lazy!

Now the Sauce!

Once you perfect the crispy baked wings, you can sauce or season them however you want! I usually make these with a classic buffalo sauce and homemade ranch dip but this time around, I wanted something a little different so I adapted this sauce from Cafe Delites’ Sticky Thai Chili Wings Recipe. I did experiment with marinating the wings first before baking or just baking them plain and tossing in the sauce. In my opinion, you get the optimal crispiness level with the plain baked wings without losing out on any flavour, so the lazy side of me votes for skipping marinating for this recipe! Instead, you end up with a super vibrant, savoury sticky sauce that’s salty, sweet and slightly spicy that perfectly coats your crispy wings for a super addictive combo!

This sauce is made with some easy to find pantry staples in an asian kitchen. One of the main ingredients is fish sauce, which is a sauce made from fermented fish. It’s the sauce you typically get at Vietnamese restaurants for dipping your spring rolls or for pouring over your vermicelli bowls. It has a very unique pungent smell and it has a yummy complex umami flavour that’s also slightly sweet. The saltiness level and flavour does vary by brand so this is definitely a sauce where you want to mix the ingredients in small increments and constantly taste along the way! If the sauce is a little too salty, just balance it out with some more mirin for sweetness or lime juice/vinegar for tartness. Personally, I like my sauce on the saltier/spicy spectrum and that’s what my recipe below reflects! I also highly recommend using freshly squeezed lime juice over the stuff you keep in the fridge. The flavour of fresh lime juice is hard to beat! That’s what makes margaritas the best! I have a great recipe for that too but that’s for another time! I hope you guys enjoy these super addictive wings!

Print Recipe

Asian Chili Lime Chicken Wings

Crispy baked chicken wings glazed with a sticky asian chili lime sauce that'll have you licking your fingers! These wings are perfect for game day appetizers or for a light dinner, it's easy to scale the recipe up or down depending on how much you need!

Prep Time10 minutes mins

Cook Time50 minutes mins

Total Time1 hour hr

Course: Appetizer, Main Course

Cuisine: American, asian

Keyword: appetizer, chicken, chili, finger food, lime, soy sauce, sticky, wings

Servings: 1 serving

Cost: $10

Equipment

• Wire rack
• baking sheet

Ingredients

Chicken Wings:

• 1 lb chicken wings
• 2 tbsp corn starch
• 1 tsp salt and pepper
• canola or vegetable spray oil

Sauce:

• 3 tbsp thai sweet chili sauce
• 2 tbsp mirin
• 2 tbsp rice wine vinegar
• 2 tbsp fresh lime juice
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• 1 tbsp soy sauce
• 1 tbsp garlic, minced
• 1 tbsp sesame oil

For Garnish:

• 1 tbsp fresh cilantro, chopped
• 1 stalk green onion, chopped
• 1 tsp sesame seeds

Instructions

• Preheat oven to 400°F. Cover a baking sheet with foil and place wire rack on top, lightly spray with cooking oil and set aside
• Dry the chicken wings with paper towel as best you can. Toss wings in a large bowl with the cornstarch, sale and pepper until each chicken wing has a light coating.
  
• Place chicken wings on the wire rack and spray with cooking oil and bake in over for 45 minutes. Flipping at around the 30 minute mark.
  
• In a small saucepan, whisk together all the sauce ingredients until well combined. Give the sauce a taste and adjust to your tastes (See note 1)
• Heat sauce over medium heat and simmer until sauce has reduced by half and can coat a spoon, approx. 6-8 minutes, stirring occasionally so the sauce doesn't burn.
  
• Remove wings from oven and let cool slightly. Then toss the wings in the sauce until evenly coated. Serve immediately with some cilantro, green onions and sesame seeds sprinkled on top.
  

Notes

1.  Every brand of soy sauce and fish sauce has a slightly different saltiness level and flavour so I find you usually need to adjust the sweetness or tart level to balance it out. So just add more mirin for sweet or more vinegar or lime juice for tart.