Smoked Jamaican Jerk Chicken Wings

This weekend I decided to smoke some chicken wings for the football games that were coming on. This was my 2^nd time smoking chicken wings and I think I’m getting a little better at it. With all things, practice makes perfect.

The key thing I’m learning is that you need to crispen the outside skin some kind of way, otherwise it’s extremely rubbery after smoking the wings. I use the hot coals on the bottom of my smoker. I put the cooking grate with the wings on top of the coals for about 5 minutes to crispen the skin. This left the wings with what looks like a slightly burnt texture in the pictures, but I’ll tell you what they were still amazing to me. Next time I’ll try to pull them off the coals slightly quicker to minimize the burning.

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I don't claim to be an expert smoker. I've only had a smoker for about 4 months now and am doing a lot of learning myself. I figured I will start to post these blogs/recipes onto our website to share my journey with everyone. My mistakes, what I figured out works for me, what doesn't work. Thanks for reading. My ingredients, preparation, and cook process are below. If you are planning on cooking some wings, I wish you luck and hope they turn out amazing.

Ingredients:

• 5 lbs. of Chicken Party Wings
• 1 Bottle of Walkerswood Mild Jamaican Jerk Seasoning
• Chigger Creek Hickory Chunks or Chips (I used chunks)
• Charcoal

Preparation:

1. Get a plate and spoon. Open up the Walkers wood Jamaican Jerk and take some scoops and put it onto the plate.
2. Take a few chicken wings and put them onto the plate.
3. Coat the chicken wings with the seasoning. The more jerk seasoning you put onto the wings, the hotter it’s going to be. I apply a lot to my wings because I like them to be spicy. You don’t need to cover the entire wing though, just make sure the liquid of the jerk coats the wings.
4. I have a picture at the bottom with them on the smoker beforehand so you can see how much I applied.
5. Let them rest in the fridge as you prepare the smoker, grill, or oven.

Cooking Method:

1. Prepare your Smoker or whatever cooking device you are using. I use the Weber Smokey mountain 22” smoker. It uses charcoal for fuel and wood chunks/chips can be added to the charcoal. I used Chigger Creek Hickory Wood Chunks for the chicken wings.
2. I smoked the chicken wings at around 250 degrees F thru the entire process. I smoked the chicken wings for around 2½ hours. I turned the wings after about 1 hour into the smoke.
3. After the wings reached about 165-170 F I took them off the top of my smoker and put them directly over the hot charcoals to sear them. This process doesn’t take long, I left the wings over top the charcoals for all of 5 minutes, if that. You need to be careful because it can get away from you in a hurry and you will end up with burnt wings. As you can see in my pictures, some of mine are a little burnt because I left them on for seconds to long. That’s ok for me because I like them to be a little burnt on the outside. It’s a tricky process, but very rewarding if done correctly.

I have found that this helps get the outer skin crisper and not make it such a rubbery texture that you can get from smoking chicken. You could also probably broil them in the oven or use a regular grill if you have one. The skin really needs some direct heat applied to get it nice and crispy.

        4. Let the wings rest for a few minutes to cool off and then dig in and enjoy.

Pictures:

Recipe by Andrew Edmondson Backyard Smoker Enthusiast from Central Meats