Thai Chicken Wings are the ultimate appetizer. Baked until crispy and tossed in a sweet and savory glaze for maximum flavor! Healthy & yummy!
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Thai Chicken Wings
Everyone loves a good appetizer/party food and wings are perfect because they are so easy to make and incredibly delicious!
These Thai Chicken Wings are perfectly crispy and you will not be able to get enough of the sweet, yet savory, sauce.
You need less than 10 ingredients and about an hour to have these sweet Thai Chicken Wings on your table.
Thai Chicken Wings Ingredients
To make these thai chicken wings, you will need:
- chicken wings
- peanut butter
- honey
- lime juice
- rice wine vinegar
- coconut aminos (or low sodium soy sauce)
- lime zest
- garlic powder and red pepper flakes (optional)
For ingredient substitutions, see the green shaded box below.
We love this meat thermometer for checking the temp to make sure your meat is cooked thoroughly!
How To Make Thai Chicken Wings From Scratch?
It’s easy to make crispy chicken wings!
- Pat the wings with paper towels until they’re dry.
- Mix together marinade and toss the dry wings until fully coated. Leave marinating for at least 20 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 400 and prepare a baking sheet with greased metal cooling racks on top.
- Remove the chicken wings from the marinade (do not discard marinade!) and place the wings on top of the cooling racks. Bake the wings for 35-40 minutes
- While the wings are cooking, pour the marinade in a saucepan on the stove and bring to a rolling boil for about 2 minutes, stirring constantly. The sauce should start to thicken.
- Remove the chicken wings from the oven and add to a bowl to toss with the cooked marinade/sauce.
- Once coated, enjoy as is or top with crushed peanuts and green onions!
Why Are Chicken Wings So Bad For You?
There are a few reasons that chicken wings aren’t “healthy” food. Chicken wings are almost entirely skin and fat and they are also traditionally deep fried. Lastly, typically they are tossed in a sauce that’s a butter based sauce.
This leads to a super high calorie, high fat snack.
However, these Thai Chicken Wings are baked instead of deep fried, and also instead of using butter as the fat in the sauce, our recipe uses peanut butter as the fat.
Important Note: This is not an authentic Thai recipe. My goal is always to share recipes that are a bit healthier and made with affordable, accessible ingredients so everyone can enjoy them regardless of their food allergies or dietary restrictions. This is not an authentic Thai recipe, but a recipe inspired by the flavors of thai cuisine/based on our Healthy Chicken Pad Thai sauce
Thai Chicken Wings FAQ
There are two categories of chicken wings: drums and flats. The drums look like small chicken legs with only one bone. The flats have two small bones and typically have less meat than the drums.
Usually, a package of wings will come with a mix of the two types, but if not this recipe works great with both types of wings, so just pick whichever you prefer.
Because chicken wings come in a variety of sizes, there isn’t an exact number, but typically 1KG equals around 16-24 wings (depending on size).
When cooking wings you’ll need 1 lb of raw chicken wings per person. Chicken wings lose roughly 1/2 their weight when you cook them. So if you cook 4 lbs, you’ll wind up with about 2lbs in cooked wings.
SUBSTITUTIONS FOR THAI CHICKEN WINGS
These wings are pretty versatile. Here are a few ways you can customize them!
Coconut Aminos: Coconut aminos are a gluten free/lower sodium alternative to soy sauce. If you don’t have coconut aminos, you can substitute soy sauce or Bragg’s liquid aminos. If you use Bragg’s, use 1/2 the amount as it is much saltier.
Peanut Butter – We haven’t tested this recipe with almond butter, but think it would turn out well!
Chicken Wings – We haven’t tested this marinade on different types of chicken, but it should work well on chicken breast, thighs, or tenders. Cooking time would need to be adjusted however.
Rice Wine Vinegar – This is essential to the recipe and most Asian dishes, so we do NOT recommend substituting this for any other vinegars. You can find rice wine vinegar in most grocery stores in the Ethnic food aisle or online.
Grilling – You can grill these wings instead of baking them. We tried them on our Traeger and they were SO good!
How To Bake Thai Chicken Wings In The Oven
We prefer to bake these thai chicken wings and the directions for baking are listed below, but they do taste great when grilled as well.
If you are worried about your wings not being crispy in the oven, we have tips below.
Tips For Crispy Baked Chicken Wings
Here are some tips for getting the crispiest baked chicken wings:
- Use a baking rack – Using an oven-safe cooling rack on top of a baking sheet, helps air circulate around the wings which makes them crispy.
- Pat dry before baking – Be sure to always pat your chicken wings dry before baking them. We use paper towels. This ensures there isn’t any excess moisture, allowing your marinade or seasonings to stick to the wings better.
Storing/Serving Thai Chicken Wings
How to serve – We love these thai chicken wings served as an appetizer. Once you’ve coated your wings, save the excess sauce and serve on the side for a delicious thai dipping sauce.
Refrigerator – These thai style chicken wings will last up to 4 days in the refrigerator. We recommend storing them in an airtight glass container.
Freezing – We don’t recommend freezing these wings.
Reheating – You can reheat your chicken wings on a parchment-lined baking sheet in the oven or toaster oven until warmed through.
Other healthy appetizer recipes:
Here are some of our other favorite appetizers and snacks:
Thai Chicken Wings
Ingredients
- 3 lbs chicken wings
- 3 tablespoons peanut butter
- 4.5 tablespoons honey
- 1/3 cup lime juice
- 4.5 tablespoons rice wine vinegar
- 1/2 cup coconut aminos or low sodium soy sauce
- ½ teaspoon lime zest
- ½ teaspoon garlic powder
- ¼ teaspoon red pepper flakes optional
Instructions
- Pat chicken wings dry with paper towels.
- In a bowl mix together marinade/sauce. Toss with dry wings until coated. Marinate for at least 20 minutes.
- Preheat the oven to 400. Prepare a baking sheet with metal cooling racks on top. Grease the cooling racks with baking spray.
- Remove chicken from marinade but do not discard the marinade!!
- Place chicken wings on top of the cooling racks. Bake for 20 minutes, flip and bake for an additional 20 minutes.
- While chicken wings cook, pour marinade in a saucepan on the stove.
- Bring the marinade/sauce to a rolling boil (should be bubbling) for about 2 minutes, stirring constantly. The sauce should start to thicken. If your sauce over thickens and gets pasty, add a bit of water or orange juice to thin it out
- Remove chicken wings from the oven. Add to a bowl and toss with cooked sauce/marinade.
- Once coated – enjoy as is or top with crushed peanuts and green onions.
Lauren says
Just made this on Super Bowl eve and it was such a funky way to eat wings. My boyfriend was skeptical about the peanut butter but he loved them. I thought about adding more peanut butter than the recipe stated but I’m glad I didn’t because it gave the perfect taste without being overpowering. I put a little squirt of sriracha in the sauce before coating the wings in it bc we like it spicy. Oh and don’t thing the sauce won’t thicken because it will!
The Clean Eating Couple says
So happy you both liked them, Lauren! Thank you so much!!! Love the sriracha addition!
Kelly says
Tried these of course for the Super Bowl! The bummer was that I didn’t have an oven safe cooling rack to put the chicken on so it would get crispy all over. Just ended up baking on foil. Broiled at the end for extra crunch, which was fine. But overall these wings (I used tenders and drums) were delicious! Loved the flavor! I have leftovers so will be using for my salads this week! Also, I didn’t have honey but did have agave syrup so used that instead and it was just fine!
The Clean Eating Couple says
So happy you liked them, Kelly!
Annette says
I made these for dinner last night. Soooo good! Crispy and the sauce was amazing.
The Clean Eating Couple says
So happy you liked them, Anette!!
Courtney says
The sauce for these is fantastic. I’m trying to decide what else to put it on! I used the air fryer instead of the oven and they were still fantastic!
The Clean Eating Couple says
Thanks, Courtney! I have to try them in the air fryer!
Kim says
I made these for the first time last night for NFL draft night for my husband! They were DELICIOIUS! We substituted cashew butter instead of peanut butter and crushed cashews instead of peanuts and they turned out great! Our only complaint is I didn’t make more!