Orange Soda Hot Wings

Seasoned and smoked chicken wings that are then tossed and slathered in a thickened slurry of orange soda, hot sauce and butter to make one of the best tailgating (homegating) recipes you will ever cook. Also, down below the recipe card is the original orange soda hot wings recipe as it appeared more than 10 years ago on this site. Scroll down to see how far the Grillin’ Fools have really come and to point and laugh at my horrible photography skills (at that time).

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This is not our first stab at a non-traditional smoked chicken wings recipe. How about Ancho Coffee Wings with Adobo Honey Butter? Or the iconic Alabama White Sauce wings made famous by Big Bob Gibson’s BBQ. 

Orange Soda Hot Wings Ingredients:

• 1 dozen whole chicken wings
• Your favorite BBQ Seasoning (we used Aight Guy’s from my friend Tim)
• 1 teaspoon vegetable oil
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 teaspoon fresh ginger, minced
• 3/4 cup orange soda
• 1/4 cup hot sauce
• 1 teaspoon Chinese five spice powder
• 2 tablespoons of butter
• 1/2 stick melted butter (separate from the 2 t
• Salt and black pepper
• Green onion (for garnish, optional)
• Sesame seeds (for garnish, optional)
• Poppy seeds (for garnish, optional)

Set up the smoker for 275F

Prep the Wings

Season the wings with your favorite BBQ seasoning and salt, if the seasoning doesn’t have enough salt on its own:

Smoke them Wangs

Then, place the wings in the 275F smoker:

Prepare the Sauce

While the chicken wings smoke, let’s get after that orange soda hot sauce.

This sauce can be prepared on the stove or, in this case, on a gas grill.

In an oven-safe pot, add the oil and garlic:

Then get to shaving the outside of that ginger to get to the inner, yellow, lemony deliciousness:

Mince the ginger:

Sweat the garlic and ginger in the oil for a couple minutes, then add 2 tablespoons of butter:

Next, pour in the hot sauce, orange soda and Chinese five spice and blend well:

Blend well:

Now, melt the rest of the butter:

After the chicken wings are in the pellet smoker for about 20 minutes, brush the melted butter on each wing:

Be careful with the butter. Do not brush off the seasoning.

Speaking of seasoning, the older I get the more I like to re-season throughout the cooking process and usually again at the end. Not a total reapplication, but a subtle dusting to replace what is lost during the cooking process:

Close the lid again and wait for another 30-40 minutes until the smoked chicken wings reach an internal temperature of 170F-180F

I know chicken only needs to be 165F, but that’s really more for chicken breast. Indeed, dark meat can go much higher. 

When the wings are between 170F-180F remove them in batches and place in a large chicken wing tossing bowl. Drizzle over some of the reduced sauce:

Time to Sauce them Wangs

Typically, I recommend some older shoes before tossing, particularly if you’ve never done this before.

Also, have a roll of paper towels ready. Scroll down to below the recipe card to see why.

How to Toss Chicken Wings in Sauce

Start with a large bowl and place enough wings to fill only 1/4-1/3 of the bowl. Drizzle the sauce over the top and hold the bowl out in front of you on either side. Let the far side of the bowl dip down away from you as you lower your arms. Bring your arms up as you bring the far side of the bowl up as well to toss the wings into the air a few inches then try to catch all the wings in the bowl. Repeat until all chicken wings are coated. 

After tossing the wings in the sauce, the orange soda hot wings can be put back on the grill to tack up that sauce, or served straight away.

Before serving the wings, garnish with thin sliced green onions, sesame seeds as well as a final dusting of the seasoning:

Orange Soda Hot Wings Summary

The sweetness of the orange soda counters and compliments the heat from the hot sauce beautifully. The butter adds some richness and the Asian elements make the sauce a well nuanced coating of these smoked chicken wings. Give these a try the next time you are tailgating or homegating.  

If you have any questions or comments, feel free to leave them below or send me an email.

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Recipe Card

Print Recipe

Orange Soda Hot Wings

Grilled wings coated in a sauce made of orange soda and hot sauce

Prep Time10 minutes mins

Cook Time1 hour hr

Total Time1 hour hr 10 minutes mins

Course: Appetizer, Barbecue, BBQ, Finger Food

Cuisine: American, American Fare, Asian, Barbecue, BBQ, Chicken, Chicken Wings

Keyword: Cherry Pellets, Chicken Wings, Green Mountain Grills, Hot Sauce, Hot Wings, Orange Soda, Orange Soda Hot Wings, Pellet Cooker, Pellet Grill, Pellet Grilling, Pellet Smoker, Smoked Chicken Wings, Smoked Chicken Wings Recipe, Smoked Wings, Wings

Servings: 4 People

Equipment

• 1 Oven safe sauce pan
• 1 Large bowl to toss the wings in the sauce

Ingredients

• 12 Whole chicken wings
• Your favorite BBQ seasoning
• 1 tsp Vegetable oil
• 2 cloves Fresh garlic Minced
• 1 tsp Fresh ginger Minced
• ¾ cup Orange soda
• ¼ cup Hot sauce
• 1 tsp Chinese five spice powder
• 2 tbsp Salted butter
• ½ stick Salted butter melted, (separate from the 2 tbsp above)
• salt and black pepper to taste
• Green onions, sliced thin For garnish, optional
• 1 tsp Sesame seeds For garnish, optional

Instructions

• First, load the pellet grill up with Bear Mountain BBQ cherry pellets and set the cooker to 275F (+/-25)
• Then, season the wings with your favorite BBQ seasoning and salt (if needed). Place the seasoned chicken wings into the smoker and close the lid.
• Next, place an oven safe sauce pan on a medium burner or onto a gas grill. Add the oil, minced garlic and ginger. Allow the garlic and ginger to sweat for a minute or two. Then, combine the orange soda, hot sauce, Chinese five spice, and 2 tbsp of butter. Cook down by about half. Set aside and wait for the smoked chicken wings to be done
• While the sauce reduces, melt the rest of the butter in a pan. After about 20 minutes in the smoker, brush the wings with the melted butter.
• When the wings reach an internal temperature of 170F-180F remove from the heat, remove from the pellet cooker and place in a large sauce tossing bowl. Drizzle the orange soda hot sauce over the wings and toss
• Finally, Place on a platter and garnish with thin sliced green onion, sesame seeds and a dusting of rub

Video

Recently we were approached by Joe Bonwich (God rest his soul) to help out with an article he was doing about Ski soda to develop some recipes where soda was used in the cooking process. We were more than happy to oblige with these orange soda hot wings. Ski is an icon in Southern Illinois. It’s a must try. Sadly, the article is behind a pay wall, but don’t let that stop you from trying this because Orange Soda Hot Wings are AMAZING!

The first recipe from that day of epic grilling, that included both brisket marinated in Dr. Pepper and pork tenderloin brined in root beer, was smoked chicken wings in an orange soda and hot sauce glaze.

Orange Soda Hot Wings Ingredients

• 3/4 cup orange soda
• 1/4 cup hot sauce
• 1 tsp fresh ginger, minced
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 1 tsp Chinese five spice powder
• 2 tbsp butter
• 1/4 cup melted butter, divided and reserved for the grilling process
• 1 dozen chicken wings
• Salt and black pepper

Combine the orange soda, hot sauce, ginger, garlic, Chinese five spice, 2 tbsp butter in sauce pan and reduce to the thickness of syrup. We used Frank’s red hot for this, but Crystal or Louisiana would work well too. If you wanted to kick it up even hotter, go with Tobasco.

For those of you who have never worked with ginger, there’s nothing to it. It’s a root and looks like this:

You have to peal away the outer skin with a knife or a veggie peeler:

What’s left is a starchy chunk of lemony goodness:

About half that chunk came out to be a full teaspoon of ginger. Here’s the sauce pan with the wet ingredients cooking down:

Time to prep the chicken wings:

I only did a dozen for this demonstration. If you plan on doing more, feel free to up the amounts in the glaze.

All they need right now is a dusting of salt and pepper, but not on that side above first because if I do, when I flip them over to get the other side, all the salt and pepper is going to stick to the platter. Flip the chicken wings over and give them a dusting on the bottom side first:

And then flip them over and do the other side and allow the natural shape of the wing to keep most of the meat elevated off the platter and thus the salt and pepper on the skin. Same deal if applying a rub to wings or ribs:

It turns out that useless little end of the wing has a good use after all; to prop the wing up to maximize the rub staying stuck to the skin.

How to Grill Orange Soda Hot Wings

Now melt the other couple tablespoons of butter and get out to the grill that is prepped for two zone grilling (coals on one side, nothing on the other). You’re looking for an internal temp of the grill to be between 250-300. Put the chicken wings on the side with no coals:

The smoke wood we used was Bradford pear, cut fresh from the tree that morning. We’re looking to dispel a couple myths here. Many believe that ornamental fruit trees aren’t as good as regular fruit trees and that green wood shouldn’t be used in smoking. Both are false. Myron Mixon uses the greenest peach he can find and he’s not too shabby around the pit. It takes a little while to get smoking, but that’s the only drawback.

Now here I am brushing the chicken wings with the melted butter to help brown the skin:

After an hour in the smoke the skin is browning nicely:

Time to put the smoked chicken wings over the direct heat:

And then hit them with a little butter to help to firm that skin up:

That’s Joe Bonwich applying the butter. The fire was a little hotter than we expected and we had to yank a few of those wings back before they were torched.

Once we grilled the smoked chicken wings on both sides to firm the skin up, it was time to apply the orange soda hot sauce. It’s a little more orange than BBQ sauce as to be expected:

Pull the orange soda hot wings off the heat and back over to the side with no coals to allow the sauce to set on the smoked chicken wings after the sear to caramelize:

That was another helping hand from Joe as he dove in to assist move the wings to the other side. The guy is definitely willing to get his hands dirty to perfect his craft.

Pull the orange soda hot wings from the grill in 5-7 minutes and serve. Here is a picture that appeared in the Post Dispatch as well as on their website and was taken by Stephanie Cordle:

Some are wondering why not sear and then smoke? Once the outside temperature of the skin gets to a certain temperature, it no longer allows any smoke to penetrate the meat. I smoke first to impart that flavor, then I sear to get that flavor crust and the caramelizing of the proteins. This method gets the smoke flavor and then the flavor crust. That’s why I went with the smoke chicken wings first. It’s called the reverse sear method.

If you have any questions about the orange soda hot wings, feel free to shoot me an email or leave it below and I will get back to you as soon as I can.

If you like this recipe and are interested in other poultry dishes we’ve done on the grill, click here.

Scott Thomas

Scott Thomas, the Original Grillin’ Fool, was sent off to college with a suitcase and a grill where he overcooked, undercooked and burned every piece of meat he could find. After thousands of failures, and quite a few successes, nearly two decades later he started a website to show step by step, picture by picture, foolproof instructions on how to make great things out of doors so that others don’t have to repeat the mistakes he’s made on the grill.

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BBQ Grilling

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Ancho Coffee Wings with Adobo Honey Butter

White Sauce Wings

A Midwestern BBQ Staple – Pork Steaks

This article was initially published on: May 31, 2011