The Case Against Frozen Pre-Cooked Chicken Wings

If you love saucy, crunchy, and spicy flavors it's possible that you sometimes have a craving for chicken wings. While going to your local restaurant or bar to grab a plate of the classic appetizer can be fun, cooking them at home can be a great way to enjoy them as well.

Perhaps one of the best parts of preparing your own wings is flavoring them however you fancy. Baked or fried, chicken wings are highly customizable and relatively simple to throw together on game day. Try using an air fryer to achieve a perfect texture, or use a simple buffalo wing recipe that requires only a few steps and little prep.

There are many perks to making them at home. For example, you can pick your own sauces and decide how you best like them cooked. If you opt to order them from a restaurant, you'll be selecting from a limited menu. Whatever you do, you may not want to reach for frozen chicken wings.

The grocery store may be stocked with dozens of frozen chicken wing varieties, but that doesn't mean you should opt to buy them when the desire for this tailgate staple strikes. In fact, you may be better off avoiding them.

Frozen chicken offer only a morsel of convenience. They can be cooked from their frozen state which eliminates a little bit of prep work, but that's about it. Making your own hot wings recipe with fresh wings only takes a little bit longer than a frozen option that already comes with sauce — which may be less flavorful than you desire. 

Wingmaster Wing and Sauce Shop explained that the freezing process affects the quality of the meat. Freezing can cause the bones to crack and the hue of the chicken to turn gray. The texture could also be a bit off, partly because their connective tissue hasn't been sufficiently broken down. This results in a "rubbery" quality that you can avoid if you simply opt for fresh.