The Great Fast-Food Wings Taste Test
In preparation for the big game this weekend, we ordered a mess of wings from the biggest chains to track down the best. Braving the threat of orange fingernails, we found the spiciest wings, the slimiest wings, and the least objectionable blue cheese dipping sauce.
Best All-Around Wings
All photographs by Robyn Lee
KFC. They have everything you look for in a wing: good skin-to-meat proportions, good sauce (or a sauceless option, as pictured), good bellyache of success after, and good leaning tower of bones to prove you ate too much. Case closed.
Best for Spicy Fans
If your taste buds have an ego for heat, go for the Domino's "fiery." These pack a punch, man. Sure, the real spicy freaks might scoff, but they're the hottest of the dial-up wings genre. To extinguish the flame—if you're not scoffing, but choking—get out the mini tubs of blue cheese and follow with a dairy extinguisher. (Milk contains a protein that washes away tongue-burning molecules, and luckily the Domino's blue cheese doesn't suck!)
Best for Moderately-Spicy Fans
Domino's realizes that not everyone can handle "fiery." They also offer mild, medium, and hot. And hey, "hot" is just fine for people who like a little heat, but still need to wear some SPF to protect from the burn.
After the jump, the Most Ginormous Wings, Worst Fake Chicken Taste, Best Sauceless!
Best Sauceless Wings
While finding sauce under the fingernails for days seems like a prerequisite, crispy wings are also an option. The only moisture here is from the grease. Popeyes offered not only the best, but the biggest. Unlike the iconic "wing," these aren't detached and cut into little pieces. They just give you the whole darn aerodynamic limb! So unless you're emotionally attached to the mini concept, embrace Popeyes.
Best Non-Buffalo Flavor
KFC's "honey BBQ." The sauce had an appealing sweet-to-tang ratio; appealing enough to clean via licking, not the sink. Unlike the Domino's "BBQ" option, which had hardly any crunch, the KFC wings had an ideal chicken crust.
Most Ginormous
KFC's buffalo spicy wings. Huge! Some were bordering gerbil size!
Best Blue Cheese Tub
Michele was going to disown me if I called this "bleu" cheese. She's right. This probably isn't the time to be all Pepé Le Pew. It's "bl-oo" cheese, not "bluh." Though the taste might inspire a "bleugh" grunt.
Ed volunteered to dip his spoon into each tub. While Domino's and Pizza Hut were sickeningly sweet, Papa John's offered some zing. It was the least bleugh.
Best (or Worst?) Fake Chicken Taste
At times Ed will refer to a past job somehow related to airline food consulting. So when he identified the "severe frozen chicken taste" in the Pizza Hut wings, we didn't ask questions. All you need to know: these are bad. Just bad. None of the others had such an unavoidable processed, preservative-rich aftertaste. Do not want.
Most Slimy
Wings are usually fried before they're sauced-up, which provides the bird some crisp. But given the slime factor on Papa John's wings, they were probably broiled first. We learned that broiled is not good. Even dunking and re-dunking these in sauce couldn't mask the excessive gooeyness. There's such thing as good gooey (cinnamon rolls) but this was a bastion of bad gooey.
The Players
KFC
kfc.com
Popeyes
popeyes.com
Papa John's
papajohnsonline.com
Domino's
dominos.com
Pizza Hut
pizzahut.com
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28 Comments:
Popeyes is King of FastFood Chicken, who else fries in LARD?! Always get the spicy version.
Wings from Dominos? Same junk as if you buy a bag of Tyson frozen wings, and pop them in the microwave. YUCK!
peekpoke at 8:46PM on 01/28/09
This post is what (my) dreams are made of...
The KFC wings = the key to my heart!
cochon at 9:07PM on 01/28/09
Popeyes current "spicy" recipe is a joke. When I was a kid in New Orleans that spicy chicken hurt so good. Now the "spice" is barely noticeable.
God, that's like something an old person would post.
Get off my lawn!
RegrettableFoodie at 9:50PM on 01/28/09
That's all well and good for people in the suburbs but I would rather either have good recipes or places from which I could order. None of those places you mention are near me in the Bronx. Where are some classic wing recipes?
SEFB9118 at 9:53PM on 01/28/09
I gotta say, I am shocked and disappointed that this kind of post would make it to the pages of Serious Eats. Not a single one of those outlets mentioned has anything close to what a real Buffalo chicken wing is about.
It reminds me of the "CitySearch" type of surveys where some nameless city votes Pizza Hut #1.... How would your brethren at Slice feel about that?
Well, this is the same thing. Points off for this one.
Machineman at 11:06PM on 01/28/09
Wow. Good wings + chain restaurant = oxymoron.
I understand why you chose who you chose for this, but I'll be ordering my wings Sunday from the biker bar down the street...I mean, even "Wings to Go" (a chain, but only wings) at least gives you a reasonable facsimile to a Buffalo wing.
paMom at 11:19PM on 01/28/09
Eh, those CitySearch things aren't surveys, though. They're basically awards for whoever spends the most in advertising money for the local paper or whoever puts together the results. I'm not going to eat any of these wings, but it doesn't offend me to see the post.
worldcupfever at 12:06AM on 01/29/09
@SEFB9118: The Serious Eats audience extends beyond the Bronx and beyond NYC (92 percent of SE readership is from outside the NYC area), so on the main seriouseats.com homepage, we do try to keep the topics of interest to a national audience. Although many of our non-NYC readers tell us we're too New York–centric. :/ It's damned if you do, damned if you don't, which seems to be the case here. We wanted to do a wings roundup for the main seriouseats.com site, and, unfortunately, the only common ground is wings from chains. If you're a longtime reader, you know we're champions of mom-and-pop joints—it's just that we couldn't possibly do a roundup taste-testing of all the best wings places in each city. We do have some wings recipes here: http://www.seriouseats.com/tags/recipes/chicken%20wings. And NYC Food Guy has embarked on a NYC wings roundup. See if you dig his choices here.
@machineman: The Slice brethren (i.e., me) actually did a chain pizza roundup for the Super Bowl last year. Pizza Showdown: The Best Delivery Pizza. Unfortunately, lots of people only have chain pizza in their city. So I thought it would help to do a taste test of various chain pizza to take the temperature of that genre. Same as we did with wings here.
@paMom: Yes. Definitely. Go for the biker bar. If you have a viable option other than the chains, that's always better.
Adam Kuban at 12:39AM on 01/29/09
@SEFB9118 - check around the site a bit. http://www.seriouseats.com/recipes/2009/01/slow-fried-momofuku-inspired-buffalo-chicken-wings-recipe.html
I'm tired of the auto bashing of food from a chain because it's food from a chain. If it's bad, fine, but what if it's not bad? Popeyes, for instance....good chicken most of the time.
ccbweb at 12:42AM on 01/29/09
You know, my wife *(whom I bog about a LOT) thinks the Papa Johns wings are NASTY. (I am inclined to agree.) I want Spicy, CRISPY, and SUCCULENT wings delivered to my front door... ESPECIALLY for the price I pay for them. (Papa Johns is $5.99 for 10 wings!, OUTRAGEOUS!)
If you're going to try to sell me chicken wings... to a chicken wing LOVER... I think you should "beta test" them, because what you are selling isn't going to cut it.
chefimpostor at 2:05AM on 01/29/09
I find the Domino's wings so fatty that they're almost inedible. I've tried to like them many times but to no avail.
JustinH at 8:29AM on 01/29/09
Come on guys, the title even said "great fast-food wings taste test" not "all-time greatest wing" or something. We all know where to find the best of at small restaurants, but what do you do if you are only surrounded by chains? It is good to know which chain can suffice in an food emergency...
Plus, we all need to slum sometimes. I know the best fried chicken in Wilmington is Walt's Chicken, but there is a KFC down the street when I need mashed potatoes from a machine.
inothernews at 9:19AM on 01/29/09
Good wings= go to store, buy pack of fresh wings,bring home and deep fry them in hot oil, finish with homemade hot sauce. Taste like wings should taste...save you lots of $$$.
dmcavanagh at 10:06AM on 01/29/09
Popeyes would be my choice. Forget the blue cheese, that does not go at all with anything! In the trash with it.
Maryland Crab
Maryland Crab at 11:23AM on 01/29/09
Great group piece, guys! Oh, how I would love to hang out in your office and taste test some wings.
veggiesattva at 11:34AM on 01/29/09
big fan of the KFC and Dominoes
foodinmouth at 2:09PM on 01/29/09
I'm out in a Popeye free zone in Michigan, I never went there too often,when I lived back east, as I watch my figure, but would give in to the jones every now and then. They aren't as good as the Church's stands in Florida, but still pretty darned good.
Mares at 3:38PM on 01/29/09
I have to agree with Machineman, and my first response on seeing this article was "Gyarrgh! Blech! Do they even know what an actual Buffalo wing is?"
kaszeta at 5:04PM on 01/29/09
I also can't stand reflexive chain-bashing, but in this case I have say that I've tried all of these wings (except for Papa John's) at one time or another, and find them all pretty revolting, except maybe for Popeye's. That said, I agree with RegrettableFoodie -- what the hell happened to their spicy chicken? It's so tame now, I can barely tell the diff between it and the regular. Oh well.
Anyway, wings are so easy to make at home, and homemade wings are so superior to any fast food joint, I don't know why you'd bother ordering out.
Weirdsmobile at 12:26PM on 01/30/09
Popeye's probably had to tame it down because of all the macho idiots who think they can eat spicy and order the hot...then complain about it. Or because it gets them more business to bow to the lame egos of these macho idiots.
I don't understand why people are disappointed when SE reports on stuff like this. I've said it before. SE doesn't stand for "snobby eats".
wunami at 11:40AM on 01/31/09
I think that when dealing with franchise chains, the quality of the product depends on said franchise. Upon reading this article a couple of days ago, I thought, hey, let me revisit the KFC wing. All this wing talk had given me some pretty severe cravings.
They were terrible. A wing has to have some crispness. These were just sorta gummy and gross, but I feel sure it's my local KFC. I'd stopped going there a couple of years ago, when everything tasted as though it had been marinated way too long and got that weird slimy consistency in the meat that belongs only in some kind of weird canned food "product."
With Popeye's, I do think they make be best franchise wing. Actually, I think they make the best franchise chicken, period. Though, yeah, they're not so much with the spicy anymore, which is disappointing. They have a good flavor and the breading (at least at MY Popeye's) is nice and crisp.
chisai at 3:09PM on 01/31/09
Wow. Seriously. The authors said, very clearly, in the title of the post, "Fast Food Wings Taste Test." Not wings from a mom-n-pop joint. Not wings from a local place in a big city. Not wings you'd actually find in Buffalo (and yes, upstate New York RULES! Sorry...). Not wings you'd make at home. Fast Food Wings - as in, wings you BUY at a FAST FOOD PLACE. If you didn't want the information, why did you read the post? And then feel the need to bash on it?
I say, thank you. Thank you Erin for subjecting yourself to a load of gut-busting food and mean-spirited comments. I'm sure the wings were easier to swallow.
TheCheapChick at 12:07PM on 02/01/09
I have tasted wings from all of these chains and I am surprised that Dominoes got recognition for anything positive what-so-ever. I do agree with the KFC comments but, Dominoes wings are slimey,fatty,bland and are not even of decent size. This opinion is not from one try or one specific store neither. I would like to know what cities they tried these wings at because, sad to say it quality is not equal throughout the chains.
angiebabywb at 1:06PM on 02/01/09
One thing not addressed in the reviews: how many of the "wings" were actually wings, how many were drumettes (sp?). For me, a wing's gotta be a wing, and anyone who serves all wings gets extra points. The public has a right to know!
kevmalone at 5:30PM on 02/01/09
I disagree with @Machine. This was a worthwhile post because it addressed what sometimes may be the only wing options in certain markets. For people who travel for business, there are many places where chain restaurants are pretty much the only option for people other than locals "in the know". The local giveaway weekly in fact does its annual food awards on this basis, e.g. "favorite pizza - chain", "favorite pizza - non-chain" and so on.
I would love to see follow up posts with the same comparison involving more upscale chain wing options, e.g. Buffalo Wild Wings, WingZone, Buffalo Wings & Rings and so on, as well as posts with the same comparison of local establishments in a number of markets. As a former Buffalonian married to a man whose favorite food in the world is wings, I volunteer to take a group around in my local area to do the testing!
Mizbee at 1:53PM on 02/02/09
Aww, no love for Atomic Wings? BW3's? Both fast food joints geared towards wings only. I think there are a few stores for these chains in the city
Brian
www.discovertaste.blogspot.com
TheUE at 4:32PM on 02/02/09
I applaud your attempt at rating the fast food chain wings. Very interesting article.
I've still never been to popeyes - mainly because the only one I know is across the street from Nathans in Coney Island.. and you know where my allegiance lies...
jeffsayyes at 9:51PM on 02/02/09
I agree with the distate left in my mouth over the anti-chain bashing. You probably know where to get the best wings in your town (I know I do!) But what about those people who don't have a "wing place" in town? For some people its fas food or nothing. And I don't have the money to waste on the worst chicken wings. I appreciate when Serious Eats does stories like this because it saves me time, money, and a lot of frustration.
So thank you for your stomach's time, Erin! I will agree with the decision to put KFC out there as the best all around fast-food wing place. They do the best they can as a chain :)
~*Ery*~
erysheep at 11:00AM on 02/04/09