Air Fryer Hot Wings are even better than the buffalo hot wings from the Hot Wings Café on Melrose in Hollywood. Super easy to prepare and great on the wallet.
There is a cute little café on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles, called Hot Wings Café. My work colleagues and I often frequented the restaurant for lunch. They make the best Hot Wings!
They offer mild, medium and hot and they are served in little red baskets with French Fries, sticks of celery and Blue Cheese dressing. You can order six, 12, 18, etc. I think we used to get a dozen each. These Better Than Hot Wings Café Air Fryer Buffalo Chicken Wings will make you feel like you are sitting in that restaurant, enjoying a meal.
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Cast of Ingredients for Air Fryer Hot Wings Better Than Hot Wings Café Buffalo Chicken Wings
Back in the 80’s things I was at the Hot Wings Café and was talking to the Chef about how much I loved the wings. He told me his recipe. It’s simple he said, just two ingredients. He also told me how to vary the heat with those two ingredients.
Years and years later, my husband and I wanted Hot Wings and I told him about the Hot Wings Café on Melrose. We made the wings in our tiny deep fryer as I remembered from the Chef and they were excellent. Friday’s became Wing Night and we needed a larger deep fryer, where we could drain and clean the oil, so we purchased a T-fal Oil Filtration Ultimate EZ Clean Up Deep Fryer and made the best wings. We did change the recipe slightly and guess what? The delicious wings were incredible, better than Hot Wings Café!
After a while, we started making the wings in our oven, but it just wasn’t the same. It did cut down on calories however, so we only fried once in a while. Then my wonderful, lovely, awesome air fryer arrived.
We discovered that with our recipe and our fantastic GoWise 7 Quart Air Fryer (? get this one) we were able to produce incredible chicken wings, even better than from Hot Wings Cafe.
I’ve also turned this recipe into a pressure cooker recipe, which you can find here Pressure Cooker Buffalo Hot Wings. They are super good, but we prefer this Air Fryer Hot Wings recipe better
Can Whole Wings Be Used for Air Fryer Hot Wings?
Sure they can. We like them whole too and kept them whole in my Air Fryer Hamburger Hamlet Fried Chicken Wings recipe. Oh yes, that secret apricot sauce is used in that recipe too!
By the way, if you do purchase your chicken wings whole and prefer them in pieces, I recommend the Kuhn Rikon Kitchen Shears. They self sharpen and cut through bone really well.
Do The Wings Need to Be Single Layer?
No, they don’t.
The air fryer I mentioned above is super terrific and the best I have tried. During cooking, you will shake the basket a few times and that is enough to cook and crisp the wings on all sides.
If you use an air fryer oven, the wings would need to be single layer and depending on brand of oven, may not need to be turned. Some air fryer ovens like this Instant Pot Brand Air Fryer Oven, has a rotisserie and many people like to put the wings in the basket.
Personally, I prefer a medium hot wing sauce and Ed like a hotter hot wing sauce.
Can I Make Mild Buffalo Wing Hot Sauce?
- Good question and glad you asked.
- With my very super easy recipe you can prepare your sauce, mild, medium or hot….and somewhere in between.
- The recipe for all degrees of heat is the same with one minor adjustment. The hot sauce to butter ratio. The recipe card at the bottom will show you how to make varying degrees of hot sauce.
For me, making the sauce is very easy when I add all the ingredients to a Liquid Measuring Glass and using the microwave. Then I grab my trusty Rösle Stainless Steel Flat Whisk and I am good to go.
The beauty of my Hot Wing Sauce is that you can make it hotter or more mild after it is prepared! An important thing to remember and will make or break the sauce, is to use Frank’s RedHot® Cayenne Pepper Sauce. I know other brands are also terrific, but for this recipe, the Frank’s is my preference.
The Hot Wings Cafe serves the wings with a side of blue cheese dressing and celery sticks. The wings are not dripping with sauce, which is a good thing. You don’t want them to get soggy, so make sure not to keep the wings in sauce while you are eating.
After saucing them up, get them on your plates and start to enjoy.
A wonderful side dish are my Air Fryer French Fries or my Air Fryer Yuca Fries with Creamy Curry Mustard Sauce.
Just looking at the Air Fryer Hot Wings makes me drool.
For you chicken wing lovers, I bet you will like my Honey Bourbon Chicken Wings or my my Asian Sticky Chicken Wings. There are tons of chicken wing recipes on my website and I hope you try them all and then let me know what you love.
My new favorite recipe for Wings is my Crispy Honey Garlic Chicken Wings, which incorporates a different method of cooking the wings. Trust me, they are not your regular honey garlic wings. These are something to behold.
More Air Fryer Recipes to Make:
Kitchen Equipment and Essentials
- J.A. Henckels Classic 7-inch Hollow Edge Santoku Knife or Kuhn Rikon Kitchen Shears
- Rösle Stainless Steel Flat Whisk– a MUST have, probably my most used utensil
- Alton Brown Salt Box
- Fine Life Oil Mister
- Silicone Coated Tongs
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