The best frozen chicken wings should pass for restaurant-quality chicken wings without any work on your part. Let’s be real: You’re not going to season and bread and deep-fry fresh chicken wings for your game day party. You’re going to get a big, giant bag of frozen chicken wings and pour them into the airfryer or onto a baking sheet. But you still want your guests to think you’ve got a mini Buffalo Wild Wings in your kitchen.
The best chicken wings can be defined by two things: Crispy skin and juicy meat. So that’s what we looked for when we cooked up a slew of the top frozen chicken wing brands. If we bit into a wing and the skin went “squish,” we tossed it out of the running. We also looked for flavor, whether that was from a tangy Buffalo sauce, sweet honey BBQ, or just some salt and pepper. Flavor has to show up to get a high score. We also looked for good quality meat—something that really tasted like chicken. Also, the best frozen chicken wing should cook up to look and taste like it’s been in the deep fryer. Seems impossible, right? Well, some of these brands actually got pretty darn close.
Knowing our objectives, the Sporked team rolled up our sleeves and sat down to try some of the top-selling frozen wing brands. We prepped the wings using an oven—but you can use an airfryer and get different results (probably better results, if we’re being honest). (Let us know what you find out! Slide into our DMs or tag us with @sporked.)
We used up a bunch of paper towels and got into deep discussions about wings vs. flats (we won’t even touch that debate now), but we found eight of the best frozen chicken wings, including the best frozen Buffalo wings and the best frozen hot wings.
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- Foster Farms Hot & Spicy
These wings take the title of best frozen chicken wings for their even balance of crispy texture, tender meat, and amazing flavor. It should also be said that these were the only wings to not stick to the baking sheet. They were adequately crispy and evenly coated with sauce. That sauce, albeit not a traditional, buttery, restaurant-style Buffalo sauce, is tangy and hot just like we want it. Foster Farms Hot & Spicy wings uses aged cayenne peppers and a bit of vinegar to achieve that classically spicy, zesty flavor. This is a quality wing that scores high marks in both texture and flavor. For that reason, it alone sits in the top spot. After the taste test, writer Danny Palumbo ate a few more of these over the office garbage can like only a garbage man can (nice).
Credit: Liv Averett / Walmart
- TGIFridays Buffalo Style Wings
These bone-in Buffalo wings can be pretty tough to find, but when you see them at a store, get a tattoo of the exact location so that you never forget. They are the best frozen Buffalo wings. These wings are perfectly crispy—astonishingly so. Even when we cooked them in an oven, they achieved an incredible crunch. The only knock on these wings is that there’s not a whole lot of Buffalo sauce flavor. What sauce it does have permeates the chicken, though. “The sauce feels like it’s baked into the wing,” Sporked editor-in-chief Justine Sterling said glowingly. That said, you might need to apply your own Frank’s Red Hot here. Still, achieving crispy wings without using an air fryer is a feat, which makes TGIFriday’s Buffalo Style Wings a superb 8.5 out of 10. If you ranked them higher, we would totally understand.
Credit: Liv Averett / Target
- Foster Farms Take Out Crispy Classic Buffalo Wings
These wings come with Buffalo sauce, which you might not even need. Foster Farms wings are perfect naked and plain; they are salty, meaty, and moist all by themselves. Sporked staff writer Jordan Myrick enjoyed these so much they said, “I kind of forgot I was on camera for a minute,” as they got lost in the taste. (Want to see them and the rest of us Sporked folks taste test in action? Check out our TikTok or Instagram.) Well-seasoned food wins out every time, and these Foster Farms wings score high on our list of the best frozen wings to buy because of it.
Credit: Liv Averett / Target
- Trader Joe’s Hot & Spicy Wings
“If I saw these at a Super Bowl party I’d be like, this party ‘bout to pop off,” Jordan said while eying these glorious wings—a new addition to this list. Trader Joe’s Hot & Spicy frozen wings are indeed a pleasure to behold. They glisten with lacquered sauce. If we judged by looks alone, these might be the best frozen chicken wings. But they just didn’t have the crisp skin or ka-pow of flavor we were looking for to earn them the top spot. That said, the meat itself is really good. Out of all the frozen wings we tasted, these tasted the most like fresh-not-frozen chicken. If you’re a regular TJ’s shopper, pick up a bagful of these on your next stroll down the freezer aisle.
Credit: Liv Averett
- Tyson Buffalo Style Hot Wings
Not to be confused with the Tyson’s Any’tizers Buffalo Style Wings, these Tyson wings have a loud Buffalo flavor that we enjoy. The tangy heat also provides a bit more spiciness than the other wings on this list, making them all the more delectable. The wing meat is no joke, either. These aren’t dry and thin; Tyson’s Buffalo Style Hot Wings feature big, honkin’ hunks of juicy wing meat. Meaty hot wings are a no-brainer to pair with a good blue cheese dressing, just like the good Lord intended. The skin on each wing is nice and craggy, too, with an even coating around every morsel of chicken. Everything is super solid, Tyson wings just need some blue cheese to really bring it home.
Credit: Liv Averett / Sam’s Club
- Tyson Any’Tizers Buffalo Wings
These are darker than TGIFriday’s Buffalo wings and bigger, too. They’re pretty standard, and should have more Buffalo flavor, but you can take care of that on your own if need be. (Want a Buffalo sauce recommendation? We’ve got you covered.) The meat is really good. It’s gorgeously white and flavorful. The crisp is pretty good, too. The flavor on these is mild, and blue cheese might be a little too sweet and cheesy for something that doesn’t pack a ton of flavor. Instead, I’d pair these with some tangy, herb-speckled ranch (probably one of the best ranch dressings) to make up for the slight lack of flavor.
Credit: Liv Averett / Walmart
- Kirkwood Buffalo Style Chicken Wings
“The meat tastes like it was marinated in garlic, almost like it’s brined,” remarked Justine. She was a big fan of the flavor here, but not of the texture of the wing. Kirkwood wings are curious. The flavor here is great, it contains the correct amount of sharp heat you come to expect out of Buffalo sauce, but the texture is a little peculiar. I think it’s a good move to mess around with the cooking process to get the right texture. Jack up the heat or put them under the broiler at the end of the cooking process for a minute or two if you have to.
Credit: Liv Averett / Instacart
- Tyson Any’Tizers Wings Honey BBQ Seasoned
These wings are sweet and tangy, just like you want out of a good honey BBQ sauce. The sugar in the honey is also an added textural bonus, as it creates these crispy little edges on the wings themselves after they come out of the oven. These come fully cooked, so all you have to do is reheat them. That said, I would consider cooking these in the oven at a higher temperature than suggested. We cooked them to package directions and they were just fine, but the wings could have been a lot crispier. Enjoy the flavor and the tasty white meat, but it might take some noodling with the oven to get the right texture.
Credit: Liv Averett / Target
Best of the Best
Best Crispy
Best Plain
Best Chicken Quality
Best with Blue Cheese
Best Hot Wings
Best Buffalo Sauce
Best Honey BBQ
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surprise, y’all! it’s all Tyson!
When I saw the topic I thought “Oh good. I’m going to find out the best WINGS I can apply my favorite sauces to”. But, instead, you rate the sauced wings too, eliminating most of them for me.
Hahaha
TJ Friday and Tyson boop, y’all gotta try Farm Rich BBQ😎