Wingstop Hot Honey Rub Recipe

Wingstop's Hot Honey Rub is a dry rub that pairs honey with cayenne pepper and ancho chili; it is not a sticky sauce. This copy mixes two tablespoons of honey powder with brown sugar, ancho, cayenne, paprika, garlic and salt, and tosses it with melted butter onto two pounds of wings baked crisp at 425°F. It serves four.

What Wingstop's Hot Honey Rub is

Wingstop introduced the flavour on 29 June 2022 as a summer special. Its announcement describes the sweetness of honey with heat from cayenne pepper and ancho chili, in a dry rub, and says plainly that this is not the sticky hot honey people expect.

After three limited runs Wingstop made it permanent on 9 July 2024, on classic and boneless wings, tenders and the chicken sandwich, and called it its best-performing limited flavour so far. The recipe is not published. This one is a reconstruction from those descriptions, and MakeFoodLovely is not connected with Wingstop.

Recipe

Wingstop Hot Honey Rub Wings

A reconstruction of Wingstop's Hot Honey Rub — a dry rub of honey powder, brown sugar, cayenne and ancho chili, tossed with melted butter onto two pounds of oven-baked wings. Four servings.

5.0 (1)Print

Prep

15 min

Cook

50 min

Total

1 hr 5 min

Serves

4

Cuisine

American

Ingredients

• For the hot honey rub:
• 2 tablespoons honey powder
• 1 tablespoon light brown sugar
• 1 1/2 teaspoons ancho chili powder
• 1 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 1 teaspoon paprika
• 3/4 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon garlic powder
• For the wings:
• 2 pounds chicken wings, split into drumettes and flats
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 2 tablespoons unsalted butter, melted

Instructions

1. Stir the honey powder, brown sugar, ancho chili powder, cayenne, paprika, 3/4 teaspoon of salt and the garlic powder together, pressing out any lumps of sugar.
2. Heat the oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with foil and set a wire rack on it.
3. Pat the wings very dry with paper towels. Toss them with the baking powder and 1/2 teaspoon of salt until evenly coated, and arrange them on the rack without touching.
4. Bake for 45 to 50 minutes, turning them once after 25 minutes, until the skin is deep golden and crisp and the meat is at least 165°F.
5. Tip the hot wings into a large bowl and toss them with the melted butter. Sprinkle the rub over them in two additions, tossing after each, until they are evenly coated. Serve at once.

Honey in a dry rub

Liquid honey cannot be part of a dry rub, so the honey here is honey powder: dried honey, sold as honey powder or granulated honey with the baking ingredients or online. It pours like sugar.

Without it, use 2 more tablespoons of brown sugar in the rub, and stir 1 tablespoon of liquid honey into the melted butter before the wings are tossed. The coating is then slightly tacky instead of dry.

Getting the hot honey rub to stick

• The rub goes on after cooking. It is mostly sugar, and sugar scorches at 425°F. Baked on, it turns bitter and black.
• Butter first. Two tablespoons of melted butter give the dry rub something to hold on to. Oil works; water does not.
• Hot wings, two additions. The first half of the rub melts slightly into the butter, the second half stays powdery on top.
• Dry skin. Wet wings steam in the oven. Baking powder on dried skin helps it blister and crisp without frying.

Fried or air-fried wings

• Air fryer: 400°F for 22 to 25 minutes in one layer, shaken twice. Use the baking powder as in the card.
• Deep-fried: 375°F for 10 to 12 minutes, without the baking powder, drained on a rack.

Either way the butter and the rub go on at the end.

Milder or hotter

Ancho chili powder is mild; the heat comes from the cayenne. One teaspoon of cayenne is a medium. Half a teaspoon makes a mild rub, and two teaspoons a hot one. Standard chili powder can replace the ancho, but it carries cumin and oregano with it.

What else the rub goes on

Wingstop sells the flavour on tenders and on its chicken sandwich as well. At home the rub works the same way on chicken tenders and on popcorn or roasted nuts, always tossed on after cooking with a little butter.

Other Wingstop flavours on this site are the sweet chili glaze and the hickory smoked BBQ. The Weber Kick'n Chicken seasoning is a savoury rub that goes on before cooking.