Sous Vide Chicken Wings: Time and Temperature

Sous vide chicken wings cook at 165°F (73.9°C) for very juicy meat with a little spring. Wings 0.75 in (1.9 cm) thick need a minimum of 1 hour, with a best window of 1 to 2 hours and a maximum of 2 hours.

The bath cooks the meat. The skin is crisped afterward, and the calculator's recommended finish is deep frying.

Temperature and doneness

The calculator has four settings for wings.

How the four compare:

• 150°F (65.6°C) gives juicy, tender wings with more chew than the hotter settings.
• 160°F (71.1°C), longer cook gives soft meat that comes away from the bone. The minimum is 2 hours for wings up to 1.25 in (3.2 cm) thick and 2 hours 30 minutes at 1.5 in (3.8 cm). The calculator's note for this setting cites a Serious Eats test of 160°F (71.1°C) for 2 hours.
• 165°F (73.9°C), the default, gives very juicy wings with a little spring. The calculator's note for this setting cites a Serious Eats test of 165°F (73.9°C) for 1 hour, which found these wings juicier than the other settings tested.
• 176°F (80°C) gives very soft meat that pulls apart easily, close to braised.

The order is not a simple scale from firm to soft. The 160°F (71.1°C) setting is softer than the 165°F (73.9°C) default because it runs longer.

Jason Logsdon's wing guide at Amazing Food Made Easy describes the mechanism. Raising the bath to 156°F (68.9°C) starts to break down more of the collagen and connective tissue in the wing, and his hotter options are more tender still.

Chicken thighs are dark meat with the same 165°F (73.9°C) default, and the chicken temperature chart puts all the cuts side by side.

Time by thickness

Measure the thickest wing through its thickest part, including any bone. The times below are for wings straight from the refrigerator.

For wings up to 0.75 in (1.9 cm) thick the default window is 1 to 2 hours, the range Logsdon's chicken time and temperature page prints for wings at this temperature. Thicker wings need longer: 1 hour 30 minutes at 1 in (2.5 cm), 2 hours at 1.25 in (3.2 cm) and 2 hours 30 minutes at 1.5 in (3.8 cm).

At 150°F (65.6°C) and 176°F (80°C) the minimum is also 1 hour for wings 0.75 in (1.9 cm) thick. At 1 in (2.5 cm) it is 1 hour 15 minutes at 150°F (65.6°C) and 1 hour 30 minutes at 176°F (80°C).

The 160°F (71.1°C) setting is the longer one.

At 165°F (73.9°C) the maximum is 2 hours for wings up to 0.75 in (1.9 cm) thick, and at 160°F (71.1°C) it is 3 hours for wings up to 1.25 in (3.2 cm) thick. For thicker wings the minimum is close to or past that limit, so the maximum is the minimum plus 1 hour.

The maximum is a texture limit. The wings are pasteurized at the minimum time, and extra time makes them softer but does not make them unsafe.

Keep the wings in a single layer

The thickness that counts is the thickness of what is in the bag. If the wings overlap, measure the whole stack.

A bag with wings piled two deep is roughly twice as thick as a single layer. The calculator's range for wings stops at 1.5 in (3.8 cm), so a pile can fall outside it, and the calculator marks a thicker piece not recommended. Douglas Baldwin's guide to sous vide cooking gives a rule of thumb that doubling the thickness increases the heating time about four fold. In the calculator's own table the minimum goes from 1 hour at 0.75 in (1.9 cm) to 2 hours 30 minutes at 1.5 in (3.8 cm).

Use a large bag or several bags so every wing lies flat. For a thickness between the rows, enter it in the calculator.

How to sous vide chicken wings

1. Heat the bath to the temperature for the doneness you chose.
2. Season with salt. Sauce goes on after the finish.
3. Bag in a single layer. Use a vacuum sealer, or a zipper-lock freezer bag sealed with the water displacement method.
4. Cook for at least the minimum time. Keep the bags fully under the water and not overlapping. Crowded or overlapping bags heat more slowly, and the times shown will be too short for them.
5. Dry the wings very well. Pat them with paper towels. Logsdon's guide then puts them in the refrigerator for several hours or overnight to remove more moisture.
6. Crisp the skin by one of the methods below.
7. Sauce and serve. Toss the wings in sauce after they are crisp.

The wings can be cooked ahead. Anova's buffalo wing recipe says the cooked wings can be refrigerated until serving time and then fried. The meal prep guide covers chilling cooked food.

Finishing: fry, grill or broil

The wings are fully cooked when they leave the bath. The finish only has to crisp the skin, and the longer it runs, the more it cooks the meat again. That is the reason to keep it hot and short.

Deep frying

This is the calculator's recommended finish: dry the wings very well, then deep-fry them to crisp the skin.

• Logsdon's guide heats the oil to 375°F to 400°F (191°C to 204°C) and fries for 1 to 2 minutes, until the skin crisps.
• The Anova recipe uses 3 in (7.6 cm) of oil at 400°F (204°C) and fries for 3 to 5 minutes, until golden and crispy.

Skin-on pork belly is finished the same way, dried and then fried in hot oil, after a bath of 24 to 48 hours.

Grilling

Logsdon's guide grills the wings over high heat for about 1 to 2 minutes per side. It notes that the smoke adds flavor but the skin comes out less crisp.

Broiling

For the broiler, the same guide uses the highest setting, puts the wings close to the heating element and gives them 1 to 2 minutes per side.

Chicken wings from frozen

Frozen wings can go straight into the bath. At 165°F (73.9°C) the frozen minimums are:

• 0.5 in (1.3 cm): 1 hour
• 0.75 in (1.9 cm): 1 hour 30 minutes
• 1 in (2.5 cm): 2 hours 15 minutes
• 1.25 in (3.2 cm): 3 hours
• 1.5 in (3.8 cm): 3 hours 45 minutes

At 160°F (71.1°C) the minimum stays at 2 hours for frozen wings up to 0.75 in (1.9 cm). From 1 in (2.5 cm) up it is the same as at 165°F (73.9°C).

In the calculator, the heat-through time from frozen is 1.55 times the thawed time, and the pasteurization time is longer by a matching allowance. That allowance is the calculator's own rule. No published table covers pasteurizing from frozen.

The guide to cooking from frozen covers other foods.

Safety

FoodSafety.gov lists 165°F (73.9°C) as the safe minimum internal temperature for all poultry, including wings. The default bath for wings is set to that temperature.

The 150°F (65.6°C) and 160°F (71.1°C) settings are below the USDA figure. The USDA temperature is a single reading with no hold time. The lower temperatures pasteurize the wings only because they are held for the full minimum time shown.

The explainer on whether sous vide is safe covers how pasteurization by time and temperature works.

Common problems

The skin is not crisp. Logsdon's guide ties crisp skin to how dry the wings are before the finish. Dry them longer, in the refrigerator if you have time.

The meat is dry after the finish. The finish ran too long and cooked the meat again. Keep to the short times above, which depend on very dry skin.

The wings are too soft. That is the texture of the longer cook at 160°F (71.1°C) and of the 176°F (80°C) setting. The 165°F (73.9°C) default keeps a little spring.

The bag floats. Any wing above the water heats more slowly than the times assume. Push the air out again and hold the bag under.