This Traeger Chicken Wings Recipe is smoky and delicious, and the perfect match for your favorite bbq or buffalo sauce – or just add your favorite dry rub and eat them on their own!

Traeger Chicken Wings Recipe

Listen. You guys know me by now. I’m not afraid to make a meal out of chicken wings, and we do it regularly around here. Appetizers for dinner are the best treat you can give me. All the munchies, all the time, please.

I didn’t really think wings got any better than our spicy grilled chicken wings. They are made on our gas grill, pre-pellet-grill times around here.

Then, Jeremiah threw wings on the Traeger, put some smoke on them, and STOP THE PRESSES.

Wings just got better.

Way better.

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Traeger Chicken Wings shopping list

Wondering if you have to hit the store? Here’s the list of items you’ll need to make this recipe. Please refer to the printable recipe card at the bottom of the post for specific amounts.

chicken wings
dry rub
sauce of your choice

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How to make perfect Traeger Chicken Wings

This is just the overview so you can see what you’re getting into here. When you are cooking, you’ll want to use the full recipe at the bottom of the page.

1. Preheat – Preheat your pellet grill to 350°F.
2. Dry & Season – Pat your wings dry with paper towels. Toss with a little oil and then coat liberally with the dry rub of your choice.
3. Grill – Lay out the wings right on the grill. Cook for 20 minutes and then flip and rearrange (if necessary) to account for hot spots. Grill for another 20-25 minutes.
4. Enjoy – Remove from the grill, take care of any post-grilling crisping you might want to do (totally optional, by the way! Most of the time we eat them right here at this point and skip that part), and enjoy!

More Easy Traeger Chicken Recipes here!

Do you love your pellet grill too?

See my entire Traeger Recipe Collection if you are a pellet griller too!

If you need specific suggestions, I highly recommend our Traeger Smoked Salmon, Traeger Walleye with Lemon Cream Sauce, and this Bacon-Wrapped Pork Tenderloin. Oh yeah. We went there.

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To sauce or not to sauce?

These Traeger Chicken Wings don’t even NEED sauce; they are so great. Our famous, all-purpose BBQ Rub puts a huge kick of flavor directly onto the wings, but if you wanted a little extra kick, I’d recommend a good barbecue, teriyaki, or a classic Buffalo sauce.

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How many wings do you need to feed a hungry crowd?

Side note.

Do you know how many wings you need to feed a crowd of hungry teenage boys?

You probably don’t want to.

It is a shocking number, and I’ve never had leftovers, so I don’t have an answer yet. I imagine it’ll increase exponentially as they get into their teens and have friends here with them, right? 

If you are trying to cook Smoked Wings for a crowd, I’d figure on about 6 per person, unless you are trying to make a meal out of them. Then a dozen is a pretty safe bet if you have sides to go with it. 

If your crowd consists of teenage boys, I’d just have about 15 pounds of wings on hand and ready to go. 😉 

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Can you get crispy skin on pellet grilled chicken wings?

Kind of. 

But it takes some work, and a caveat. If you are looking for “crispy” as in the same kind of cripsy you get with deep-fried wings, you will be disappointed and should skip right to the Smoked and Fried method.

Baking Powder/Cornstarch Method

Some people swear by a dry-skin method which involves dusting the wings with baking powder and/or cornstarch and then laying them out, uncovered, on a pan in the fridge overnight. 

This lets the skin dry out, the fat renders more quickly, and the skin crisps faster so you don’t overcook the wings in the quest for crispy chicken skin. 

You want to mix roughly two parts of your rub with one part of baking powder for this to work correctly. 

Air Fryer Method

For this method, you skip the prep work and just toss the wings in the dry rub and put them on the grill, but after they come off the grill, give them a spritz of oil and toss them in the air fryer. 

This will crisp up the skin without drying out the meat and is pretty foolproof. 

The downside is that most air fryers don’t have large amounts of food at once, which means you’ll have to do them in batches. 

Oil Fried Method

This one is by far my favorite method, and the most reliable way to get that crisp skin without losing the smoked flavor you need. 

Just heat an inch or two of oil in a cast iron pan, and give your wings a 2-3 minute fry post smoke. You’ll have the best of all the worlds with these wings, which are by FAR the best tasting. You can read about my experience with smoked and fried wings here.

More Chicken Wings & Sauce Recipes

• Sweet Heat Chicken Wings
• Smoked and Fried Chicken Wings
• Smoked Air Fryer Chicken Wings
• Homemade Old Bay Buffalo Sauce
• Sweet Chili Sauce
• Bleu Cheese Dressing