Hot wings are an undeniably American tradition. From coast to coast, you’re likely to find them at birthday parties, tailgating events, and more.

There’s a good reason for the popularity. They taste great, and they’re incredibly easy to make. Below, we’ve included two recipes for how to make homemade hot wing sauce. One does require a few other ingredients, and the other is, in our opinion, just as good, a little healthier, and could not be easier.

For both of these recipes, we recommend using 2 ½ pounds of chicken wings cooked under a broiler on high for 15-20 minutes, turning once. Once the wings are cooked, combine them and your hot wing sauce of choice in a large bowl until the wings are completely coated.

Hot Wing Sauce #1

This tasty sauce is a little more traditional than our other recipe. It also has added calories from butter and other ingredients, so if you’re trying to cut calories, skip ahead.

Ingredients

  • ¾ cup of Secret Aardvark Habanero Sauce
  • ½ cup unsalted butter (softened)
  • 1 ½ tablespoons white vinegar
  • ¼ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

Depending on your taste (or the amount of heat you like), you may also want to add some salt, garlic powder, or cayenne pepper. We recommend starting without, since it’s always easier to add more heat later.

If you don’t have Worcestershire sauce, you can make a Worcestershire sauce substitute pretty easily. To get a tablespoon of Worcestershire sauce substitute, combine 2 teaspoons of soy sauce, 1/4 teaspoon of lemon juice, and 1/4 teaspoon of sugar. But only add ¼ teaspoon of that mix!

To make the sauce, simply combine the ingredients in a saucepan and whisk them together. Start with the butter, then add the other liquid ingredients. Finally, add any additional seasonings to taste. Bring it to a simmer, then take it off the heat and set it aside.

If your hot wing sauce is a little thin try adding a little bit of flour (ideally, ¼ teaspoon at a time) to it while it’s still on the heat, like you would a roux. Make sure you really whisk all of the ingredients together if you do add flour, otherwise you might find yourself with lumpy hot wing sauce.

Hot Wing Sauce #2

We said both of these recipes would be easy, but it literally doesn’t get easier than our original hot wing sauce recipe. Don’t believe us? Check out this ingredients list…

Ingredients

  • ¾ cup of Secret Aardvark Habanero Sauce

End of list. Yep, all you need for these hot wings is our Habanero Sauce.

This may not be a traditional hot wing sauce, but we think it’s pretty dang tasty, and there’s so much less measuring, taste testing, and cleaning, and we think that’s what makes it a winner.