Juicy on the inside with an easy crispy breading on the outside, these boneless wings are baked and make a great dinner or an appetizer for game day.
Boneless chicken wings made with boneless, skinless, super-juicy chicken thighs are so flavorful. With a delicious breaded coating and an easy oven-bake, you’ll be ready to enjoy these breaded wings in about 45 minutes. And of course, they’re even easier to eat than regular wings, because they don’t have bones!
Scroll down to read more about how it all comes together or click here to jump straight down to the recipe.
What Are Boneless Wings?
A lot of recipes for boneless wings use skinless chicken breast or chicken tenderloins. While that works great for chicken tenders or nuggets, I find it a bit odd for wings. Why? Because the texture and flavor of chicken breast meat is not at all similar to the texture and flavor of the dark meat found on chicken wings. That’s why I’ve used boneless skinless chicken thighs here. You get the nice juicy dark meat that you get from wings, but with no bones and no skin, making them even easier to eat.
Note that you absolutely can make these with skin-on chicken thighs too. You just can’t usually buy boneless skin-chicken thighs so you’d have to de-bone them yourself. Also, with the crispy breading, I don’t find that you miss the skin. I’ve done the comparison between the breaded chicken wings here, which use the same breading as this boneless chicken wing recipe, and the skin doesn’t improve them much. It’s all about the juicy meat and the crispy breading, right?
How To Cut The Chicken Thighs
First, we need to cut the chicken thighs so that they look like chicken wings. So fun!
Unroll the chicken thighs so they are flat, not the rolled bundles as they usually are sold. Then cut into wide thirds. You want short, stubby thirds that are about the length of chicken wings, not longer, lengthwise thirds, which would end up being more the length of chicken tenders. If I’m not making sesne to you, don’t worry since there’s a picture right here of what I mean:
See? You end up with pieces of chicken that are about the length and width of chicken wings!
Then you’re going to bread the cut chicken thigh pieces and then put them onto a baking rack set over a baking sheet. Once they’re arranged on the rack, that’s when you give them their chicken wing shape. Here’s what you do: pinch near the end of each one to gives it a slight drumette shape. Note that some of the pieces will already look a bit like wing flaps and you can just leave those alone, only pinching ones that don’t already look a bit like wings. See the picture below showing how some of them look like wings and then how to pinch them if not.
While the wings are uncooked, they are pliable and you can put them in whatever shape you want. Then, once the meat cooks, it firms up and holds that shape. So once they’re cooked, you’ll have little chicken pieces that look like wings and hold their shape. How fun is that?
How To Bread Boneless Wings
Okay, but before pinching them, you are going to bread them. This breading is similar to what we use for shake and bake chicken, with onion and garlic powder, smoked paprika, and optional cayenne. The oil is mixed with the breadcrumbs, instead of being sprayed on or applied after breading. This ensures that each crumb is coated in fat so that it can brown and crisp up really well.
You could bread the boneless wings by putting the breading in a bag and tossing, however I find that the breading is quite wet with the oil and it needs a little help sticking on. So I put the breading in a bowl and add the wings a couple at a time, turning them and pressing the breading on. Once the wings are baked, the breading stays on perfectly. But it just needs that little push explained in the recipe to really stick well.
Baking Boneless Chicken Wings
These are oven-baked for a couple of reasons. Deep frying wings uses a lot of oil and can cause a smell in the house. But also, you can only fry 8-10 wing pieces at a time. If I’m cooking for my family, I don’t want to stand over a fryer doing multiple batches. This way, they cook in the oven all at the same time and it’s hands off.
The oven gets preheated to 425°F and the boneless wings bake on a wire rack over a baking sheet for 30-35 minutes. Easy!
Serving Breaded Boneless Chicken Wings
You can toss these baked boneless wings in homemade Buffalo sauce after baking to make them into boneless Buffalo wings, if you’d like. But I tried it and preferred just dipping them in sauce so that the breading stays nice and crispy.
The other thing I like to do is to add extra cayenne to the breading so that they’re hot wings without the sauce, then dip in homemade ranch dressing (or store-bought) or blue cheese. So good!
More Chicken Wing Recipes
We love chicken wings here and have a whole collection of over 20 chicken wing recipes for you to enjoy. Here are a few of our favorites:
Breaded Boneless Chicken Wings Recipe
You can toss these breaded wings in sauce after they finish baking, but I find that the sauce softens their crispy coating. I therefore prefer to serve a Buffalo sauce or ranch dressing on the side for dipping.
- Prep Time: 10 minutes
- Cook Time: 35 minutes
- Total Time: 45 minutes
- Yield: 4 servings 1x
- Category: Appetizer
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: American
Ingredients
- 5 boneless skinless chicken thighs*
- 1 cup breadcrumbs
- 2 tsp. onion powder
- 1 tsp. garlic powder
- 1 tsp. smoked paprika
- 1 tsp. salt
- 1/4 tsp. cayenne pepper (optional)
- 1/4 cup cooking oil**
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 425°F. Line a large baking sheet with aluminum foil. Top with an oven-safe rack. Oil rack lightly to help prevent sticking.
- If you chicken thighs are in little bundles, unroll them. Lay a chicken thigh flat and horizontally in front of you. Cut into thirds. The resulting three pieces should be about the length and width of a chicken wing piece. See picture above if this isn’t clear. Repeat with all chicken thighs.
- In a large bowl, mix together the breadcrumbs, onion powder, garlic, smoked paprika, salt, and cayenne, if using. Add the oil and stir well until it is thoroughly mixed and looks like wet sand.
- Put 3-4 thigh pieces into the bowl. Spoon some bread crumb mixture over them and press down to help bread crumbs adhere to the chicken. Flip and repeat so they are fully covered in a light coating. Transfer to prepared rack.
- Bake on rack set over pan until cooked through and well-browned, 30-35 minutes.
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Notes
*This recipe makes enough breading for exactly 5 medium-sized chicken thighs. If your chicken thighs are large, you should make an extra half batch of breading (add an extra 1/2 cup bread crumbs and then halve the amount of the seasonings and oil and add that in also).
**It is best to use something with a neutral flavor like grape seed oil or vegetable oil rather than something with more pronounced flavor like olive oil.
What is your thought on using melted butter in the breading instead of an oul?