BBQ Wings & Homemade Ranch Dressing

Tonight for dinner I made roasted chicken wings in the oven and tossed them in the BBQ sauce we made the week before last. They were soooooo good! I chopped up some fresh celery & carrots into matchsticks to dip in the homemade ranch dressing as well. All my beautiful herbs are growing like crazy right now in our garden so I thought it would be a good idea to incorporate them into this meal - ranch dressing it is! :-)

Fresh from the garden: chives, dill & parsley

At some point I chose to stop buying pre-made dressings at the store. They are loaded with fat and sodium and they tend to expire in my fridge before I can even use the entire bottle. Once you start making dressings yourself, you will probably agree with me and adapt the "just make 'em when you need 'em" philosophy I have. Most of the time the ingredient list is stuff you already have in the pantry/fridge so it's really a no-brainer to me!

Anyway enough blabbing... here's how I made dinn-dinn tonight:

BBQ Roasted Chicken Wings (for 2)

Place wings on wire racks so the heat
circulates around them evenly

ingredients
• 18 chicken wings (flats & drumsticks)
• Homemade BBQ Sauce (click for the recipe)
• salt & pepper

directions

1. Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Line a baking sheet with foil and place a wire metal rack on top. Spray the metal rack with non stick spray so you aren't cleaning these all night long after dinner. We also soak ours in hot soapy water while we are eating dinner. (Tip: This helps the chicken cook all the way around so you don't have to turn them halfway through cooking and they won't stick to the foil!). 

2. Place wings on top of racks and season with salt & pepper on one side.

3. Bake in oven for at least 45 minutes, an additional 5 minutes if you want them even crispier.

4. While wings are baking, take some BBQ sauce and put in bottom of large bowl that has a lid. Once wings are done to your crispiness liking, remove from oven and put in bowl with BBQ Sauce. Put the lid on and toss until wings are coated. If you open it up and see that you didn't add enough sauce, then just add more and repeat. Easy, right!?!

5. Serve with carrots, celery & ranch dressing for dipping.

BBQ Roasted Wings

And now onto the delicious, addictive ranch dressing...

Ranch Dressing 

Carrots, Celery & Ranch - Oh My!

ingredients
• 1/2 cup buttermilk
• 1/2 cup plain greek yogurt (or mayo, but greek yogurt is healthier)
• 2 Tablespoons each of fresh dill, parsley & chives, chopped (feel free to add more or less of each depending on your taste buds)
• 1 Tablespoon apple cider vinegar
• 1/4 teaspoon kosher salt, garlic powder, pepper
• 2 dashes (or more) of hot sauce

directions
Whisk together all ingredients until smooth and well incorporated. Store in a large mason jar in the fridge. I'd also suggest letting sit in fridge for at least 2 hours to cool and let all flavors meld together. This stuff is addicting and you will love it.

This should store in the fridge for at least 7-10 days, if it lasts that long! I doubled the recipe so I could use it all week for salads, snacking, etc. The recipe was adapted from Food Network's 50 Salad Dressings booklet. 

Enjoy!