Valentine’s Day might be over but luckily Wingstop can still hold you in their arms as they are celebrating Valentine’s week by bringing back the very desirable Hot Honey Rub!
In addition to all of their existing sauces, you can request the Hot Honey Rub as it is only here for a limited time at participating locations.
The Hot Honey Rub is basically a dry rub that provides a slightly sweet taste which goes along with a kick from their cayenne peppers and ancho chillies.
New and existing customers can request this rub on a number of items such as Wingstops chicken tenders, classic or boneless wings, or even their sandwich!
I am getting hungry so let us go grab some of these Hot Honey Rub Items ourselves!
Buying Wingstop’s Hot Honey Rub Coated Items
In order to get your hands on some of the delicious items that will be covered in Wingstop’s Hot Honey Rub, you can place orders through fast food apps such as Uber eats, DoorDash, or even Wingstop app itself.
As you all know by now, my preferred method is to pick up these items in person, so I decided to drive to my nearest participating Wingstop location.
The ordering and waiting process tends to be pretty quick at Wingstop, especially for to-go orders.
This year I wanted to try the Hot Honey Rub specifically on their chicken tenders and classic chicken wings.
I ordered a six piece classic wings and a three-piece chicken tender Hot Honey Rub meal.
The costs for both items were respectively $11.29 and $8.89. The price was definitely a bit steep. I feel perhaps next time I’ll just order the items without the meal.
After about 10 minutes of waiting, I got my huge bag with all the items, so let’s go and see how they look.
What Does Wingstop’s Hot Honey Rub Look Like
The first thing I opened up were the chicken tenders, and immediately you could see the golden brown texture of an item that was fried to perfection.
The dry rub seasoning was practically there on almost all sides of the tenders. It looks like when they were applying the seasoning it must’ve been only poured on from the top and not padded on with gloves, because the bottom of the tenders lacked the Hot Honey Rub seasoning.
Even though the seasoning was lacking underneath, they were not soggy at all and still had that crispy texture from the deep fry.
Each of the three tenders were relatively big in size and looked like they would provide a sufficient and filling bite.
Right alongside our tenders we also had the six piece classic chicken wing with the Hot Honey Rub sauce.
You could see the dry rub blend was coating just about all of the wings.
On a few occasions in the past, I have come across issues where the flats tend to be more coated in seasoning or the sauce compared to the drums, but I was glad to see that was not the case here as both the drums and flats were pretty evenly coded.
In addition to the rub, the classic wings were fried to perfection as usual.
Obviously visually both items look absolutely amazing, so let us dig in to see how they taste!
How Does Wingstop’s Hot Honey Rub Taste Like
I remember as soon as I took both of these items out of the bag, the hot honey rub scent was immediately all around me.
As soon as I bit into the chicken tender, it was like my taste buds had entered the matrix with an overabundance of flavors.
The sweet flavor coming from the honey was not so excessive where it starts to cover up the other flavors.
Right as you are enjoying the sweetness from the honey, you immediately get roundhouse kicked from the heat that comes with the ancho chili and cayenne pepper blend.
Thankfully this heat from the peppers was not something similar to that of the scorpion or Carolina reaper where your whole mouth is on fire and you need to drink a whole glass of milk just to tame the heat.
These peppers provide a sensation that is similar to something that rattles your taste buds into waking up, yet those same spices work very harmoniously with the hot honey and this essentially elevates the overall flavor to a whole new level.
This flavor is so bold that it is not only limited to the outer skin of the tenders or classic wings! The white meat chicken in the tenders as well as the chicken in the classic wings also have this flavor infused within it!
Right as I was enjoying everything, I remembered I still had the ranch sauce I had asked for.
My original fear was that the hot honey and the spice blend of cayenne and ancho chilies may be blurred out from the ranch, but there was absolutely no way that I was not planning on dipping the tender and the classic wings in some delicious ranch.
The combination was not as good as I had imagined.
I mean both the wings and the tenders tasted delicious after being dipped in ranch dressing, but this was no different than eating regular wings and tenders.
The ranch for me personally overpowered the hot honey rub and the spice blend.
With so many good flavors and textures, is there anything that can be done differently with the Hot Honey Rub?
How Can Wingstop’s Hot Honey Rub Be Improved
For some reason, Wingstop’s Hot Honey Rub this year feels like it is a bit hotter compared to last year.
Currently there is nothing that needs to be adjusted in terms of its sweetness or the kick it delivers from the ancho chillies with cayenne.
There is a perfect balance of flavors in the rub which just happens to work for all of their items.
If Wingstop wanted to possibly deliver a hotter version of this, maybe they could look into adding the Mulato pepper into the mix as long it does not drown out the sweetness from the honey.
The only thing I feel each store can do better on, is to make sure to toss the items that are being requested multiple times so each item is coated evenly with that delicious rub!
Overall Thoughts
Wingstop has quite literally hit a home run with their Hot Honey Rub!
It does not matter what you put it on, whether it is the tenders, the classic or boneless wings, or even the sandwich, the rub just tastes amazing!
I would not hesitate too long to get your hands on some of these items.
Hopefully sometime down the road they can make some adjustments to the meal pricing so it is a bit more cost effective.
Overall Score: 9.5
What are you waiting for? Go grab Wingstop’s Hot Honey Rub today as it is only here for a limited time!
