8. The type of wing
(Flats today, flats tomorrow, flats forever.)
7. An appropriate amount of liquid-based white substances to dip them in
(For the record, blue cheese and ranch are the only appropriate liquid-based white substances. If you're eating wings with me and you try to dip a wing in some mayo or some fucking milk, I'm going to assume you're a Fed or an Armitage.)
6. The amount of meat on the wing
(The chicken wing is one of the few meat-eating times — perhaps the only meat-eating time — when less meat is optimal. Eating a chicken wing with too much chicken meat on it makes you think you might as well just inject the hormones into your own body.)
5. The actual taste of the actual chicken meat
(The fact that the actual taste of the actual meat is fifth on this list actually helps prove my theory that chicken, while amazing and tasty and sexy, is slightly overrated as a meat.)
4. The Breading/Covering
(An underrated part of the chicken wing experience, because while breading can be heavenly, too much breading will make you think you're eating a deep fried bat.)
3. Rubs/Flavors
(For the record, the best chicken rub/sauce/flavor is garlic parm. I know lemon pepper gets all the pop culture co-signs, but garlic parm kicks lemon pepper's ass.)
2. How they're cooked
(Anything other than fried or roasting is really pushing things. Like this party I went to a few years ago where the host had the audacity to serve a group of Black people a batch of wings cooked on a Foreman grill. We almost burned her house down.)
1. How long they're cooked
(As important as the rest of the list is, none of it matters if the wings aren't fried hard enough, and you're left with a batch of bitch-ass soggy, slippery, soft, and flaccid fucking wings.)