Healthier Hot Wings & the Save Mart 350

To celebrate tailgating at the Save Mart 350, as part of a sponsored post for Collective Bias® and Save Mart, I made some tasty Healthier Hot Wings using ingredients from my local Save Mart Supermarket. #FreshFinds #cbias

My husband and I LOVE tailgating - seriously, what is more fun than friends, food & an awesome sporting event? Not much.

An upcoming event where there is sure to be a lot of tailgating going on is the Save Mart 350. If you have not heard of the Save Mart 350 before, it is a NASCAR race at the Sonoma Raceway in Sonoma, CA on June 23rd. I wish we were going - it would be great to smell all the awesome foods being eaten by all the tailgaters before the race and then head to the track and smell the brake dust and rubber. However, we have 4 kids under 4 - so there are no NASCAR races for us anytime in the near future.:(

Although we weren't going to be headed for the races in Sonoma this year, I still wanted to whip up some of our favorite tailgating munchies - Hot Wings!! I raced headed to my local Save Mart Supermarket for the ingredients I needed, it just wouldn't have felt right shopping anywhere else to celebrate the Save Mart 350. ;)

How cool is that display?? Here is the deal - if you are a NASCAR fan and you have a Save Mart Supermarket nearby, you want to go check it out! There is NASCAR-themed merchandise and decorations all over the store. They even changed the aisle markers to read "Pit Stop #", so awesome!! It made it so much fun to shop there, especially for my "tailgating" items.

While shopping, I was inspired to make our usual Hot Wings a bit more heart-healthy. Save Mart has so many healthy choices, fresh finds and even organic sections on certain aisles - it was easy to find ingredients for Healthier Hot Wings.

Wait, NASCAR and a Heart Healthy Recipe?? Why yes, because the longer we live - the more races we can see. :)

I posted pictures from my shopping trip at Save Mart on my Google+ albums. Check out all the fun stuff I found!!

My normal Hot Wings are deep-fried and then slathered up in sauce - but for these Healthier Hot Wings I skipped the deep fryer altogether. Instead, I fired up the bbq. Our small one,the one we would use for tailgating, not the big propane one. My husband got a kick out of that. :)

I was worried about the crunch that would be sacrificed by grilling the wings instead of frying them. However, they still had a crunch to them and the flavor was still amazing. Plus, knowing that the wings we were eating did not have a high amount of fat or cholesterol also made them taste better. Seriously. Arterty-clogging jokes are funny - but the real thing is no laughing matter.

Not only are they delicious, they are so easy to make! Just grill and sauce them up, serve with a dipping sauce and watch them be devoured. No messy oil to clean up, plus you get to enjoy the outdoors a little. :)

Healthier Hot Wings
Ingredients
3lbs chicken wings - Save Mart sells chicken wings in Black Pepper Sauce that are perfect if you like an extra kick to your wings
1 cup Wing Sauce of your choice - I used Frank's Red Hot Wings Sauce & The Pepper Plant Chipotle Sauce
Directions
1. Heat up bbq to medium-high
2. Grill chicken wings until golden brown - about 15 minutes total
3. Place chicken wings in large bowl and pour sauce over the top. Mix until all chicken is evenly coated in sauce.
4. Serve with dipping sauce - like Brianna's All Natural Classic Buttermilk Ranch I found at Save Mart!!

For more information on Save Mart, you can also find them facebook, twitter and pinterest!