Hot and spicy, salty and sweet, and blessed with a natural handle, chicken wings are perhaps the perfect finger food for the big game. Lots of wings, lots of cold drinks and lots of napkins ensure a successful Super Bowl Sunday, even without the hometown birds on the playing field.

There's a National Buffalo Wing Festival held every Labor Day in Buffalo, N.Y., where in 1964 the fascination of dipping hot-sauce-doused wings along with celery sticks into cool blue cheese dressing first caught on. Wings are such a part of our culinary history that the James Beard Foundation awarded the place that introduced them, Buffalo's Anchor Bar, an American Classic Award in 2003.

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Variations of the classic Buffalo wing are a fixture in virtually every bar and have even found their way into your grocer's freezer. One popular wing joint, the Wing Zone (with two metro locations), is among the fastest growing franchises on Fortune 500's list of privately held companies.

According to the National Chicken Council, the average American consumed a whopping 81.9 pounds of chicken per person in 2002. Wings are decidedly among the top chicken appetizers along with chicken tenders and chicken nuggets. On Super Bowl Sunday, it is estimated that 54 million pounds of chicken wings (about 500 million pieces) will be consumed, about 14 million pounds more that what usually sells in a week. Fried, grilled, baked or broiled, the wing is the thing.

This Sunday, consider spreading your wings beyond the deep-fried classic. Don't bother with the bucket and leave lettuce-lined deli platters behind. Grilled, baked and broiled wings are healthier, lower in fat and easy to prepare and clean up.

Battle to the bone

Whole chicken wings often are separated at the joints. The wing tip is discarded because there is relatively no meat. The remaining two pieces are known as the drummette, as it resembles a miniature drumstick, and the wing, or "flat wing."

Some folks nibble around the edges, and others pick the bone clean. Some who fall in the latter category abide by the "umbrella" technique — involving putting the whole chicken wing in your mouth and then pulling it out, using your teeth to open the "umbrella" of the meat.

There's also the "twirl" method, in which the chicken drummette is rotated between the fingertips and teeth.

And finally there's the "pull and flick," in which a modified "umbrella" is applied to the flat wing, and then finished with a "flick" between the two small bones to open them and extract the shred of meat between them.