Wingstop
Wingstop Lemon Pepper Wings Copycat Recipe
The chain's most ordered flavour, and the reason home versions taste dusty is that they skip the butter. Forty minutes.
How to Make Wingstop Louisiana Rub at Home
Louisiana Rub: the Dry One That Is Still Bound With Butter
The second-most-ordered flavour on the wall, in three minutes.
AI-generated illustration created for food.fast. It is not photographic evidence of a prepared batch.
Wingstop's flavour wall runs to eleven, and after Lemon Pepper this is the one people order most. It is a dry rub in the sense that it arrives as a powder, and like every other flavour on that wall it is tossed with melted butter rather than dusted on.
The blend is a Louisiana-style seasoning: paprika-led, cayenne behind it, garlic and oregano underneath, with a fair amount of salt. It is a close cousin of the Five Guys Cajun seasoning with more heat and less celery.
Three minutes in a bowl and a jar that lasts six months.
How this page shows its working
The method gives quantities, timings and observable cues rather than asking you to guess. The 4 cases in If it goes wrong explain likely causes and corrective action.
See the recipe verification standard · See how the cost is calculated
How this differs from the Cajun blend, and when to use which
The two blends share most of their ingredients and are not interchangeable.
Cajun seasoning (the Five Guys one) leads on paprika with celery salt providing the savoury backbone. It is salty, moderately warm, and it is designed to go on chips.
Louisiana rub leads on paprika with more cayenne and a distinct oregano and thyme presence, and no celery. It is noticeably hotter and more herbal, and it is designed to go on meat.
Practically:
- On chips: Cajun. The celery salt is what makes it work on a potato.
- On wings and chicken: Louisiana. The extra heat and the herbs suit it.
- On prawns and fish: Cajun, with lemon.
- On roast potatoes: either, and Cajun by a nose.
If you are only making one, make the Cajun blend - it is the more generally useful. If you are making wings, make this one.
How to make it, step by step
Make it
-
Crush the oregano and thyme between your palms
As they go in, to break the leaf pieces down and release the oils.
About 1 min -
Whisk everything for thirty seconds
Until the colour is completely uniform with no white specks of salt against the paprika.
About 1 min -
Jar it and date it
Best in the first three months, usable for six.
About 1 min
Using it on wings
-
Melted butter into a large bowl first
60 g per kilo of wings. The fat is the glue and the carrier - dry-dusted seasoning falls into the bottom of the bowl.
About 1 min -
Hot wings straight from the oven or fryer, tossed
Until every piece is glossy. Then the seasoning in two additions with a toss between - two goes coats far more evenly than one.
About 1 min
Louisiana Voodoo Fries, which is the other thing it is for
The chain's other Louisiana item is chips with this rub, cheese sauce and ranch, and all three components are on this site.
Chips by the twice-fried method, tossed in this blend rather than the Cajun one.
Cheese sauce - the nacho cheese sauce is the right one, thin enough to pour.
Ranch - the Wingstop ranch, drizzled rather than dolloped.
Assembled in that order, with the chips seasoned before the sauces go on. It is an enormous portion, it costs about ninety pence to make, and it is one of the better uses of leftover cheese sauce there is.
Ways to change it once you have made it once
Hotter
A tablespoon of cayenne and a teaspoon of ground habanero.
Blackening rub
Double the thyme and oregano and add a teaspoon of mustard powder. For fish cooked hard in a dry pan.
Lower salt
Drop the salt to 2 tsp and season the food directly instead.
What went wrong, and how to fix it
Each entry names a likely cause as well as a correction, so the advice remains useful when equipment, ingredients or batch size differ.
It tastes dusty on the wings
- Why it happened
- Dry-dusted rather than butter-tossed.
- What to do
- Melted butter in the bowl first, then the hot wings, then the seasoning.
Too hot
- Why it happened
- Cayenne strength varies enormously between jars.
- What to do
- Drop the cayenne to a teaspoon and raise the sweet paprika by the same amount.
It tastes like the Cajun blend
- Why it happened
- They are close relatives.
- What to do
- This one has no celery salt, more cayenne and more herbs. Check you have not mixed them up.
The blend separated in the jar
- Why it happened
- Shaken rather than whisked.
- What to do
- Tip it into a bowl and whisk. Shaking sorts by density.
Questions people actually ask about this recipe
Is Louisiana rub a dry rub?
It arrives as a dry blend and it is tossed with melted butter, like every Wingstop flavour. Dry-dusting it makes it taste dusty.
How is it different from Cajun seasoning?
More cayenne, more herbs, and no celery salt. Hotter and more herbal, and better on meat than on chips.
How much do I use on wings?
A tablespoon of blend and 60 g of melted butter per kilo of wings.
How long does it keep?
Six months sealed and out of light, and it is noticeably better in the first three.
Make these next
The recipes that go with this one, or that use what you have just made.
Five Guys
Five Guys Cajun Seasoning Copycat Recipe
Paprika-heavy, salty, with celery salt underneath. Ninety seconds and a jar that lasts six months.
Wingstop
Wingstop Ranch Copycat Recipe
Buttermilk, mayonnaise and a proper quantity of dill, thicker than any bottled ranch. Five minutes and an overnight rest.
Wingstop
Wingstop Mango Habanero Wing Sauce Copycat Recipe
Mango, habanero, lime and a little vinegar, blended and simmered. Ten minutes, and the heat builds rather than hits.