Ha! I’m totally with you here. Though I never thought of deep fryers as particularly dangerous, just very inconvenient. (And I do love my air fryer!) And the closest I ever came to owning a chain saw was an electric pruner. It had a cutting chain but it was so completely enclosed in a safety-oriented design that even a klutz like me would have to work really hard to injure himself with it. 
It is easy to deep fry wings in a deep pot. But you need an oil thermometer and a litre or two of oil (preferably canola). Cornstarch makes them perfect.
Air frying is a reasonable alternative and salty baking powder is the way to go. There are many good sauces, though the ones I prefer are spicy. Easy non-spicy alternatives include honey, bottled plum sauce, mayonnaise or yogurt based sauces or a salad dressing base (mixing equal amounts low fat Italian dressing, basically flavoured vinegar, and ketchup makes a surprisingly tasty quick mild sauce.)
Who needs a deep fryer?
A pot of oil is all you need. Unless that is what you call a deep fryer. Personally, I call it a pot I put oil in (usually my Dutch oven unless it is a shallow fry).
That said, I grant that deep frying leaves you with problems you have to deal with which is why I almost never do it. I have that oil-to-plastic magic powder which works great but it just seems so darn wasteful I almost never do it. Also, cleaning the grease spatter off of everything sucks. And it doesn’t smell very good and that smell lingers.
I did see someone once almost get a finger dehanded by a chainsaw. In 1980 myself and other members of my business fraternity Delta Sigma Pi were helping a professor do some winterizing work on his property. Raking, painting a chicken coop, some wood cutting, etc. One guy with the chainsaw had is kind of kick back on him. Phil had incredible reflexes and managed to escape with just a big cut on one of his fingers. We had been painting the coop red, but you could see “Oh, that’s the paint, that’s Phil” and so on.
Second the suggestion to use baking powder, but wanted to add that for best results you need to get the chicken as dry as possible by blotting the wings with paper towels first.
Do you thaw the wings first?
For my post (the toaster oven/butter version) I should have specified that I meant fresh - e.g. refrigerated, not frozen - raw, unprocessed wings.
As in, cut off the bird, thrown onto a tray, and wrapped in plastic.
I bought the wings and am putting the powder, salt, and starch on them tonight, will finish them tomorrow. I love chicken.
Yeah, I do it in a Dutch oven, outside. Stinks up the kitchen too much to do it inside.
When I’m done with the oil, I let it cool, filter it, and put it back in the big plastic Butcher Boy container it came in. Next time I deep fry, I use a mix of fresh and old oil. I find that old oil somehow fries up better. The old oil lasts several months before I can detect any sort of change in smell or taste in it.
I’ve long watched America’s Test Kitchen and, as it happens, they just released the video below. I can’t say if this is a good recipe or not. Nor can I say the OP would like these but I think the basics are there and can be fiddled with to whatever you want.
9 minutes:
I have now done chicken wings twice since the OP.
The first time they were edible but not all that crisp
The second time, this evening, they are much better but still not what I was looking for. Slightly different directions, but still not what I envisioned
There are so many YouTube videos about these. What I need to do is listen to more and not just go by there looks. The ones I have seen in this thread are where I will start over.
Just an IMHO thing, but I find that oven based cooking tends to lead to moister results than frying or air frying. Just because the moisture you force out of the skin still remains in the ‘air’ of the oven as it were. Which is why the fryer, air fryer, or convection oven with movement of air (or oil) to carry it away have all been mentioned.
Sure you can do crispy in the oven, but there is a short distance between crispy skin and moist interior, and crispy skin and dry interior.
Alton’s option seems best - a two stage cook, once at a temp and method where you can cook everything without drying it out, and a second at HIGH heat to crisp the skin. Although (IMHO) it’s more trouble than it’s worth - with the amount of effort involved, it’s getting to the point where I’d rather buy a new tool such as an air fryer (a solid multitasker) or go to a place that I know will do a good job, even if I have to pay for it.
My favorite Thai place does 4 chicken wings with perfect skin for $10. It used to be less of course (and 5 not 4), but, well, it’s still not insane given current chicken wing prices.
Ovens and such are wonderful but do not fully replicate a deep fryer. You’d have no trouble figuring out which one used what.
Yes, my husband tried everything possible to make a good chicken wing at home. We usually baked them on a cookie sheet with bbq sauce, and they were good, but nothing can really make them crispy but deep frying. Sorry, we don’t do deep frying in the house, that’s why there are chicken wings for sale in every other restaurant in the land.
I dry them thoroughly and cook them on a wire rack in an oven at 500F, starting from cold until they look and feel done. Not as crispy as deep frying, but they are reasonable. My reasoning is the cold start gives them time to render and then the hot finish crisps them up. I suppose I could also try it as a cook at, say, 225 for awhile and then raise the temp to 500, but I’m pretty happy with the straightforward approach.