Homemade Wings, Part 1

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Genre: Home Places

Cooking Overview: I’ve done enough cooking to know that I’m not much of a cook. But I said I was going to review some wings that I made myself, and I’m sticking to it. I’ll show you the recipes I used, note the ways that I varied/messed up the recipe, critique how they ended up and give some thoughts on what I’d do differently next time. Also, more pictures than a regular review. Here we go!

Recipe: Fried Sriracha Hot Wings

The recipe I followed was from Serious Eats and it actually calls for grilling the chicken instead of frying it. I wanted to fry, however, so I ignored that part. I halved the amount of chicken called for (my wife and I don’t need 4 pounds of wings) and naturally, I forgot to half some of the other ingredients in the recipe. We’ll talk about it as we go here. I decided to make a full batch of sauce because you can’t have enough sauce. I’ve made a version of these wings once, a year or so ago. Here are the ingredients for the full recipe:
Chicken

  • 4 pounds chicken wings, cut into drumettes and flats
  • 1 tablespoon baking powder
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt

    • Sauce:

  • 4 tablespoons butter
  • 1/2 cup sriracha
  • 2 tablespoons honey
  • 1 1/2 tablespoons soy sauce
  • 1 tablespoon finely chopped cilantro
  • 1 tablespoon freshly squeezed lime juice
  • 1 teaspoon rice vinegar

    • Before I went to work on the morning I wanted to eat these for dinner, I took the Perdue Fresh Chicken Wingettes I had bought out of their packaging, patted them dry with a paper towel, and covered them with 1 tablespoon baking powder and 1 teaspoon kosher salt. This would have been fine, but I should have used half that amount of those two items. We move on. I put them in the fridge, on top of a PBR box, like so, for the day.
    Image 1
    They sat for over 8 hours, then I came home, filled our temperature controlled skillet with about 3/4 an inch of vegetable oil, and turned the temperature up to 375º. While that was heating up, I made the sauce. That was easy. All you do is heat up the butter on low heat on the stove top, then mix in all the other stuff. Lydia also made a standard Franks sauce. The sriracha sauce is on the right.
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    After that, it was time for wing frying. I put all the wings in and turned the temperature down to 350º after everything got settled. Everything I read said to cook them until they were golden, so that’s what I did. They were done after about 12 minutes, and I tested my chicken with a meat thermometer to be sure (Poultry: 165º).
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    Then, I set them on a cooling rack to drip off a bit of the grease
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    Finally, I tossed them in a bowl with the sauce
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    And put ’em on a plate!
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    Review

    BAD • FAIR • GOOD • GREAT • BEST

    Here’s what went right:

  • The Sauce. It’s really good. My wife was worried that the sauce was going to be too spicy, but she enjoyed it. We both agreed we might add a little more honey next time. The compliment of the sweetness of the honey with the bite of the sriracha is great.
  • The crispiness. For a first try at frying, these were pretty crisp, not perfect though (see more below)
  • The appearance. I mean… that looks like a restaurant quality wing, doesn’t it?
  • The moistness of the chicken. It was juicy all the way through, even though I think I cooked it longer than I needed to.

    • Here’s what could be improved:

  • Looking for smaller wings. These were too meaty.
  • Oil temperature control. I think I should add my wings more slowly next time. A little bit of oil got absorbed into the skin of the wings, and I suspect it’s because the temperature dropped to low when I was adding all those wings at the same time. Next time I will cook in a couple batches.
  • Follow the recipe. The 2x amount of salt and baking soda proved to be not too big of an issue, but we each got some bites that could use less baking soda.

    • Overall, this first homemade wings meal was a success, and we’ll definitely be doing it again in the future. If you’ve got any tips for how you like to cook wings, let me know in the comments!

    Wings cooked & eaten on 8/27/2013 at my home in St. Louis

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