I’ve written about the foods that make me happy before. While I love trying new and different things, my comfort foods are pretty basic: hot dogs, steak and prime rib, and fried chicken sandwiches. I also love chicken wings. However, unlike all those other foods, I had never made my own wings, instead getting ready-made ones from restaurants or grocery stores, or frozen ones. Part of the reason is that my wife doesn’t share my taste when it comes to wings. She doesn’t like spicy foods, nor does she enjoy food with bones in it. However, that all changed just a few short months ago.
On a recent trip to Anaheim, my wife accidentally ordered chicken wings at Roy’s Restaurant. I say “accidentally,” because the menu description made it sound as if they were boneless chicken pieces, like Japanese karaage. When they were served, she was frustrated to see that they had bones, but decided to try them anyway. To her surprise, she loved them! She thought the crispy skin was perfect, and found the meat to be tender and flavorful.
Once our trip was over, however, she was disappointed by the wings we had at home. The skin was too soft and rubbery for her tastes. It looked like wings were going to be something that would remain solely my domain. Until this past weekend, when I decided to make my own wings, following the recipe from Jeff Phillips’ cookbook, Smoking Meat.
We purchased two and a half pounds of wings from the store. We would have preferred fresh wings, but all we could find were frozen. To be honest, my wife was pretty negative about the frozen meat, to the point that I almost gave up before we started. However, she relented, and I decided that since it was my first try anyway, it would probably be okay.
Following the recipe for smoked chicken wings, I let the wings come to room temperature while I heated the smoker up to 225 degrees, with a 50/50 mixture of hickory and mesquite wood chips. I don’t know if I would really notice the difference if I had just used one or the other, but that’s what the recipe called for.
The recipe said to cook the wings in the smoker for about two hours, until they reached 150 degrees, as measured with an instant-read thermometer. I decided to check the wings at 90 minutes, and they were right at 150. Of course, I hadn’t started making the hot sauce yet, so I started to panic a little. However, since I knew the wings were going to be finished by frying them, I figured they could sit out for a few minutes while I made the sauce.
The hot sauce recipe came from the same book, and was pretty easy: just Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, butter, and brown sugar, simmered for 15 minutes. Easy peasy, and pretty tasty. (Of course, the thought occurs that if all I’m doing to make the sauce is buying a commercial hot sauce and adding butter and sugar, I might as well just buy a commercial buffalo sauce. But there you go.)
Once the sauce was done, I turned my attention back to the wings. I brushed each one with butter, and then coated them with flour. Then came the part I was most worried about: frying. I have very little experience with frying meat, and am terrified simultaneously of overcooking, undercooking, and getting splattered with hot oil. Thanks to our weekly meals from Hello Fresh, though, I had recently and successfully fried chicken breasts on two occasions. So I was willing to give it a shot.
I heated about a half inch of oil in a pan until it reached 375 degrees (again, using the instant-read thermometer; Alton Brown has taught me well). I put the wings into the oil, cooked them for 45 seconds, flipped them, cooked them for another 45 seconds, then took them out to drain.
We tossed half the wings with the homemade buffalo sauce.
We also had a bottle of pineapple coconut mango tequila sauce we had purchased at the butcher shop some time ago, and decided to toss the other half in that, in case the buffalo ones were too hot for my wife.
As it turned out, the buffalo sauce wasn’t too hot for her, but having the two different sauces made for a nice variety.
The wings turned out pretty good. As I had hoped, frying the wings after smoking them gave the skin the crispy texture that she was looking for. The first wing she tried was a little tough, and she thought that might be because the meat had been frozen. However, the others she ate were much more tender, so we figure that first one was just from a tough old bird.
Because I wanted to focus on the wings, we just had store-bought potato salad as a side dish. For dessert, though, my wife wanted to try a dessert mac dish she had read about in The Mac + Cheese Cookbook, which I had brought home from the library. Published by the restaurant Homeroom, in Oakland, California, the book has a ton of mac & cheese variations, including this one dessert. (There are other dessert recipes in the book from the restaurant, but this was the only dessert macaroni dish.)
The recipe included egg noodles, eggs, mascarpone cheese, sour cream, strawberries, and probably other stuff that I’m not remembering. It was delicious! And the recipe makes four huge servings, so we had half a serving each for dessert, the other half for breakfast the next morning, then another half serving each for dessert the following evening. (We still each have half a serving left.)
Overall, I’m really happy how the wings turned out. I really liked the smoky flavor. I guess it’s a good thing I mixed the woods the way the recipe said, probably.
Clearly, it’s a lot more work than getting them from the store or a restaurant or heating up the frozen ones. It’s more work than I’m likely to put in to make a casual snack. But there’s something reassuring about knowing that I can make one of my favorite comfort foods myself, even if I’m not likely to do it that often.
I’m also happy that I was able to make the kind of wings that my wife will enjoy sharing with me. She used to be a professional chef, so when I am able to make food that she enjoys, pretty much all by myself, I feel a real sense of pride and accomplishment. Plus it’s one more thing we can share.
Obviously, I’m running behind this week, so no Pop! of the Week.
See you next week!
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