JANE's Ultimate Buffalo Style Dry Rubbed Seasoned Wings

Frozen chicken wings are a wing lover's challenge. I mean, they are convenient. But my experience is that they are terrible. But every now and then I find a hidden gem.

Jane's Ultimates Buffalo Style Dry Rub Seasoned Wings were not that gem.

There was a sale for Jane's chicken products not long ago, so 900g that were on for less than $8, I was willing to try. The package suckered me a bit* - I mean they look so tasty with the beer and they look crispy. Dry Rub Seasoned also sounds pretty good. Buffalo Style was a bit of a red flag for me though.


*see the end of this post for part of that suckering

I should have known something was up when there was microwave instructions for these wings. What?

CHICKEN WINGS SHOULD NEVER BE COOKED IN THE MICROWAVE

Never. Another red flag should have been the use of Wheat Flour in the breading. Also Buffalo style wings are never breaded. Also, they were served with Ranch dipping sauce instead of blue cheese.

The wings are in a bag and in total there are about 14-16 wings in a package.

There are also two packages of their 'Tangy Ranch'. They do not need to give two packages as one packet is more than enough for all these wings. I put one packet into warm water and by the time the wings were done, so was the ranch.

I followed the instructions on the back and baked them at 400 for 10 minutes, then flipped and cooked for 10 more minutes. I did bake them on a pan with parchment paper as that is how I usually cook wings in the oven to help make them crispy.

My next warning sign about these wings was that when I went to flip them after 10 minutes of cooking they were quite soggy/mushy - that's weird. So I upped the temp to 450.

So cooked they looked good, but again, when I picked them up with tongs the wings were still soggy.

The ranch was ok. I've had another frozen brand's sauce and it was so terrible. This wasn't terrible but it wasn't great either. It's not very tangy, but it tastes like ranch. It's a bit runnier than ranch dip should be; I want my dip to be thick and creamy. Plus, why wasn't this blue cheese?

I only made up about half of the wings. As you can see in the photo above, the wings were patchy in their breading/rub. Like chicken wing lepers.

These wings were small in length, but maybe a medium in meatiness. Even with the breading they weren't that much bigger.

The meat was pretty tender and could be pulled apart with relative ease. The problem again was that they were soggy. Just a reminder, these are a wing with NO SAUCE. They are dry wings. Why were they so mushy?

The flavour on these were not at all tasty. At all. There was a hint of spicy rub on the skin, but it was so far in the background and lost to the overwhelming mushy skin and fatty tasting chicken. There was also this blah tasting note that I couldn't figure out until I went back to the ingredients. Remember when I mentioned wheat flour? These tasted like wheat. Wheat is not a good breading flavour.

After trying a few wings as they were, I just couldn't eat any more. I grabbed my 3rd Degree and drenched them. Then I poured the ranch over top. I ate this hot mess and they were more consumable.

Honestly these are crap wings. Pure crap. They are small, mushy and have a fatty, unappetizing flavour to them. They aren't hot. They don't taste like Buffalo, they aren't made like Buffalo. Just a really disappointing product.

And it seemed familiar this failure but I couldn't put my finger on why. Then I looked into my records:

I found back in 2011 I bought a box of this dry rub Buffalo wings in a post I never posted. And I didn't like them then but these came with sauce on the side. Then I was like, I'm sure I've had these again ...

I found ANOTHER post that I had never posted, this time from 2017, so only one year off, but with a BBQ flavour. Suffice it to say, I wasn't crazy about these either.

Why do I keep buying these?

The problem is that this blog is supposed to be a log for me to keep track of what I like and don't. Well when I don't post, I don't always remember. I also found one more post from a few months ago for Jane's boneless wings. I gotta get that one up because it had a different outcome than the wings. So I need to remember:

LORD of the WINGS

DON'T FORGET TO POST ALL YOUR REVIEWS

&

STOP BUYING JANE's CHICKEN WINGS  

Jane's Ultimate
janesfamilyfoods.com  (they don't even have this product on their website)