It's time for another:
Many many months ago I found myself in Giant Tiger. If you've never been in a Giant Tiger, it's kind of like a step up from the dollar store, but a step down from Walmart. It sells everything from clothes, housewares, toys, and groceries. But a lot of the brands that they sell are not what I would call national name brands. They are little companies I have never heard or seen outside of Giant Tiger (GT). Every once in a while I dare to try some of these off-brand or smaller company products. Some are good, some are decent, and some are just awful.
So on this particular trip to GT I happened to notice Watson Ridge chicken wings. I've seen them there before, but the flavours I had seen were Honey Garlic or BBQ and wasn't super interested. They usually sell for $5.99 but the box isn't very big.
But then I saw a box on for $4.99 so I figured what did I have to lose? I've since seen the wings go on sale as low as $3.99 in the flyer, so you can get it even cheaper.
For some reason I waited until much later after trying these wings to do some research on Watson Ridge. They are not a well reviewed brand online FYI. They also stopped caring about their social media. On Twitter they haven't posted for years, and the only thing I could find were two posts back in 2015. The first Tweet is a great wing marketing in my opinion and speaks to me. It's lunch and I'm hungry? Have some Buffalo wings. They are baked so therefore not Buffalo, but I'll give them some slack.
Some.
The next Tweet from Oct 10 2015 suggests they don't know what they are doing; "It's a stay at home, enjoy some breaded wings type of night!" That's fine, except the photo they have is of non-breaded wings. It's not even a photo of the type of wings they sell.
The box keeps it pretty simple and direct for info: It's Buffalo Chicken Wings (it's not), they are fully cooked (just heat & eat), comes with sauce, and it's 475g. 475g is not a lot, but it's all the wings on the cover photo, not just a photo representation of what's in the box like most companies.
And it's true, the box has the bag of frozen wings and one sauce packet.
I didn't look at the ingredients until later as well. The wings had a lot of questionable ingredients in them, specifically water (2nd ingredient?), Toasted Wheat Crumbs, Wheat Flour, and Wheat Glueten. Ewww. Why is there ANY wheat in a chicken wing, let alone a Buffalo wings?
The wings were not stuck together. They weren't frost bitten either.
There it is, 475g in all it's glory. 6 wings. 6 large wings, but 6 wings. 6.
I admit I didn't follow the cooking instructions and went with my experience for frozen wing cooking. I jacked the oven up to 400F and put the wings on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper, instead of 375F on a plain baking sheet. 20 minutes total with one flip in there, about halfway through.
I also threw the sauce packet into some warm water to thaw during the cooking process.
They recommend after 18 minutes if you want a "crispier finish [is] desired" to put on the broiler for the last 2 minutes of cooking. But at 400 degrees things were crispy enough. I was also surprised when they came out of the oven that there was no grease, fat or water dripping out of the chicken.
These wings looked like they needed sauce (and there were only 6) so I didn't bother tasting them sans sauce. I cut open the packet and drizzled the sauce on.
A little toss toss toss and the wings were well covered. It was enough sauce to coat the wings but also have some left for return dips.
Now they were ready to be plated. They don't look bad and the sauce looks tight for commercial Buffalo sauce, but gosh 6 isn't very much at all eh?
I will say these wings are large. The above is one mutant-sized chicken wing. It does not look natural, but it's huge. They aren't super long, but look at the apex on that sucker. Now a lot of that is breading mind you, and the breading is a thick, thick shell. But these are still a very meaty wing.
That meat is terrible though. Before you get to the meat you have to deal with the terrible breading. Yes there is a crispy/crunch to it, but that shell just comes off the wings. And if you eat that breading on it's own, you will regret it. Because it's all wheat. Remember the 3 different wheat ingredients I mentioned above? It's all in there. It tastes like cardboard. And somehow that breading that was crunchy was also mushy at the same time. It was some sort of horrible science experiment that went wrong. The chicken meat was tender, but it was a weird texture. Pretty sure that's from it being pumped full of water. I want a juicy piece of chicken, but not this fake, pumped up garbage.
The Buffalo sauce from the packet wasn't wasn't ... bad. It was really vinegary and not really buttery. So just like the wings, the sauce wasn't Buffalo either. It was more tangy that hot. It was ok.
WOULD I BUY THESE AGAIN?
Nope.
Not even if they were free. I ate 3 and threw the rest out. Me, a wing apologist, who hates waste, had to throw them out. Gross meat, terrible breading. Sauce was ok but with so much terrible breading and weird meat it just wasn't worth while. Sometimes, you do get what you pay for, and I paid for this. From me to you (and future me)
DO NOT BUY 5/14
Watson Ridge
Chicken Wings (they don't even list their flavoured wings on here)
watsonridgefoods.ca
