President's Choice Medium Buffalo Wings - QUARANTINE FROZEN WING REVIEW

It's time for another:

I'm still dipping into the archives here, but I have so many unpublished frozen wing reviews that all we can do is move forward. 

President's Choice Medium Buffalo-Style Chicken Wings.

I'm going to stop you right there. I can tell you before we begin, these are not in any way Buffalo Style Wings.

I'm not going to lead you on at all. They don't look like Buffalo Wings, they aren't cooked like Buffalo wings, and they don't taste like Buffalo wings. 

Don't believe me? Read that intro that they themselves give the wings. Go on, I'll wait. Can't read it? It starts of with "smoky sauce". Smoky. When has a Buffalo wings ever been smoky? And why does it come with Sour Cream & Onion dip? sure that sounds delicious, but Buffalo wings call out for Blue Cheese.

But all of that, all of these #wingcrime 's against authenticity doesn't mean that these could be really good frozen wings. But just know PC is lying to you up front.

There is so much info on the box. Little stories here, ingredients there. Information overload. Ingredient overload. Look how many ingredients are on that list. Do you know how many ingredients are nomally in Buffalo wings? Chicken. Hot Sauce. Butter/Margerine. Vinegar. Maybe salt & pepper. Bah!

Inside the box are the bag of frozen wings and a packet of Sour Cream & Onion dip on the side. There's only one packet of dip, which is kind of surprising because it seems like endless amounts of sauce are included in these things. Despite the authenticity faux pas, I was actually curious to taste this dip as I've never had SC&O with wings before.

The wings came bundled up at the bottom of the bag and while slightly stuck together, they came apart easily and without tearage.

I turned on the over to 400 degrees and placed my wings on a baking pan that was already lined with tinfoil (I reuse it over and over as long as there are no spills) and magic parchment paper. I places all the wings on the pan and there were 24 wings in total.

The wings had a mild frosting to them from being in the freezer but nothing detrimental to the product. I also noted that there were pretty equal flat-to-drum ratio going on here.

I put the sauce packet in warm water, then popped the wings into the oven and baked for about 10 minutes before flipping them over. You can see the grease/glaze oozing off the wings. Baked and pre-glazed, just like the Anchor Bar eh?

It is not in case you missed that sarcasm.

After 20ish minutes or so the wings were done. Not the prettiest wings around ...

Because they are pre-glazed, the wings are ready to eat. No saucing or tossing. They still looked tasty but clearly don't look like Buffalo wings at all.

Let's talk about the size. These are a medium in length, width, height, girth etc etc etc. They aren't too small, but they aren't big either. Pretty average for frozen wings, especially from President's Choice.

The texture on the skin is what I think of as baked-crispy. First off, I never use just tin foil (or even bare pan for that matter) because the skin is going to stick and it's going to make a mess. It won't stick to parchment, and I like that the fat renders out but then get's crispy on the skin. The skin's fat hasn't fully rendered (like deep frying) and these are pre-marinated, so short of deep frying (don't because of the glaze though) it's not going to get crispy. BBQ grilling is an option on the box and that would be good but more char-crispy then skin crispy.

How do they taste? Well not like Buffalo wings. They have a hot wing flavour to them, but there's no buttery richness that you would get with a Buffalo wing. I thought they were tasty enough as is, but these wouldn't hurt from an extra application of sauce either.

As for the heat, PC lied again, but in a way I was actually happier with. These had some bite! There was actually a kick to them. I would say these were a Hot and not Medium. It wasn't killer, but someone who doesn't go for heat much might find them a bit much. True Chiliheads will dismiss these, but I was surprised to have a warm buzz even after I was finished.

Now if you did find these spicy, there's that Sour Cream and Onion dip on the side. Wow, was the texture on this sauce horrible. Horrible! It was so thin and watery that some wings I would dunk and nothing stuck to the actual wing. The flavour was ok ... more like a SC&O ranch dip. But it's not strong and without a creamy texture the sauce just falls flat.

WOULD I BUY IT AGAIN?

Meh.
Give me a really good sale and I will keep them on hand for emergencies. I think these would probably do well on the BBQ. I'd ditch the dip (it's flavour is weak so that even if you added some sour cream or mayo to bulk it up, what flavour there was would be lost). The wings are ok size, ok texture. The heat is good, the flavour's not bad. But I cannot stress enough that in no way is this like a Buffalo wing.  7/14

President's Choice
Medium Buffalo-Style Chicken Wings