"A must at La Cage, our Buffalo wings are spicy as hell!"
My outlook on frozen chicken wings swings all the time, especially with labeling and names. Sometimes I'm jaded and think only the worst of things, other times I'm optimistic, thinking 'this might be the one'. It's usually the former, but occasionally my patience and experimentation are rewarded.
So while checking the grocery flyers one day I see that Costco has La Cage chicken wings on sale. Normally their wings are $19.99, but this week, they were on for $14.99. And for 1.8 kg of wings, that's not too bad a price. I went and I was a little excited; but there was still lot's to be worried about.
If you aren't familiar with La Cage, it's a line of products (in this case, chicken wings) based on the sports pub La Cage aux Sports (ie the Sports Cage) chain from Quebec (now seemingly shortened to just La Cage these days). They have a variety of flavours, but the one for sale at Costco is Buffalo. Here is where my concerns came in. I've been to couple of La Cages, even I think the original one in Montreal.
I was not a fan of the wings. Why would their frozen wings be any good?
So I like the box are - clean, simple, but still dark and edgy. The name and logo is the biggest part of the box, with four wings on a table piled up. And one garlic clove. Why is there a garlic clove? There is no garlic in Buffalo wings?
I find the back of the box a little funny. They are advertising the wings in a group party, but they are overshadowed by the other La Cage frozen foods you can buy; ribs, chicken bites, chicken burgers etc. I also like the honesty of the box: "This Package Contains Only Buffalo Chicken Wings" . But are they Buffalo wings? Really?
The second ingredient after the chicken is water. Then sauce. The water isn't part of the sauce. Water? But there's still water in the sauce. And the sauce doesn't even resemble Buffalo sauce. Here is the sauce ingredient list, and let me highlight some things that are highly questionable about a Buffalo wing sauce:
"water, vinegar, salt, sugar, modified corn starch, chickpea flour, tomato powder, corn syrup solids, palm oil, dehydrated red wine, canola oil, garlic powder, yeast extract, beet powder, onion powder, spice, natural and artificial flavours, citric acid, xanthan gum, guar gum, natural and artificial colours"
Chickpea flour? Tomato powder? Red Wine? I'm not saying that these ingredients might help make a tasty wing, but none of those things goes in Buffalo wing sauce.
As promised there are only frozen wings in the box. It's a big box and a big bag. I mean, it's 1.8kg!
There were about 35ish wings in the bag. I made two rounds of wings. One day I cooked about 17 of the wings as I usually do on parchment paper on a baking sheet. The next day I cooked the remaining 18 wings on a wire rack (more on this later).
The wings looked decent actually. They were a good size, nice colour, only a little frosting of ice from the bag. They looked slightly dusted (must be the chickpea flour), but not overly so. So even if they didn't seem to add up to be Buffalo wings, they seemed like they could be decent wings.
I cranked the over to 400 F and cooked them for about 30 minutes turning over half way. I even popped on the broiler as they recommended in the instructions. They didn't get crispy doing this, so the second time I did it by wire rack.
This was the recommended method in the instructions, but I didn't find this produced a more crispier wing at all. Actually it just created a bigger mess.
When they cooked up there was enough marinade and grease that seeped out and off of the wings, but that was to be expected. After a little trip under the broiler I did get little bubbles coming out which you can faintly see above.
Behold, my plate of wings. Actually this photo makes them almost look like deep fried Buffalo wings, but fried saucy wings they were not.
This photo you can see the tell-tale sign of baked wings, with the flat, caramelized patches of skin and sauce forging into one. The colour of this process creates patches of dark reddish-brown while the regular lighter chicken peeks around.
They were not a bad sized wing at all. Not small, but a healthy medium. They aren't that long, but a bit more girth to them. They aren't breaded, so it shows that these were pretty meaty morsels.
The skin was not crispy. This is not uncommon at all to pre-sauced wings. There's a slight crispy factor, but the skin on the wings was more gummy from the sauce. The meat was pretty tender, and these wings could be pulled apart with not much effort.
Now I ask you, do this look like a plate of Buffalo wings? No it doesn't. And it doesn't taste like it either. The flavour wasn't bad. It wasn't spicy, it wasn't rich and buttery and zingy like Buffalo wings, but it was tasty enough. It reminded me in both taste and ingredients to
No Name Buffalo wings, or even the unique wings from
Buffet Des Continents. It's kinda sweet, kinda not. There's a spice flavour but no spice heat. It's disappointing when they say "it's spicy as hell", and it's not, so what Hell are they referring to?
WOULD I GET THESE AGAIN?
Sure, on sale. I mean they aren't bad
frozen wings, they just aren't
Buffalo chicken wings. They're a decent size and have a decent flavour. The texture is on par with lots of other frozen wing products, but the meat was tender. I did buy another box later while they were still on sale and gobbled them up not long after. Because they are easy to do. Plus I just added my own sauce and it was much better. They also suggest putting them on a BBQ Grill and that would work too.
I also find it interesting that they have 5 other flavours to choose from at regular grocery stores (of course Costco only has one), but the actual menu at La Cage only has two current flavours (although this might have to do with COVID, I'm not too sure). Either way, these are worth it on sale, but I'm going to pass the rest of the time.
8/14
La Cage
cage.ca
In Grocery Stores
At Costco
