#nonwingsunday = Air Fried Pickles

 

#nonwingsunday = Air Fried Pickles

Not bad, not bad indeed!#lordofthewingsblog #lordofthewings #friedpickles #deepfriedpickles #airfriedpickles #dillpickles #lotwtestkitchen pic.twitter.com/sq2ZVwminv

— LORD of the WINGS (@LordoftheWings) February 1, 2021

Buffalo Cauliflower 4.0 - a visual reference

 

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I really can't relay how good this version turned out. Actually I did a second batch and it was even better. Crispy cauliflower, decadent Buffalo sauce. It's not Buffalo Wings, but it's damn good!

Griddle Wings Experiment: The Worst Way to Cook Chicken Wings?

Over a year ago we were given an electric griddle as a gift. It's great for making a bunch of things all at the same time. Pancakes, potato pancakes, or I mostly use it for frying bacon. My version is really easy to clean and my only complaint is the cold zones take up a big side of the griddle.

Since I got it, I've wanted to try and cook chicken wings on it. I don't know why, but I thought this would be a great new way to make a fried wing without deep frying. I don't know why it would, because I'm not crazy about pan fried wings, but a new toy is a new toy. Only it wasn't new. Or a toy.

I entered the Lord of the Wings Test Kitchen and went simple for the wings; I just seasoned the wings with salt and pepper and tossed them on the griddle. That's it.

They might have done well to have some oil, but I figured the fat in the wings would be enough to keep it lubricated, and the griddle is non-stick, and ya I didn't need it.

I kept the wings on the hottest side of the griddle, and we got a good cooking sizzle going on. I was cooking at the maximum heat to try and get the crispiest skin possible.

When the chicken skin browned, I flipped them over. The drums got 3 or 4 flips because there are basically 3-4 sides to try and get it all fried up.

At the midway of cooking these wings I started to go from excited to really skeptical about this cooking method. The joints still had lots of blood coming out, but the skin was fried up. I did not like how this was going.

One of the problems with cooking like this is that so much of the heat is lost. When you cook wings in an oven, or a BBQ, or the deep fryer, you are enveloping the wing with heat. But the griddle, you lose so much heat. I was cooking these for almost half an hour and finally decided to change things up. I grabbed a metal bowl and decided to cook the wings underneath.

This seemed to be working. The skin was staying crispy, but the inside was starting to get crisp.

When I thought they were done, I took them out and took a bite. Nope, still not done. This is why you cook by temperature and not time. Unfortunately my thermometer hasn't been working, so I couldn't. But you should.

So they went back under the metal bowl and cooked for like another 15 minutes.

The wings were still juicy looking and crispy. But it wasn't that appealing to look at. I mean, I think to the average person anyway.

Also, how tiny are those wings? It's hard to get good size fresh wings around here.

So the cook time was basically an hour plus a bit more. This took way too long. It was just too long. I did try the wing as is, and it was ok, but it was going to need sauce.

I threw together a quick and tasty sauce - margerine, hot sauce, chili flakes, worchestshire sauce, some spice, some garlic. This was tasty.

I poured that sauce all over the wings because that's what you do.

These still don't look so good.  More tossing and saucing needed.

Well these don't look that much better either. Bah!

This was the best looking wing of the bunch, then I stopped taking photos. Because I stopped caring. The wings were ok. The sauce was the highlight.

The actual wings were kind of crispy, and the wings remained kind of juicy, but it wasn't the best texture. I would not bother with this way of cooking wings ever again. Baking makes much better wings than this. When I bake wings, the skin is really crispy, the meat is tender, the bones pull apart nicely. This was tougher, not that crispy, and it took way longer to cook.

So I won't bother with an electric griddle again. Of all the ways I've tried cooking wings, this is the worst. The only way that would be worst is the microwave, but I won't do that to chicken.

#FAIL

#lotwtestkitchen finds a new Home

If you've been wondering why the lack of posts, it hasn't been because I haven't been eating wings (I have), or because Ive been on the road (although I have), but mainly because we bought a house & we moved in!

We`ve been busy with lots of unpacking (what box did I put the deep fryer in?), organizing, setting up utilities and just settling in when we`ve been home. Thanks to our parents for helping with the move, painting, cleaning etc. They were amazing help.

So what`s next once we are officially settling in? Well I have a new #lotwtestkitchen to make wings (and have been fortunate enough to have had the first wings of the house!), which means in 2019 I'd like to reboot WingKingTV on youtube, but that won't be for a while yet. I'm also furiously trying to finish all of my 2018 reviews (I have like 10 in various states of being completed) so that I can get to my Year in Review for 2018 done! This will be the first YIR that isn't just mini reviews of reviews I never got to post.

Anyways, exciting stuff around here, but thanks for your patience. There's lots to do but we are super excited to settle into a proper home.

De-Heating Super Spicy Wings

So recently I celebrated a birthday, and at the end, I did something stupid.

I was at wing night at Patty Boland's and I was sampling wings with my wife. Feeling pretty good and wanting a small thrill, I tried their Reaper Inspired Wings. I signed the waiver, and was excited with my plate of wings and a challenge.

First, these wings were dry rubbed in Reaper Pepper spice. They came on a crispy, fried wing and were tossed in the seasoning. I was expecting a wet sauce, but I thought this would be easier to handle. I was wrong. I ate one wing, and I had to give up. The heat attacked my throat, it went to my lips. I was sweating. The worst part was my stomach started acting up. I did not want to mess with my stomach.

One part of getting older is that you can't do things you used to. I couldn't eat these wings. But part of getting older is getting wiser, and I weighed my pros and cons and determined it wasn't worth it to eat these wings. I mean I could have if I really pushed it, but I didn't. When I did a Ghost Pepper challenge years ago, my body has been affected by that ever since. I didn't want to cause irreparable damage.

 I said no, humbled and embarrassed, and took those wings and my tail between my legs, home.

If you are not aware and before you start scoffing at me not being able to eat these wings (without causing serious internal damage), the Carolina Reaper is the hottest pepper in the world. The above infographic shows it well - a jalapeno  is 10 000 Scoville units; the Carolina Reaper is 2 million. This is dangerous level hot.

So I had 7 dry dusted Carolina Reaper wings (they let me take those home, which is not usually allowed on wing night) and I wasn't NOT going to eat them. I needed to enter the LOTW Test Kitchen and find a way to De-Heat these wings.

I came up with a 3 part strategy to De-Heat these wings.

1. Coat the wings in margarine (or butter)
2. Coat the wings in bbq sauce
3. Spritz those wings with fresh lemon juice

Before that, we needed to re-heat the wings. The best way would have been to deep fry them again, but there was no way I was slogging out the fryer, filling it with oil, heating it, stinking up the place, then clean up. I also wasn't going to take the easy route and microwave them - nuked wings are quick but terrible. So baking these wings on parchment paper was the way I went.

I put them in the toaster oven (didn't need a whole oven for 7 wings) and baked at 400 degrees for like 5 minutes. The wings stayed crispy, but the oils in the wing brought new life back into them. Some of the seasoning 'burnt' and went dark, but that didn't really affect the flavour. I did make the mistake of touching the wings with my bare hands, and then getting the reaper spice on my hands, which I licked. This led to my mouth stinging for a while.

STEP 1 - Margarine 

Right out of the oven I added margarine to the wings. Like about 3 or 4 tablespoons. My thinking on this is that the margarine (you could use butter, but this was easier for me) was going to add some heat diffusing layer, just as you add more to hot sauce to make mild/medium/hot wing sauce.

It melted into thos diabolic slurry of spice and vegetable oil. I tossed the wings until they were nice and coated. I think the wings might have been good just like this, but still way way too hot.

STEP 2: BBQ Sauce

I had two reasons for adding BBQ sauce to these wings. 1) the sugar in the sauce was going to help cut down the heat. Plus that sugar was going to cling on and coat those wings well.

2) The flavour (I went with a bold but sweet sauce PC Beer & Chipotle) was going to work well flavour-wise with the pepper. This sauce has a mild kick, but the two would pair well. I love spicy BBQ as a wing flavour.

STEP 3 - Lemon Wedge

I, I don't know why I thought this would help. It technically shouldn't. I mean the acid in the lemon juice would normally exacerbate the heat problem (in the same way that pop, beer or anything that isn't milk makes things worse when you try to douse a heat fire in the mouth). Really, the citrus blast was to elevate the flavour more than anything.

I tossed up those wings - margarine, BBQ sauce, lemon spritz - and it looked and smelled good. I couldn't find any direct evidence of the reaper on these wings. So far, so good. Don't they look good as wings as is?

So I cautiously bit into one of the wings. The first moment I noticed the sweet/savoriness of the sauce. The next moment, the heat of the pepper came though, but at least 50% less.  It had worked, mostly!

I ate two wings really quick. My mouth was on fire and my nose was running, but it was good! I ate another one and then two things happened: my stomach recognized the heat in the wings - the sauce was mostly covering up the reaper, but that heat was still there. Diffused, but not to be ignored. Then, I got high. I had this head rush of endorphins like I've never had before. I felt good; a little woozy, a little euphoric. I've had some minor highs eating spicy wings before, but nothing like this. It only lasted a few moments, but it was awesome.

This was an incredible experience, and it's what I love about eating wings. I had the heat and the spice  lighting my mouth on fire, with the rich, sweet De-Heating sauce with lemon highlights making some awesomesauce. Also the wings were crispy and crunchy making the texture great as well. Then I got high on my wings. It was simply an amazing experience.

So if you want to De-Heat some wings, adding margarine and bbq sauce is going to help. Lemon didn't seem to do much except flavour. You could also add honey as another way to neutralize heat, but I didn't think it would work with this flavour profile. You  have to worry about flavour as much as you do about de-heating the spice.

DRY FRY WING EXPERIMENT v1

There was an amazing deal on fresh, uncut chicken wings at the nearby Asian market store and I bought a pound of wings to have with lunch. Well I bought 2 pounds. Well then one more because it was such a good deal. 2 of the pounds went into the freezer but the last pound I planned on going out and using the community grill for the first time since the fall.

Unfortunately due to various circumstances, that didn't happen. I didn't want to bake the wings, so I did a little research online and decided to try dry frying the wings. The dry frying idea is that you don't need oil or anything else to fry the wings, just use the chicken's natural fat to produce a crispy wings. Sounded simple enough ...

I had to cut the whole wings for them to fit into the pan. I dry rubbed them with Frank's Red Hot Dry Seasoning, garlic powder, paprika and salt. I then made sure that all the wings were skin/fat side down; the reason for this is that the fat will render out making the skin crispy, but also providing that oil needed for when you flip the wing over.

I found it interesting that in the dry frying process you place them in a cold pan, place the pan, then start heating. I don't know the food science behind this (where is Alton Brown when you need him?) but this is what I did.

After frying for about 10 minutes I could see the skin turning a nice golden brown. I was impressed. Some of the chicken skin stuck to the pan; I lowered the heat and waited a minute or so until they naturally released themselves.

Pro-tip: make sure your vent fan is on high for the heat. There wasn't a lot of smoke, or even that much smell, but better safe than sorry.

To make sure the inside of the wings were cooked through, I covered the wings which kind of steamed the chicken. I removed the lid after the first 5 minutes to reduce the 'steam' effect and help crisp up the skin again. Also, you may have to toss the drummettes a third time because they kind of have 3 sides instead of just 2 to make sure you get crispy coverage.

There was so much fat/grease from the chicken that if I didn't do this myself, I would have sworn they were cooked in oil.

I took the wings out and actually did a little paper towel dab to remove some of the excess oil. There was a lot of excess oil.

Look at that, crispy skin! They were tasty just like this,

I made a hot wing sauce on the side: 1 part butter, 1.5 parts Frank's, 1/2 part 3rd Degree & Sriracha each. Melted and hot. It was VERY good. Buttery, rich, nuanced, and a good kick. As soon as I added the sauce I knew I added way too much for these wings to handle.

I served myself these wings with some leftover fries and extra hot sauce I made. I was very pleased with my meal.

The good news is that the wings were very tasty. The bad news is that the sauce completely destroyed the crispiness of the skin. Obliterated it. Again, I tossed them in waaay too much sauce, so that didn't help. But without that true deep-fry crispingness, these wings didn't have a hope in hell.

I would totally make these wings again. Next time though, I would definitely do these as a dry rub and maybe do a sauce drizzle. There is merit to this method, but you have to do it right.

Overall, I'd say a successful experiment with room for improvements.

Mountain Dew Wings - Wing Recipe

After visiting my folks, my dad had bought a bottle of Mountain Dew for me. We went to a family party and it was put in our cooler, and we came back home with the 2 liter bottle. I like MD, but I wondered if I could do anything with it wing wise. I remembered 8 years ago my buddy Dude and I made Chinese Coca-Cola Wings, a recipe very popular in China. You fry the wings, add some garlic, ginger, soy sauces and Coke (we did a simpler version) where the cola reduces to a syrup, so I thought, what would wings cooked in Mountain Dew be like?

I tried to do some research to see if anyone else was doing Mountain Dew wings, and I read that Buffalo Wild Wings has their own version, but it was very different. So I stepped into the Lord of the Wings Test Kitchen to make my own.

This is a super easy recipe/experiment. Fry wings, add seasoning, add pop, reduce. I tried to think what flavour would go well with the lemon/lime soda - I didn't think garlic or soy sauce. Some spice would help, but maybe just some flakes. Let's start basic and we could always build.

I started off with my wok/pan on high high heat. I added some canola oil and when it was hot enough, tossed in the wings, which I seasoned with salt and pepper. I had to overcome my urges from just eating them right now. I also thought back to my Coca-Cola wing and my buddy Ricky's suggestion to do the sauce on the side to preserve the crispness. I almost did this but thought I wanted the MD flavour infused through the whole wing.

1. I removed the golden fried wings and removed the excess oil. I put the wings back into the hot pan and added some chili flakes. I had to toss them quick so as not to burn the flakes.
2. Next I added enough Mountain Dew to cover them in the pot. It's at this point I need to make it clear, you have to use FULL SUGAR MD, not diet. The key to these wings is the sugar, and diet has fake sugar that won't caramelize like sugar will.
3. After adding the MD, I put a lid over the wings and walked away with them on high heat. Don't go to far away ...
4. After less than 10 minutes I came back to almost all of the pop gone and the gooey sugar sauce.

I won't lie, this does not look appetizing.

I was really surprised when I opened the lid - the colour was a caramel colour! I was totally expecting that neon green colour of the Dew. Instead, that boiled off quick, leaving just the sugar, which carmalizes as cola would. Who would have thunk it?!

I won't lie, I was bummed out that the wings weren't neon green. But that didn't mean they weren't bad looking. I plated the wings and poured what goo was left over them.

I took a bite, expecting a burst of fake-chemical citrus flavour. Again, I was wrong. These tasted just like Cola wings! Clearly the citrus essence boiled off with the colour. Does this mean that I could use any soda and it would all end up tasting the same? Orange? Cherry Coke? Grape?

The flavour was sugary, but not cloyingly so. The chili flakes added a nice bite that went well with the chicken.

The crispy texture of the wings was completely gone. Well maybe not completely; I wouldn't want to NOT fry before this process. So like last time, these wings are not crispy, but they were super tender. enough that the meat just fell off the bone.

What would I do differently next time? I still like the idea of MD wings, but want more of that flavour.

• Maybe marinade the wings in Dew to infuse more flavour?
• Make a sauce that isn't boiling the flavour out, but adding maybe more of a sweet & sour approach?
• Keep the chili flakes. If I wanted to make this more Chinese flavoured, I would add the traditional garlic, ginger and soy sauce.

So I didn't learn all the lessons from the last time, but I did learn more about this process. 

So feel free to try this recipe yourself and Do the Dew!