Piller's Buffalo Chicken Sausage Snack

I am always up for pretty much anything chicken wing related. Chicken wing chips, chicken wing nuts, chicken wing dip, chicken wing pretzel nuggets. So when I saw Buffalo Chicken pepperoni sticks at the store, I didn't even hesitate to buy them. Well, they were on sale so I was even more encouraged to buy them.

The packaging is pretty underwhelming and if I wasn't already looking at Piller's pepperoni sticks to begin with, I would have easily missed this. I mean, there isn't even a chicken wing on the cover, but at least they have Buffalo sauce.

 After getting this I looked over their social media and saw no advertising for this product either. They do have it on their website - but there isn't anything highlighting it other than an item on a menu list. Way to sell your product Pillers!

The back of the package is almost unreadable. It wasn't until I saw the website info that I could even read the ingredients. I'm happy to see chicken and cayenne sauce powder on there as well as some other spices and even natural smoke. This may contain egg ... but is that from the chicken?

Nothing seems out of the ordinary for commercial pepperoni sticks, so that's good. Even the bad stuff doesn't seem so bad. It's 50 Calories per stick, and 22% Meat Protein. I don't know if that's good or not. I also find it funny that they call this a sausage snack. Sausage just doesn't seem like a snack.

These say spicy, but that could be a gamble. Sometimes pepperoni sticks can get spicy or stingy, or they can fall flat.

The first thing I noticed when looking closely at the package was the condensation inside. That's a little weird. I think.

They were really wet inside too. The smell when opening up the resealable opening was immensely sour. Like sour bleach. It was not pleasant. At all. The colour was really light too, but I'm assuming that's from chicken verses pork or beef?

The size seems on par for Piller's other pepperoni products. They are (by eyeballing it) about 15 centimeters long. It is also more slimey and wet than a regular meat stick from Piller's.

I took a bite - SOUR! Wow was that sour. I mean it smelled sour and the first bites were sour. My first impression - I did not like this.

It's weird. There is no way anyone would guess Buffalo chicken from this. If you stop and think about it, you can taste some spice. You can even taste garlic. There is also a hint of smoke. But not Buffalo.

I will say that once you get past the initial sour smell and flavour, it's not bad. I like the garlic and the spice and the smoke. Like, but not love.

The other downside to this product is the texture. It's tough. The skin/casing is really tough and trying to bite a piece off is a challenge. It's kind of leathery in that it's pliable, but there's no give. The meat is also chewy and there's no give. Even for a meat stick.

WOULD I BUY IT AGAIN?

No. Big old nope. It's tough, and it smells. It's flavour is nothing Buffalo-like. If you make it past the sour start and the tough casing, it's ok, but I wouldn't recommend even bothering. I wonder if this is why Piller's hasn't promoted it at all.

Piller's
Buffalo Chicken Sausage Snack

ALL Dressed Rubbed Hot Wings

Making supper over the weekend and I picked up some fresh wings. But once I got back to the kitchen, I didn't know how I wanted to cook them. I knew I was going to be baking them out of simplicity. But I wanted something different. I could rub them down with just spice, or even put on a coating. I could try and mix up some crazy sauce - but I was out of ideas. I opened up my fridge and looked over my sauces and then my cubbords and my spices. Then something jumped out as something interesting. Something different. Perhaps, something awesome?

Popcorn seasoning. Yes, popcorn seasoning. I've used it before with Dill Wings but I have not tried All Dressed seasoning.

I am not crazy about Club House's All Dressed (AD) seasoning for popcorn. I've had other AD seasonings at theatres that I liked better. I tried to imagined this brand's flavour on wings - I checked out the ingredients, and while there are some things in there I'm not crazy about (or at least I don't think I like because I don't know what they are) but it did have spices (including red pepper), garlic, tomato, onion, fancy molasses (oooh 'fancy') and smoke flavour. That could work, right?

So into a bowl the whole wings went (too lazy to cut them up). Then the AD seasoning. It was interesting that the rub basically became a liquid on the wings - I thought it would be more like, well a dry rub. I used about 2-3 tablespoons of seasoning . . . although I just sprinkled it on and didn't measure.

I put the wings on a metal pan covered by parchment paper. The oven was set to broil at 400 degrees. Once it was hot, in they went for about 20-30 minutes.

I actually have no idea how long they were in for, but 20-30 minutes sounds about right. At this point they looked almost ready.

I still flipped them over for another 15-20 minutes and then flipped again for 5 minutes. Visually I was loving the slightly charred, crispy looking wings.

I ate one wing on it's own with the rub. It was right out of the oven and too hot, but it was good. It immediately reminded me of these chicken wings my dad would make when I was younger that you put in a plastic bag, shook up, and put - bag and all - into the oven (if you know what I'm talking about - who made it and does it still exist?). The flavour is a little smokey, a little red peppery, a little salty. It was very mild,, but it worked as a base layer. I could eat it just as it was, but I prefer saucy wings.

So I took some homemade Buffalo wing sauce from the fridge, added some other hot sauce and tossed that (after heating it) over the wings. Shazaam!

The All Dressed seasoning blended in with the hot sauce. Again, it wasn't bold enough to stand out on it's own, but as a foundation, it was great for these wings. The chicken was crispy, wet and the flavours all worked. This was a great meal.

This was a good experiment. I would definetely use Club House All Dressed popcorn seasoning again for the wings. I think next time I might add even more rub and I think this would be a perfect wing for those that like mild heat and little sauce.

Emeril's Smoker Bag & My Smoked/Fried/BBQ sauced Wings

So last year I was given a great gift by my girl for X-mas that stayed on my pantry shelf for, well a year. It was two Emeril Legasse Smoker Bags (Hickory and Mesquite) for smoking food in an oven (now that I no longer have access to a BBQ). There was no reason I didn't use them, but this past weekend I decided I was going to use them after all.

When I think of Smoking food I sure don't think of Emeril. Bobby Flay or maybe Guy Fieri but not Emeril. I don't think he has much to do with the product other than endorsing it.

It's a great concept. You can use it on your grill or a campfire, but the great application is its use in an oven. I live in an urban environment and smoking is not a possibility except to go to restaurants. Now I have the power to make food smell good in my own kitchen.

Pick your meat, figure out how long it will take to smoke, then do it. Simple.

The inside of the packet has a bunch of recipes and cooking tips. 

Size wize, the packet doesn't look very big, but it does hold a lot. And look at those clear instructions on the bottom.


PART I - PREP PROCESS

I had two pounds of wings that I cut up. I knew the smoking was good, you still got to rub your bird down. So I kept it simple and commercial and used Cajun rub.

Once rubbed, into the bag they went. These were big wings, and 2lbs fit in with just a little space to spare. Actually it was just right.

I folded up the end and the already heated oven was ready. The instructions said to heat it to 475-500 and leave the door open, but a) that seems ridiculously high b) my smoke detector goes off when the oven is near 400 with a brief opening of the door, let alone keeping it up c) it was waaay to warm in my unit as it was, let alone that much heat pouring into the space.

PART II - SMOKED

Following the directions, I let the wings cook for 45 minutes at 450. When I pulled out the tray, the bag was inflated like a little zepplin. I was very nervous about opening up the bag - not from the steam and heat - but from volumes of smoke I imagined that would set off the smoke detector, or worse, the building fire alarm. I let it sit for a minute, then slowly, slowly, opened the back up.

Steam poured out, but not smoke. I mean there was a smokey smell, but nothing that was going to wreck my place. Inside I found the wings well cooked, smoked, and swimming in juice.

I pulled out a drummette which looked really good. It smelled good too. And, it tasted good. The hickory smokey flavour was good, as was the Cajun rub. The meat was tender (actually it was so hot it was almost too hot to hold). This was good, but I had already planned to make it better.

PART III - MAKING SMOKED MEAT CRISPY

My biggest pet peeve with smoked wings are that the skin is not crispy. Knowing this, in the last 15 minutes of smoking, I had the oil in my deep fryer at the appropriate heat. After sampling the straight smoked wing, I dropped a batch into the fryer. And because the wings were already cooked, they only needed a few minutes in their bath.

Oh man, was that a tasty wing. Crispy, but the chicken was so flavourfull. This was awesome. But it I thought it could be even better . . .

PART IV - SAUCING IT UP

While the fryer was heating and the wings smoking, I also whipped together a BBQ sauce. I took some Baby Ray's, some sriracha, a little hot pepper sauce and some pineapple juice. I bottled the mix and squirted over the wings that were tossed in a bowl.

The wings with Chairman Emeril in the background looking on.

PART V - THE MEAL

My supper - homemade Caesar salad, yes, I made the dressing from scratch with coddled egg, anchovies and everything - and the wings. And a Cherry Coke to boot.

How good were these wings? Good. Very good. This has quickly become one of my favourite styles of wings. Smoked, fried and sauced wings. I love the levels of flavour and texture.

 There are 3 levels of flavour:

• BBQ sauce
• Cajun seasoning
• Hickory smoked chicken

The 3 levels of texture:

• Goey, thick sauce
• Crispy skin
• Tender chicken that just pulls apart

Above is a shot of a deboned wing. You can see the crispiness of the skin, the saucy sauce, and the tender chicken. This was such a good meal that was satisfying on many levels. Everything went right and I'm glad.

So my review of Emeril's Smoke Bag is thumbs up. The bag was not as strong as you would get from a real smoker, but for someone who lives twenty some odd stories up, this is the only way I'm getting something smoked. I'm curious how oven cooked ribs would be like using this, or even vegetables. There is a lot of potential out there.

If your looking to smoke indoors, and you want a crispy wings, use the smoker bag, then deep fry. You will enjoy it, trust me.