Tillsonburg Frozen BBQ Home Tweeked Baked Wings Recipe

JAN 2018

We had just arrived back from our trip to Cuba, and my father-in-law's fridge was pretty bare.my wife and I hit up the nearby Freshco grocery store to get supplies when  one display caught my eye:

1.2 Kilos of wings (about 25) with $5 off! Then I looked a little closer ... these wings are from Tillsonburg. I grew up in Tillsonburg! Growing up there I when I was younger there was nothing special about wings and the town, but I believe that Tillsonburg Custom Foods is a big processed food developer now. We got some of the wings and decided to try them for dinner.

The wings were a good size, but they looked kind of funny. They also looked really plain, so I tossed them in a pepper, garlic, chili powder mix then into the oven on parchment paper for about an hour.

After roasting for a while they did not look too bad.

I didn't look at the package too closely when I bought them, so I didn't realize they came with BBQ sauce. I didn't have much confidence in this generic packed frozen sauce, so I doctored that up as well. With the 2 packets I added stuff I found around the kitchen that wasn't mine:

• ketchup
• coriander powder
• garlic powder
• chili powder
• salt
• pepper
• brown sugar

The sauce was thick and when the wings were done baking, I tossed them in a bowl with the sauce.

After saucing them, I put them back in the oven to bake for about another 10 minutes.

I. I am not sure if these look good or not. At the time they look good, but now I'm not so sure.

So after about an hour and a half, the wing dinner was ready to be served. We had them with some waffle cut fries and a veggie platter with some dip. Not a bad combo eh?

I have to say I wasn't super impressed with these frozen wings. I'm not a big fan of frozen wings all around. These were ok - the chicken meat was a medium tenderness; not tender enough, but not tough either. The skin wasn't that crispy, which yes is party from the problem from baking, but also from chicken that is cooked straight from thawed. Fresh is always best, but fresh isn't as always convenient..

That being said, I think I was able to transform these wings enough to make them not too bad. If I had just followed instructions on the package, I would be left with unseasoned wings with generic sauce. By seasoning the wings before saucing, I gave them a flavour base that was slightly spicy and garlicky. Then the sauce I elevated to make it more savoury and spicy. The result was a garlic, spiced chicken wing with some sweetness.

We ended up buying two bags but I'm not sure I would buy them again. With the remaining bag, I will either thaw, brine and bbq grill up these wings and apply sauce to them to give them a smokey, grilled taste. That, or thaw and deep fry and hope that we could get a crispy skin. But I think the bbq route would be better since you are probably not going to get a crsipy skin either way, so might as well put them on the 'que.

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

It's Super Bowl time!

I'll be honest, I don't care about football at all, let alone the Super Bowl, but I do love Super Bowl food. When you think about game day food, chicken wings is #1. In fact, more chicken wings are ordered on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year.

Now when you do up Super Bowl eats, you want something above and beyond. So I developed 4, NEXT LEVEL recipes for your event. These are extreme flavours that will ensure you win over your crowd whether or not your team is winning. Touchdown!

 

 

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

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SUICIDE WING CAESAR COCKTAIL

BACON BLUE CHEESE

ZINGING HOT CHEX MIX

BACON WRAPPED INJECTED WINGS

Next Level Super Bowl Recipes: SUICIDE WING CAESAR COCKTAIL

OK, so it's game time and your crew has probably been drinking a bunch of beer. But maybe you have some folks who don't want an ale. Or maybe you have someone like me who isn't a drinker, but if I do, a Caesar is my drink of choice.

What is a Caesar? You might be more familiar with a Bloody Mary - this is the Canadian edition that uses Clamato instead of straight tomato juice. What is Clamato? Clam juice in tomato juice. I know that sounds gross, but it isn't. It doesn't taste fishy or anything. In fact, I can't drink tomato juice (makes me want to puke) but I can drink Clamato. Caesars are savoury cocktails and a little spicy ... and when you make them like I do ... they become NEXT LEVEL.

There are three parts to making this cocktail:

The Rim - seasoning mix to put on the glass
The Cocktail - what makes up the drink
The Garnish - stuff to make the drink look even more impressive.

This recipe is for making a single cocktail - there is a lot to go into the cocktail, but it is Next Level.

The first part is the rim. This is to apply seasoning and added flavour to the drink.

1. Apply the lime wedge to the rim of the glass to get the edge wet for the seasoning to stick
2.  On a plate, mix celery salt and Frank's dry powder
3. Turn glass upside down and swirl edge until rim is covered 

After its rimmed, add your ice, then all the cocktail parts of the drink. Stir together.

The last part is to add your garnish - washed and dried celery stick (maybe you already used your celery to stir the drink?) and take 2 fried and sauced chicken wings, impaled on a skewer. Add a straw. BOOM - Suicide Wing Caesar.

What does this drink taste like? Amazing. First off, you have the presentation - a forrest with giant chicken wings, a red crystal moat, and blood red lake of drinkable fire - how can you not like that?  This cocktail has a lot of heat here from the Extra Spicy Clamato, the Frank's X-tra Hot sauce, Sriracha and extreme beans. But then you have that salty kick from the rim, coupled with the tang of the Extreme Bean brine and the lime juice. Then you have tomato/clam drink. When you have a drink, you're mouth is going all over the place - it's an experience not just a beverage. Then you bite into a chicken wing and well you are just going on an adventure.

Now I don't drink (or very rarely) so I made this virgin, but add vodka. Do it, and you've got a whole new dimension t the drink. Suicide Wing Caesars are truly fit for an emperor!

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

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BACON BLUE CHEESE

ZINGING HOT CHEX MIX

BACON WRAPPED INJECTED WINGS

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

Next Level Super Bowl Recipes: BACON BLUE CHEESE

When you have Buffalo Wings, you have to have dip, and that dip better be blue cheese. But if you are having a Super Bowl party and you want each aspect to impress the fans, you have to take that blue cheese to the NEXT LEVEL. I do that with bacon, and a bunch of other stuff.

Yes this is a lot of ingredients for blue cheese dressing, but we aren't holding any punches. We also have to balance this dressing out.

Assembling this drip is easy. Having done it in a mason jar was not. I was thinking about the presentation, not the practicality. Mix this in a bowl folks, then transfer to a jar if you want.

The only real work is cooking the bacon and chopping it. The other part is softening the cream cheese to make it spread and mixable.After that, you just add it all and mix. Then chill.

There are a lot of layers of flavour and textures to this dressing. The cream cheese makes it thick and creamy. The lemon juice and cider vinegar give a bright zing to the sour, pungent blue cheese.  Then you have garlic and pepper seasoning. Oh and bacon, crispy chunks of salty bacon. This batch  did not last long.

This may be too thick as say a  salad dressing, but to dip stuff in, it's aces. Dip wings in there, celery and carrot sticks, add it to the Chex mix - add it to whatever you want to add some seasoned, salty, creamy goodness. Usually blue cheese is just used as relief from spicy food, but people will be finding anything to use as a vessel as an excuse to eat this dressing.

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SUICIDE WING CAESAR COCKTAIL

ZINGING HOT CHEX MIX

BACON WRAPPED INJECTED WINGS

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

Next Level Super Bowl Recipe: ZINGY HOT CHEX MIX

When you are watching the game, you need a salty snack to munch on. Yes you can do chips or pretzels, or even standard Chex Mix. But why not take that Chex Mix ... to the Next Level?

This mix is spicy, salty, zingy goodness. Trust me.

This is a dry/wet recipe.

DRY

• approx 3 cups Chex cereal
• 1 cup Peanuts
• 1 cup Jalapeno Ranch Cornnuts
• 1 cup Cheese Nibs
• 1 cup Pretzel Sticks
• 1 cup Wasabi Peas (added at end of process)

WET

• 1/2 cup butter or margerine
• 1/4 Frank's Hot Sauce (or other cayenne based hot sauce)
• 2-3 dashes of Sriracha hot sauce
• 2-3 dashes Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper

This is an easy snack to make - mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ingredients, then mix them all together. Bake, stir every 15 minutes, and boom - you have Zing Hot Chex Mix.

Make sure you use a big bowl because this is a lot of ingredients that can go flying when trying to mix. Use the biggest bowl you've got.

As you can see, my bowl just barely fit all the ingredients. That's ridiculous and trying to mix the sauce into everything is also ridiculous. I put another bowl over the top so I could shake the two together. And you need to mix thoroughly so as not to have soggy mix.

With the sauce and the baking the snack kind of takes on a monotone golden colour. Lets change that up by adding in some green peas that are covered in white wasabi.

That's better. Has there ever been this much crunch in one bowl? I hope your chompers are ready. You have the overall wing sauce flavour going on here, but you pick up the hints of  Jalapeno Ranch from the corn nuts, the cheese from the Nibs, the dry mustardy zing of the wasabi.

One thing is that this snack is SALTY. All these salty snacks mixed in, it can be a lot. I actually took some of the Blue Cheese dip and mixed it in. Actually, I took a chicken wing, dipped it in blue cheese, then rolled that in the mix. Whole new world my friends, whole new world.

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SUICIDE WING CAESAR COCKTAIL

BACON BLUE CHEESE

BACON WRAPPED INJECTED WINGS

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

DOUBLE SRIRACHA WINGS

Two is better than one right?

Double Dare was a great game show...

Doublemint was a great gum...

And Double Dragon was an awesome video game.

So I headed into the LOTW Test Kitchen to come up with a new wing recipe with that in mind. I was in the mood for a spicy wing that had some flavour, but was different than your typical Buffalo wing. I looked in the fridge, and I saw Sriracha sauce. Then I looked into the spice cabinet . . . more sriracha. That is how Double Sriracha Wings were born.

INGREDIENTS:

• 1 lb of fresh wings
• 2-3 teaspoons of sriracha powder

SAUCE

• butter/margarine
• 3 tsp of buffalo sauce powder
• 2-3 dashes of vinegar
• 3 healthy squirts of sriracha sauce
• 2 tbsp of honey

INSTRUCTIONS

1. Deep fry wings.
2. While wings are frying, melt butter in sauce pan on medium-low. Stir in remaining ingredients until well mixed.
3. Drain wings, toss in sriracha seasoning, then toss in sauce mixture.
4. Eat immediately; enjoy!

The last time I was in the USA back in December, I picked up a bottle of Sriracha seasoning. Do you know where? No not the grocery store, or even a kitchen store. Burlington Coat Factory. Go figure. Anyway, this is a great little spice seasoning for all sorts of dishes.

Also on my spice list, I had a bag of Buffalo Style Chicken & Wing Sauce Mix I had picked up at Bulk Barn. This seemed like a great time to try it.

I melted a bunch of margarine (I don't know how much, I just eye balled it), then tossed in the buffalo sauce mix. I added a bit of vinegar and stirred. The mix was great, but the sauce was really salty, so I added some honey to sweeten things up. Oh and I added a bunch of sriracha (Huy Fong rooster brand of course). This sauce is very smooth, buttery and just that nice warm heat that sriracha brings.

I was lazy and left my fresh wings from the butcher shop whole when I deep fried. After draining the oil, I hit them up with the dry sriracha seasoning. These wings came out crispy and golden and were looking good.

I should mention I double fry my wings; I put them in for about 8-10 minutes at 315 in the deep fryer, let them rest, then fry them again at 350 for about 5 minutes. I find this helps cook the inside, but the second frying makes for perfectly crispy skin afterwards.

Here is the wing just fried and spiced on its own. This was a good dry wing on its own with a salty sriracha-ish flavour. I ate part of it and thought this was good. But I was looking for great. I was looking for double sriracha.

The sauce, that's where these wings were at. The sauce.

Toss toss toss and we have magic. Ya that wing on the right looks good, but doesn't the more than double wings on the right seem 2x as good? Yes, yes they do.

These wings were right on. Crispy, saucy and a nice heat. It had that hint of Buffalo style sauce, but the added sriracha that has heat, but a warming heat not a sting or burn. There were layers of flavour and I was just pleased as punch.

Or just very hungry. And now I want to play Double Dragon. Ok I'm going to finish these Double Sriracha Wings and play some Double Dragon.