PC Gochujang Sweet & Spicy Chicken Wings

The biggest trend in chicken wings in the last year or two has been Korean chicken wings. In most cases, this has been focused at Korean fried chicken but North America has slowly been exploring gochujang (a spicy pepper paste). President's Choice has always been pretty bold in trying new flavours and I was excited to see them take on Gochujang wings.

These wings were on sale which prompted me to get them to try. They were on for $10, when they average about $13-15.

The box had some interesting points on it: 18% meat protein (only 18?), tips removed (never seen this advertised on frozen wings) and that the box says 907g but emphasize that there are 14 pieces minimum.

Within the box is the bag of wings, a packet of the gochujung sauce, and a bag of toasted sesame seeds. Because there is only one sauce pack and the super light seeds, that means there is more wing meat than most of PC frozen wings.

I opened the bag and noticed there had been a little bit of freezer burning. There were a lot of wings and I ended up not making the whole bag, which meant I was going to be using all the sauce on one round of wings.

The wings are breaded and fully cooked, so they only take about 20 minutes to cook (the box says 30-35 minutes at 425 degrees, but I didn't need that long). I flopped them at the 10 minute mark. While this was cooking, I put the frozen bag of sauce in warm water to thaw.

These seemed to be bigger than average sized PC frozen wings, a pleasant surprise for sure.

Once the wings were done I put them in a bowl and cut open the gochujang sauce packet and drizzled it over the wings.

The sauce itself was viscous but not that thick. It streamed pretty well out and over the wings. Because I didn't cook all the wings, only about 9, there was ample sauce. I tossed them up to make sure the wings were well coated.

I cracked open the sesame seeds and maybe used 1/3 of the pack, and even that was more than enough. The seeds feel more aesthetic than anything, but my wings did look a little more elevated in status than old fashioned hot wings.

Visually, these wings looked pretty exciting.

These were very meaty wings. Yes they had breading, but they were still big wings. The breading was ok, and seemed to be double breaded (like a Korean Fried Chicken piece) but the finished cooked wing didn't give a really nice crispy skin.

The meat was tender enough. The chicken overall was just ok. But these wings were going to have to rest on it's sauce. And the sauce was where the trouble really began. The sauce was good and not good at the same time.

There was something very bitter in it - it just ruined the whole flavour profile. The sauce is sweet, it's slightly spicy, but that sour, bitter flavour just wrecked the whole thing for me. Yech! I don't know if it's off garlic or what specifically it was but no thank you.

Would I buy this again?

Nope.

The double breaded chicken was ok, the sesame seeds are a nice touch, but the sauce has something in it that is bitter and sour and wrecks the fun for the sweet/spicy side of the sauce. As someone who has eaten Korean wings, and made Korean wings, these don't taste like they should and are a big thumbs down for me. Too bad.

President's Choice World of Flavours Sweet & Spicy Gochujang Chicken Wings