DELI EXPRESS Chicken Wings: BBQ HOT - QUARANTINE FROZEN WING REVIEW

This is a QFWR:

So this review is pretty out of date - it was from Jan/Feb of 2019 so it's over a year old, so any of the details of the information may no longer be applicable.  

While cruising the flyers (I use the Flipp App), I saw that Walmart had some Deli Express wings on sale for $5.70. I knew it wasn't a big box (750g) but for $5 it was worth a shot. I tried to find more information on Deli Express, a brand I have only seen at Walmart, but couldn't find anything (Walmart online has them as ML Deli Express - could not find out what the ML stood for).

 The only info on this company outside of some of the stuff on the Walmart website, is a sandwich site with the same logo, which is owned by E.A. Sween Company, which seems to make food? But still no specific info on Deli Express Chicken Wings.

So I went to Walmart to check out these chicken wings. I found them, but the closest Walmart to me isn't that big, and isn't always stocked well. In this case, they only had two of the wing flavours left. They also didn't advertise the sale at the freezer counter either. But it still rang up as on sale, but it's annoying that they don't always post their sales in store.

The packaging is bright red and hard to miss, but it's also simple. Chicken wings and pepper spice. 14g of protein per serving, which is 15% meat protein. I don't know what that means - what is the rest of the protein?!?

It's interesting to note that these are raw chicken wings and not pre-cooked, so you need to bake these, not microwave them to re-heat. The ingredient list is also interesting because there wasn't as much weird chemicals as I expected.

When you open up the box, there is a bag of wings, and two sauce packets.

The box identifies these wings as Hot BBQ, but the sauce packet just says Hot. While there were two packets, one seemed like enough for the amount of wings in the box, so I only thawed one.

Looking at the bag, I counted about 11 wings in there. Not a lot, but it was a small box and only like $5.

The wings looked big, but kind of pale. There was only a slight amount of ice crystals in the bag.

I baked up the whole batch by following the directions, which actually recommended cooking them on a baking tray with parchment paper - that's how I almost always bake frozen wings!

You can see on the wings they are already pre-glazed with sauce. I don't know why but they are. They also had some slight frost, but not sure if that is due to the product, the time it took me to get them home to my freezer, or how my freezer treated them while they were in there.

Most of the wings came apart, but these two above were really stuck together! The package was even in terms of flats and drums (with one more flat in the mix).

I cranked up the oven to 400 and when it was good and hot popped the wings in. They cooked for about 15 minutes on one side, then I flipped them and cooked for another 15 minutes.

When I was done, they came out looking not too bad. Not bad at all ...

There was some fat and juices as well as the glaze that had run out and baked onto the paper, but they were not terrible compared to some frozen wings I've tried. But they were still sizzling and bubbling when I took them out.

I sampled one on their own before I sauced them to see how they were, because they looked darn tasty. Well the skin was crispy, and they were HOT in the mouth, but there was almost not flavour other than simple chicken. These were going to need sauce.

I grabbed my big bowl and got all the wings in. My sauce packed, which had soaked in warm water this whole time, was thawed and ready for saucing. I cut the corner and poured it in.

You could swear by the above photo that I had just put ketchup on them, but I did not. The sauce is thick and viscous but still syrupy enough to pour. Then it was time to toss!

One sauce packet was MORE than enough for all of the wings; what would you do with 2?! The wings would literally drown.

The wings were actually a very good size; on the small end they were a Medium+ and on the other end a large. Bigger than I expected from a frozen wing product.  They were also pretty meaty which was nice.

The skin on the wings was crispy when I first pulled them out, but after saucing they did not hold up  greatly. However, they were not that soggy either. The chicken meat was decently tender, and the bones pulled away fairly well too.

SWEET. Sweet sweet sweet. These were sugar wings. It's a HFCS style fake sweetness to them if you understand what I mean. It wasn't so sweet that I disliked them, just didn't think it would be that sweet.

The flavour is supposed to be Hot BBQ, but there's no real BBQ flavour to them. There's no smoke, no savoury, no hickory or anything else one would expect to be BBQ. It's just a really sweet hot sauce.

I was actually taken back by the heat that was present in these wings. I didn't notice it at first, but this stinging bite crept up on me. By the time I was finished eating my wings I was like 'what's going on here?' because I didn't expect it.

WOULD I TRY IT AGAIN?

Ya, I would buy these again ... on sale. There aren't a lot in the package, but they were large wings. The pre-glaze was not needed. The second sauce packet was not needed. The wings baked up nicely, and the sauce on it was sweet, but did have an eventual kick. I liked them (didn't love them) but they turned out better than I thought they would! 7/14

Deli Express Chicken Wings
Walmart Deli Express Chicken Wings