SCHNEIDERS Spicy & Smooth Buttery Buffalo Wings - QUARANTINE FROZEN WING REVIEW

This is a QFWR:

I'm a thrifty guy. I don't like to spend money (I mean, I like to spend) but I'm fairly conservative on how I spend it. Wings don't change that. At restaurants it's rare for me to order wings that cost $15 for a pound, especially if I know I can get them cheaper on wing night. Frozen wings are no different. I almost always only buy frozen wings if they are on sale. For me, I won't buy a box of wings that are about 700-900g for more than $10 or so. 

So when I was at Loblaws one day, I saw Schneiders chicken wings on sale for $10.99 (usually $12.99) and jumped at the chance to try them. I bought these wings in March of 2019 and tried them at that time, but never posted the review, but I checked and right now Loblaws has the same wings on sale for the same price. And the size is the same!

There were a lot of flavours to choose from but I went with Buttery Buffalo Wings and Texas BBQ (that's a QFWR for another day!), but they also had mild, Jerk (drumsticks) and Honey Garlic as well.

On their website, Schneiders has quite the description of their wings. They have some key words that sound reassuring for understanding a Buffalo Wing: "Vinegery hot sauce for bite" "pucker" "smooth buttery" "tangy blue cheese". This all sounds good. But frozen wings often do not deliver. So we would see.

The box are is both good and plain at the same time. The photo they used is great. The wings are even on parchment paper, just like how I cook mine. I like the bowl of melted butter, the cayenne peppers as well as the flakes hanging about. Look that sauce is just dripping off the far right wing. Then business. 

 There's extra details on the cover; at first I thought "Spicy & Smooth" was a line of flavours, but it's just a descriptor for the "Buttery Buffalo Wings." These are also "premium wings" and that they are pre-marinated. They are raw wings, so they will need to be fully cooked. The instructions say to bake on parchment paper, which is the only way to bake frozen wings in my opinion.

I like that the box lid flips up, and you have your bag of wings, and the two sauce pouches.

There's a packet of blue cheese and a packet of Buffalo sauce. Frozen Blue Cheese usually sucks, but this one doesn't look as grainy as others.

I opened up the bag of frozen wings, which were stuck together. You can tell right away they have a marinade/glaze on them, but they don't look too bad.

I put the whole box out on the baking pan with the parchment and there were 12 wings included. Well 9 wings and one super wing.

I tried pulling them apart but they were too fused together and I didn't want to risk ripping the wings apart before cooking.

I mean, they didn't look bad and while the photo above makes them look tiny, they were about a Medium+ so not too shabby. The cooking calls for baking them at 400 for 30 minutes with a flip, however we were also having a frozen Mac & Cheese (talk about a lazy dinner night!) and it was to be cooked at 350 for 45 minutes. They baked at the same time, so the wings were not treated quite like they should have.

They came out of the oven looking not too bad either. Not perfect, but not bad.

There was a bit of grease/fat that had oozed off and with the marinade I expected a much bigger mess. But they actually were not a mess. The wings looked ready to eat as is, but I had the sauce packet still.

The sauce packet was put in warm water when the wings went in the oven and thawed by the time the wings were ready. I put the wings in a metal bowl, cut a corner off the packet, and poured out the sauce.

The sauce looked rich and buttery, like a good Buffalo sauce should. There was plenty of sauce for all 12 of the wings. After saucing I tossed them and we plated the wings on our individual plates.

The Blue Cheese packet also went into the same warm bath as the Buffalo sauce, but I removed it as soon as it had thawed a bit. I didn't want warm blue cheese dip after all!

This photo does not make it look appetizing. At all.

This was our meal, and boy did it look good. Not a single veggie in sight. I really liked how well these wings looked when being photographed - such the wing models! You can also see our mac & cheese, which I found really blah, so I used some of the wing sauce to zing it up. I don't remember the brand, but I almost always find mac and cheese boring.

The wings were a decent size; I've had plenty of tiny frozen wings, but these were about a medium-medium+ in length and height. They were not particularly meaty, but they weren't that skinny either.

The skin was semi-crispy. That might be my fault since they weren't baked at the right heat, but they did the job. They were also sloppy wet so that also eroded the crispiness factor. The meat was decently tender.

How did they taste? Well, I need to break the flavour of the wings down into two different parts - the wings, and the sauce. Let's start with the sauce first.

The Sauce

The Buffalo sauce was good. Really good. Like, I couldn't believe this was a frozen sauce. I mean it was buttery, it had a bite (a zing, nothing killer), and was just a very good deep flavour. This was an excellent Buffalo sauce for not just frozen wings.

The Marinated Wings

The marinated wings were a different story. These tasted ... not at all good. They tasted like frozen, blah, raw chicken wings. But it wasn't a muted flavour, it was strong. These were pre-marinated but all I got was this raw flavour that was not very enjoyable. It even over-powered the very tasty Buffalo sauce. And these are 'premium' chicken pieces???

I did dip them in the blue cheese dip, and I gotta tell you, this was a quality blue cheese dip. It tasted just like the blue cheese that comes with wings at a restaurant. It was creamy, it was tangy. Very good. But it too didn't cover up the chicken itself.

WOULD I BUY IT AGAIN?

Maybe? The chicken was ok in size and texture, but the meat just didn't taste nice. But the Buffalo sauce and the blue cheese on the side were excellent for a frozen product. So I'm pretty torn. If the sale was good (better than $10), I'd buy them again. I recently saw on Twitter the @halifaxwingman did these on the grill and they looked pretty good like that. Next I will probably be releasing my review of the Texas BBQ so you can get an idea of comparison of the same brand. 7.5/14

Schneiders
Chicken Wings