Just Wingin’ It

Posted by Michael on Dec 15, 2008 in Recipes | 3 comments

By Mike Hawkins

Every decent pub on the planet has chicken wings on its menu.  They’re like crack when it comes to a bar snack, and I’m a true addict.

Sadly though, not all pubs can manage a decent wing.  I can imagine it’s a fairly hard thing to do at a restaurant level when you’re juggling 50 other menu items.  Some still manage to make a nice wing (Churchill’s Pub on Grannan Lane comes to mind immediately), while others botch it to various levels of botchification.   I just made up that word.

Different people feel differently about different wings though.  Some like a heavily breaded wing – something akin to a miniature version of fried chicken.  Some like a lightly breaded wing served dry with a side sauce.  Some like a wing that has only been crisp-fried and perhaps spiced.    Then there’s the goopy, sauced wing served with a pile of napkins to mop up various levels of goopification.  Another doozy of a new word right there.

Over the years I’ve tried all kinds of methods for making wings.  Some made for a passable wing while others bombed.   First off, forget any recipe that boils the wing first.  Some will then have you bake or fry the boiled wing but by that time, the wing’s horrendously over-cooked.   I’ve personally never had any real success with baking wings in any way.  Shake And Bake, and anything that resembles it,  just doesn’t belong in the same room with chicken appendages.   So forget baking.

TV Chef Alton Brown has developed some innovative ways of cooking all kinds of things and I recently tried his recipe for chicken wings.  A mix of steaming then high heat baking, it seemed like a decent method and he certainly sold the technique to me on the episode of Good Eats that featured it, but the result was a wing where the meat had about the same texture as the bones.  Sorry Alton, that was a crappy wing.  I love your funnel cakes though.

My favourite wing (at least lately) is a crispy, very lightly coated wing that I then serve with just a side of hot sauce.   If necessary, I’d go to great lengths to make a great wing (as I did with Alton Brown’s marathon of careful steaming and baking), but this one happens to be one of the easiest to make.

One thing I feel is required for the perfect wing is a cast iron pan.  I’ve made wings by shallow-frying in regular fry pans and by deep-frying in a larger pot, but the cast iron has been a clear winner both with the quality of the wing and ease of clean up.   I have a 10.5-inch cast iron pan with two-inch high sides that is perfect for dropping the wings into an inch of oil.   Cast iron maintains the heat of the oil better than any other material, which is the real key to a really crisp wing that is not even remotely greasy.

Salt is an important flavour for the bird and most recipes will have you sprinkle the wing with salt as soon as they come out of the pan.  I prefer to add the salt before hand, in the form of brining.   I’ve talked about brining before and its effect here is the same as with any other chicken or pork product you brine:  it seasons the meat beautifully and just as importantly, helps the meat to retain moisture far better than the wing can on its own.

The classic Buffalo wing method from the Joy of Cooking is a decent recipe that I’ve used successfully many times, but that recipe mixes the salt with the flour that coats the wing.   According to the book “How to Read a French Fry” by Russ Parsons (a great resource for fried food afficianados by the way), that’s a no-no, as the direct contact with salt will more readily break down the oil.   One other great tip from “How to Read a French Fry” is that your wings – and any other fried food for that matter – will brown better if you use a mix of mostly fresh oil with a small portion of previously used oil.  I keep a yogurt tub of used oil on hand so that I can add a few tablespoons of it to fresh oil for each time I’m doing some frying.

So with all that in mind, here’s my most recent wing in the ever-evolving saga of the chicken wing.

Hawk Wings

1 lb chicken wings, split

3 tablespoons of salt

cold water

2/3 cup all purpose flour

1 teaspoon finely ground black pepper

Cast iron pan

Clean vegetable oil (enough to fill the cast iron pan to 1-inch depth)

3 tablespoons previously used vegetable oil

Hot sauce of your choice (I like a simple Louisiana hot sauce or green tobasco)

First, rinse and drain your wings under cold water in a collander or strainer.  In a large bowl, mix the salt with a couple of cups of water and stir to dissolve.   Add the wings, then enough water to cover them.   Mix briefly, cover with plastic wrap and place in the refrigerator for at least an hour but not more than three hours.    Drain the wings in a collander or strainer and rinse under running cold water.  Let drain for several minutes, shaking off excess water occasionally.  Add the flour to a bowl and add in all the chicken wings. Toss vigorously to get them all evenly and lightly coated with flour.   Pick out one by one and shake off excess flour before placing it on a clean plate.   Put your cast iron pan on the stove and fill to a 1-inch depth with the fresh oil and three tablespoons of used oil.   Heat over medium-high heat (I use “6″ on my stove which goes from 1 to 9 where nine is the hottest) for several minutes until it’s hot.  If there’s any smoke, turn down the heat and wait for the temperature to come down.   if you have a candy or deep-fry thermometer, the oil temperature should be optimally around 360 F.   One at a time, drop the wings into the oil away from you.  My ten inch pan will fry about 6 or 7 wings at a time so I usually do two batches.  Fry them for eight to 10 minutes until the coating is golden brown, turning them carefully with a fork or tongs about every two minutes so they cook evenly.   Lift them out and place on a clean plate with a layer of paper towel.  Let cool for two or three minutes then just serve with a bottle of hot sauce.   Alternately at this point, you can feel free to apply various levels of goopification.