I’ve made a few half-hearted attempts at doing chicken wings over the years. Usually in the oven and usually burnt beyond all recognition. I now realise that you add the sauce afterwards as anything with sugar will burn.
Recently I spotted a bunch of blog postings about buffalo wings (mainly related to the Superbowl I think) and decided I wanted to try and do them properly. I’ve always found people raving about Elephant & Castle chicken wings to be a bit weird. I’ve had them, they’re fine but they are chicken offcuts in hot sauce, get a grip.
The simple recipe given on Slashfood seemed to fit the bill. I found a great site in the UK called Chilli World who stock Frank’s Red Hot Sauce. This is the “original” hot sauce used for Buffalo wings. I ordered a few bottles of that plus some other Caribbean hot sauces and some spices. They arrived within the week.
So on Monday, after buying 30 chicken wings in the English market for €2.10 (no, I don’t want to know where they came from), I made my first real batch of buffalo wings. I fried them in about an inch of oil in a pan (rather than going the full deep-fat frying route) and then coated them thoroughly in the mix of butter, Frank’s Red Hot Sauce and cider vinegar as quoted by Slashfood.
Well Frank’s sauce may be tasty and red but it ain’t hot. I ended up dousing each wing in the sauce from the bottle to get any sort of kick. Hell, I could put the sauce straight on to my tongue and it did not burn. I also question the butter. is it just to make the sauce adhere more? I dunno. What I do know is that they were damned tasty and I had 10 for lunch.
Next time I’ll try one of those Caribbean scotch bonnet pepper sauces and see if that works better/hotter.
Can someone do a margin analysis on buffalo wings for me? What are we talking? 1000%? Whoever came up with them has one sharp business mind.
For fans of “My Name is Earl”, the exchange between the main characters on chicken wings this week was comedy perfection. Dammit these guys can write:
Randy: You takin' Pops' hot dogs outta Camden County is like taking chicken out of Syracuse. Earl: It’s Buffalo, Randy. Randy: No, I’m pretty sure it’s chicken, Earl. Joy: Yeah, it’s chicken. Hot chicken!
[tags]Buffalo Wings, My Name is Earl, Franks Red Hot Sauce, Chilli World[/tags]
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