HOW TO COOK GREAT CHICKEN WINGS

Hi folks,

We’ve got a guest writer this week! The brilliant Ed Smith is tagging in to bring two delicious recipes from his brand new book, Peckish. As a long time fan, I’m thrilled to have Ed writing on How I Cook. I hope you enjoy the words and the recipes and do consider picking up a copy of Peckish!

Cheers,

B x

Hi everyone

I wanted to offer to you two recipes involving chicken wings.

The first – Fish Sauce Caramel Wings – is from my new chicken-focused cookbook, Peckish. The other – Spiced Wings with a Hawker-style Peanut Sauce – is purely for this space. You are welcome.

Both show that it’s easy to cook yourself crisp-edged yet succulent wings at home, without having to get involved with the faff of battering and deep-frying. And both also demonstrate that it’s totally legit to roast-up a tray of wings and have them as the focus of a meal, rather than as snacks to be handed round, or gnawed on post pub: 4-5 wings per person with some rice, an excess or sauce and scatterings, plus a cold beer or two – that’s all your major food groups right there.

I really hope you like the look of the two dishes, and you give them a try. You’re welcome to scroll straight to them. Although if you’ve got the time, there’s also a quick, generalised dive into how I cook wings.

All the best

Ed

Wings are huge! I mean, as a genre of fast food they’re absolutely booming: battered and fried and then lashed with punchy sauces, with a dose of social media hype on the side.

But how many wing fans cook wings at home? Not enough, I’d wager. Which is a shame, as they’re really economical, nutritious, easy to cook and satisfying to eat. Yes, you need to nibble round a few bones, but I’m convinced the ‘admin’ is worth it.

There are three parts to a chicken wing: the tip; the flat; and the drum.

The tips are, as you might imagine, at the tip of the wing and don’t offer a great deal, although they’re worth a gnaw, and work well as a handle. The flats sit in the middle and comprise an excellent mouthful of slippery meat. And then the drums look, well, like mini drumsticks. They’re the bit that remains on the breast when it’s a ‘supreme’; but if cut from the bird, then they provide a good few bites (albeit the meat is slightly leaner and dryer than flats).

The three sections can be separated before cooking by cutting through the obvious joint between them. Personally I quite like them as one.

If you’re in the habit of cutting a whole chicken into portions (see Ben’s guide!), it’s a good idea to start a ‘wing bag’ in your freezer. Once you have a useful number, you could make stock or broth, or cook them in one of two ways: the first, as per the recipes below, is to simply roast them and work on a sauce while they’re cooking, leaving you with a platter of crisp, glossed and thus finger-licking wings; the other, is to bronze them in a pan then braise/stew them, much as you would drumsticks or thighs. Peckish has a few braises and stews if you’d like to take that route … but for the rest of this piece I’ll focus on option number one.

You can get pretty good results just by rolling the wings in a little vegetable oil and then roasting them in a hot oven (230C fan) for 30-35 minutes.

But if you have the foresight to dust them with salt and baking powder 8-24 hours in advance, then the chances of crisp skin and succulent meat are raise – as the salt cures and the baking powder raising the pH of the skin (encouraging it to brown and bubble).

Beyond those simple steps, you just need to have a little think about what sauce you’re drowning them in or dip you’re serving alongside – no matter how juicy the meat, wings are best when slightly glossy.

Something sharp, slightly sweet and perhaps a little spicy works well, particularly if the wings are salty from the curing.

Ben did a whole leg dish a few months back involving buffalo sauce. And that’s a (or the?) classic coating for good reason. You might also google a Ranch, blue cheese dip or something in the ‘Korean fried chicken’ genre.

There are other options, though.

I have a recipe in Peckish for black pepper drumsticks with a lemon and Parmesan butter sauce. As I mention in the book, the recipe works very well if use wings instead of drumstick (typically I’ll serve these with a fresh carrot and cabbage slaw and maybe fine room for French fries too).

Alternatively, consider the two sauces in the following recipes. There’s a South East Asian tinge to both of them, with the first a sour-salty-sweet fish sauce caramel (with both Thai and Vietnamese influence); the second is super savoury, but also aromatic, and akin to Singaporean/Malaysian hawker peanut sauce. I love each of them equally. Have a try and see what you think?!

My favourite chicken wings are the ‘fish sauce chilli wings’ at Smoking Goat, a Thai-inspired restaurant in Shoreditch, East London. There are three things to love: an impossibly crisp and airy batter, which shatters like thin glass; the always juicy and tender meat; and the insanely moreish, salty-sweet sauce served over and under them. Although I’ve heard rumours, I ultimately have no idea how the batter is achieved. And in any event, think it’s unnecessary to try to recreate it. Not least because, as discussed above, you can achieve crisp and succulent wings just by roasting them. The results, with the sauce, are incredibly moreish.

Serves 4