Recipe for crispy chicken wings
Homemade hot wings. It sounds relatively easy, but why even bother when you can buy them relatively cheaply – frozen, pre-made, and ready to be cooked?
Because you can, and because processed food is usually among the biggest offenders we have in the country, as it is packed with unknown ingredients and often too salty.
So it’s good to know that you can buy fresh and unmarinated chicken wings in most places – or so I thought 🙁 After deciding to undertake “Operation Homemade Hot Wings,” I discovered to my great surprise that it was almost impossible to procure.
It ended with my local butcher deciding to try, and he ended up only being able to buy them in 5x 2 kg packs, so it became quite a lot of wings for my small family. But that certainly doesn’t bother me. Firstly, I LOVE wings, and secondly, it gives me the opportunity to chase my own recipe for the perfect hot wings.
My first attempt at homemade hot wings turned out delicious, but I didn’t get the sauce “sticky” or hot enough.
In this version, I was inspired by these lovely deep-fried and sous vide cooked chicken drumsticks and it’s certainly not the last time I’ll go in that direction.
Juicy, crispy, and incredibly tasty wings were the result.
Ingredients
Sous vide chicken wings
- 1 kg Chicken Wings
- Salt and Pepper freshly ground
Breading
- 1 l Buttermilk
- 62 gram Wheat Flour
- 36 gram Salt finely
- 7 gram Paprika
- 7 gram Smoked paprika
- 9 gram Onion Powder
- 9 gram Garlic Powder
- 2 gram Cayenne Pepper
- 3 gram Chili Powder
- 16 gram Wheat Flour to be used at the end
- 6 gram Salt to be used at the end
Instructions
Sous Vide Chicken Wings
- Start by preparing your chicken wings for the water bath.
- They consist of three parts: tip, middle part, and the drumette (which looks like a small drumstick).
- Separate each part by cutting at the joint in between them. It takes a bit of practice, but you can quickly tell if you're cutting wrong if you hit a bone and can't continue. The tip is not used for wings; I put them in a zip bag in the freezer to use when making stock, for example, along with chicken carcasses and vegetables.
- Season the chicken pieces with salt and pepper and put them in a vacuum bag.
- Place them as flat as possible so that they're not at different levels.
- Vacuum seal the bag and place them in your water bath.
- Cook the wings sous vide at 62 degrees Celsius (144 degrees Fahrenheit) for 1.5 hours.
- The wings are ready to eat, but they still need some steps to become hot wings.
- Find a container with a lid and put all the dry ingredients in it.
- Mix them well, either with a fork or a spoon.
- Pour the buttermilk into a jug.
- Dip each drumette in the buttermilk and then into the container with the batter mixture.
- When you're halfway through, put the lid on and shake the container hard to distribute everything evenly.
- Repeat with the remaining wings.
- Then coat them in a bit of flour/salt and they're ready for the fryer.
- Fry them golden at 190 degrees Celsius (374 degrees Fahrenheit) - it takes about 2-4 minutes. Be careful not to add too many at once, as it lowers the oil temperature too much.
- Take them out of the fryer and place them on absorbent paper.
- They are now ready to serve.
- Serve with a chili mayonnaise and for example, homemade fries.