Wings wings wings

Originally, I’d been told to relax and BF would take care of the super bowl party plans.  BF meant it.  It was a SNAFU with a website disappearing and it being too cold for me to bother walking to place the order plus FreshDirect having a sale on fry-ready wings, plus another SNAFU with that order… and let’s just put it this way.  With 20 lbs. of wings sitting in my apartment, I wasn’t going to order more food.  I’m too much of that hostess kind of girl who wants to do everything and make everything and…. yeah. 

The teeny problem being, I hate deep frying things; hot oil in quantity like that terrifies me; I don’t have an oil thermometer; I hate oil.  Plus, none of the recipes I found seemed like something I’d like to eat!  So finally, taking a smash-up of what they were all basically getting at, plus my coworker’s suggestion, I just rinsed the wings and dipped them in seasoned (salt+pepper) flour and let them rest. 

As for the oil, well, about a year ago, I’d been gifted a brand new deep fryer- nothing too fancy, but it was a deep fryer.  I’d left it in a safe place in Queens, knowing that I hadn’t the counterspace to leave it out in our Manhattan apartment, nor the patience to clean it each time I used it (and waste 2 gallons of oil?!), but heck, I think needing/wanting to fry 20 lbs. of wings uniformly- I think that was a worthy cause to break out the deep fryer. 

I cranked the thing to 350~ and started the frying.  The outside fried up so nicely, so crispy and delicious, they were good plain, just like that!  But of course, I’m not content with just one style.  I also took some bottled BBQ sauce (I recommend KC Masterpiece, though it’s not what I wound up using, since I didn’t have much left) and heated it with a generous dose of honey added, and then coated some wings with that.  This was my preferred taste for the night.  Yum!

My coworker wanted hot wings, and so I took a skillet, heated a pat of butter and also generously dosed the skillet with Tabasco (Original), then tossed the wings in to coat.  This proved too hot for him, and he resorted to just dashing some Tabasco on his wings individually (and got made fun of for the rest of the night, while his team lost with a huge thunk). 

For the last 5 lbs., my sister was constantly telling me how good her husband’s aunt/cousin (I’m not sure which)’s “Double Dipped Wings” were so I decided to give them a go.  For the sake of preserving relationships, I am not going to give you the measurements, but I can tell you what went into the marinade- soy sauce, sugar, garlic, scallions, and sesame oil.  I marinated mine for 24+ hours (due to circumstances) and half of them, I dredged in seasoned flour before deep frying them much the same way I did the regular wings.  Personally, this mixture proved too sweet for me, though BF liked them a lot and devoured the ones I fried.

But I only deep fried half of them; pictured above is the same recipe baked for an hour or so (until cooked through) at 375 degree oven.  Stickier with a nice caramelization on top, but still yummy… with rice and veggies.  Which is what I had for lunch today; made some rice in my small rice cooker, added some wings halfway through the cooking process (you can shred the meat instead of keeping them whole), and steamed some Napa cabbage on top in the steamer basket.

Happy eating!  (I say this knowing that the vast majority of the 20 lbs. of wings is behind me and I can start eating other foods now…)