chick­en wings: A Cau­tion­ary Tale

Near­ly for­got: one thing I dis­cov­ered (sad­ly dur­ing John’s mom’s vis­it, so she had to suf­fer through it) dur­ing my cook­ing extrav­a­gan­za over break: NEV­ER, EVER buy chick­en wings with the skin removed. Or, let me rephrase that: you may BUY them, but do not COOK them. Use them as sculp­ture, or doorstops, or cat food. But do not ruin my love­ly recipe for slow-cooked wings by not notic­ing that the butch­er from whom you bought them has gone to all the trou­ble to remove all the skin. John looked at them dubi­ous­ly and said, “But isn’t the whole point of chick­en wings the skin?” I was fool­ish enough to con­tra­dict him, and I paid the price. Dry, dry, dry. So to under­score this basic tenet of cook­ery, I am repro­duc­ing here my most favourite way to pre­pare the wings. Skin, skin, skin!

Slow-Cooked Chick­en Wings with Blue Cheese Dressing
(serves four)

2 dozen chick­en wings
1/3 cup each: maple syrup, chilli sauce, toma­to juice, black treacle
2 tbsps sesame oil
juice of 1 lime
4 cloves gar­lic, minced
small knob gin­ger, peeled and minced

Mix all the mari­nade ingre­di­ents in a large ziplock bag and toss the wings in, mak­ing sure they are ade­quate­ly coat­ed. Set aside for as long as you like in the fridge. If you’re like me and have a very crowd­ed fridge, the bag method is best, rather than try­ing to find room for a large Pyrex bowl as I used to do with my sat­is­fy­ing­ly mas­sive Amer­i­can fridge (one of two in my kitchen, I weep to say). With a bag you can squish it around and make room.

Line a bak­ing dish with alu­minum foil and bake the wings in a slow-ish oven (325f, 160c, about) for at least an hour and a half. You can turn your oven even low­er and cook them longer. Turn at least once. Serve with:

Blue Cheese Dressing
(serves lots)

1/3 cup sour cream
3/4 cup home­made may­on­naise (recipe below)
1/2 tsp Worces­ter­shire sauce
dash gar­lic powder
dash salt
dash black pepper
3 ounces blue cheese, crumbled

Mix all ingre­di­ents well with a whisk, then fold in crum­bled blue cheese. Chill.

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Home­made Mayonnaise
(makes one cup)

1 egg yolk
1/4 tsp salt
pinch cayenne
pinch white pepper
pinch dry mustard
juice of half lemon
1 cup olive oil

With a wire whisk, beat egg yolk with salt, cayenne, pep­per and mus­tard until thick and yel­low as a lemon. Then add half the lemon juice slow­ly and beat again. Now, one drop at a time for about a minute, add olive oil. Then after the first minute, a steady but TINY stream of oil will do, whisk­ing con­stant­ly until the oil is used up. Now whisk in remain­ing lemon juice slow­ly. Chill, and enjoy. And ask your­self: how do they get com­mer­cial mayo to be so… white? Does­n’t make sense. One of those life mysteries.

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Ah well, one can­not know what one has­n’t learned. But there’s no point in YOUR learn­ing from expe­ri­ence when you can learn from MINE. Seriously!