Good news for those who don't have a deep fryer, or can't bring themselves to deep fry food, or just don't want to deal with the mess of deep frying food. Slate correspondent Mary Mycio argues that chicken wings should always be baked, not fried. And not for health reasons, but because they taste better.
Personally I have to agree. Baked chicken is plenty greasy, especially once you add some Buffalo sauce. Deep fried wings just add a whole layer of greasy dripping fat that pushes the whole thing over the top. And in my experience, the sauce sticks better to baked wings (which, being drier, offer more traction) than it does to deep fried wings.
Deep frying is also a messy hassle, who needs it? And unless you have a very big deep fryer indeed, you can bake more wings in the oven per batch than you can fry them. That's a pretty important consideration if you are planning to make Buffalo wings for a party.
Now admittedly, I have to back off endorsing some of Mycio's other statements. Namely that she prefers her wings be "so chewy it's almost - but not quite - like jerky," or that although she likes Buffalo sauce she usually skips it in favor of ketchup. (Gross!)
Ideally your baked wings will still be juicy and tender and fall off the bone, the perfect texture for Buffalo wings. You should be able to basically slurp the meat right off the bone. Here's hoping you don't have to gnaw it off like jerky (ew). To help prevent overcooking your wings, be sure to use a meat thermometer and pull those babies out as soon as they reach 165 degrees.
In order to avoid overcooking, I would also skip Mycio's step of microwaving the chicken wings. That's just weird. Here's a baked chicken wings recipe straight from the source, the official Frank's Buffalo Wings recipe. It's delicious, and won't leave you with "chicken jerky."
Image courtesy Flickr/goodiesfirst
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