Good morning everyone.

How is that photo for a nice attention getter?

Hell yes we made wings again. Sometimes you just have to eat some wings and there is nothing that will get in your damn way.

Of course we have done other versions of chicken wings before. Here’s a recipe for Korean Style Wings from April of 2016.

That recipe has some gochujang, brown sugar, ginger and garlic along with some Asian staples like soy sauce, rice vinegar and sesame oil.

Here is last season’s season finale where we did wings four ways.

Did you notice the gradual progression in the quality of the food photos from the first,

To the 2nd,

To today’s?

That’s been one of my focuses over the past season. Bring the quality of the food photos up to my otherwise “lofty” standards. My daughters get all of the credit for helping to elevate my food photo game. Oldest daughter gave me a gift of colorful plates with unique shapes, while youngest right worked with me on camera settings, background fades, close-ups and that kind of shit.

I mean look at one of my original food photos from season one of Sunday Gravy.

Delicious meal – jerk chicken and macaroni and cheese – but a wholly goddamn uninspiring photo. Nothing says sexy like a beige plate!

Dumbass. That looks like it could have been taken from the floor of a locker room shower.

You need better. Nay you DESERVE better food photos and I’m going to keep working on it until everyone of you takes one look at the banner photo and within 60 seconds either sprints to the kitchen or picks up the phone for food delivery.

Nothing else will do.

Take today’s photo. Again.

Did you sit bolt upright, start drooling and say “Goddamn I need those fucking wings?”

You did?

Good! That’s what we’re after.

Today’s inspiration came from the fact that I had a bunch of fuckin’ chicken wings in my freezer. When planning for our Superb Owl gathering I bought a bunch of wings to cook but we had a lot of people bringing a lot of food over already so I put the wings back in the freezer.

Are you familiar with the “Three Month Freezer Rule?” That’s a general guideline that says you shouldn’t freeze anything longer than 3 months. Since the wings were bought at the start of February and it’s now mid April, well the clock was a tickin’.

Some of you may be asking, “The fuck’s the difference between Korean, Asian and Thai style wings?”

I’m glad you asked my vulgar friend.

We haven’t really had a formal discussion about flavor “profiles” before. First of all I find it kind of a douchey culinary term that is way over-used and secondly, I just hadn’t gotten around to it.

A profile of a dish gives it it’s “Ethnicity?” for lack of a better term. For example, a Mexican or Southwest cooking profile may have flavors of cumin, chili powder, fresh chilies, onion, tomato, cilantro, hot sauce etc.

If you’re cooking Creole/Cajun you’ve got the flavors of the “trinity”,  onion, green pepper, celery as well as garlic, cayenne, sausage, seafood and so on.

Italian cooking would feature tomatoes, olive oil, pesto, basil, parsley, prosciutto, parmesan cheese, mozzarella and so forth.

As far as breaking down the differences in Asian cuisines without stepping on anyone’s toes or pissing off an entire country I’ll simplify. Japanese food could contain things like miso, soy, sake, ginger and wasabi.

The Korean style wings had ginger, garlic – shit tons of garlic – a good amount of heat, and some funk from the gochujang which is a fermented red pepper product. Fermentation plays a decent role in Korean cuisine, see kimchi.

Chinese cooking has some of the same flavors with soy, rice vinegar, hoisen, green onion, garlic, szechuan pepper etc.

For Thai I used ginger, garlic, lime, peanut, fish sauce and another big blast of heat from chili garlic sauce and red pepper flake. If I would have figured out a way to integrate it I would have used coconut flake or coconut milk. Perhaps another time. Thai food also has the potential to be insanely fucking hot if desired.

There. Profiles!

That wasn’t too offensive was it? Well I’ll have to work harder to be offensive in other ways for the rest of this post.

Last little aside before we get cooking, I have said that there are several different reasons for cooking. First would be sustenance. I’m hungry ergo I need to make some food. Second reason could be entertainment: “Hey everyone, come over for the holidays and we will eat and drink things and remember days past!” A third reason may be that you want to impress somebody with your culinary skills. “Hey baby. Want to taste my Steak Diane?” And another reason is that sometimes you just want to eat THE FUCK out of something. Like a big fucking batch of chicken wings,

Let’s make us some damn wings already!

Baked Thai flavored chicken wings.

For the chicken wings:

3 or so pounds of chicken wings cut into drummettes and flats with the wing tips removed. If you would like, you can save the wing tips for making chicken stock at a later date and you can feel good about yourself for not wasting food. Look at you! You’re all sustainable and shit!

Salt and pepper or your seasoning of choice. I used Emeril’s essence of course.

For the sauce:

1/4 cup of honey.

1/4 cup of soy sauce. Low sodium or sweet soy would be nice as well.

1/3 cup of chili sauce

1 to 2 heaping tablespoons of chili garlic paste. This stuff

or some sambal or something like it.

Juice of 1 lime.

1 tablespoon of sesame oil.

1 tablespoon or rice vinegar.

1 tablespoon of fish sauce.

2 tablespoons of water.

1 teaspoon of red pepper flake.

4-5 cloves of garlic minced.

1 teaspoon of fresh ginger minced.

Some green onions chopped.

1/4 cup of peanuts crushed.

1 tablespoon of cornstarch and 1 tablespoon of water for a cornstarch slurry. *only needed if your sauce needs last minute thickening.

Do you find yourself asking “I have to buy all of these strange damn ingredients just to make some wings?”

Not if you already had them on hand you don’t. Yes, all of these ingredients were already in my cupboard from Sunday Gravy’s past. The only things I purchased from the store for this were the ginger, lime and green onion.

Find other uses for your oddball ingredients! Another lesson for today.

Let me offer you a helpful hint here. We will be baking these wings in a 375 degree oven. The ingredient list calls for honey and garlic chili sauce and other sticky type things. You can use a baking pan lined with parchment paper for this or?

Get a couple of those disposable aluminum pans. They don’t cost much and holy shit you will be happy you used them when it comes to clean-up time. Spray some Pam or other lube or simply wipe the pan with some oil and it is ready to go.

It’s a little hard to tell from that photo with the pan and the chicken in it but all of today’s wings were whole wings and needed to be cut into the proper pieces. I’ve said this before but the vast majority of the cooking scars on my hands are from cutting chicken bits.

Use a sharp knife and a cutting board that is hopefully not wood. We’ve got some chicken crime scene shit to do and we don’t want to e-coli up your kitchen.

Good news today!

Success!

All cut properly and not a single scratch from cutting! Once you get used to cutting chicken it’s fairly simple to do. For the wings use both hands and you are going to basically hyper-extend each joint by bending it backwards. If this sounds awful and maybe like it would make you squeamish then buy the pre-cut wing parts. If you can’t handle the cutting part maybe your ass ain’t ready to throw back a big fucking plate of wings in the first place.

Man up and get to cutting!

Bend the joint back and cut each joint into sections. You’ll get the hang of it after a few wings are cut.

Pre-heat your oven to 375 degrees.

Season both sides of the wings with your choice of seasonings.

These are going to cook for a TOTAL of 45 minutes but we will cook for 15 minutes then turn over the chicken, cook for 15 more minutes then sauce the chicken and cook for the final 15 minutes to finish the chicken.

Here’s what the chicken looks like after the first 15 minutes of cooking.

While your chicken is cooking let’s get to the rest of this.

Chop up the green onions and the peanuts. I found that using a food processor saved my ass a whole lot of trouble by chopping up the peanuts for me. The green onion and peanuts are going to be used as a finishing garnish on the fully cooked chicken.

Cover with some plastic wrap until everything has been cooked.

Now let’s build that sauce.

Put the honey, soy, chili sauce, chili garlic paste, lime juice, sesame oil, rice vinegar, fish sauce, red pepper flake, ginger and garlic (yes, we are using raw minced garlic) into a sauce pan and simmer over low heat for about 10-12 minutes, stirring fairly frequently. Add in the water to cut the intensity of the sauce and cook for 3 minutes more.

I DID use the cornstarch slurry to thicken the sauce. If you choose to do so it should only take about 2-3 additional minutes to thicken the sauce.

After the first 30 minutes of the wings cooking, baste the wings with some of the sauce and get back in the oven for the final 15 minutes of cooking time. You should be able to reserve about 1/2 cup of the sauce for finishing the cooked, basted wings in.

After the full 45 minutes of cooking has elapsed your wings should like something like this.

That disposable pan makes a lot more sense now, doesn’t it?

If you want to get a rich glaze on the wings at this point, increase the oven temp to “broil” and cook the wings for 1-2 minutes more. DON’T WALK AWAY if you do this. They should brown and crisp really fast.

Remove the wings from the oven, place in a bowl, cover the wings with the remaining sauce and toss to fully coat.

Dump the wings out on a serving dish and top with the crushed peanuts and the green onions, grab at least 3 beers from the refrigerator and serve.

Mother of fuck.

Sweet. Heat. Tang. Funk. Crunch. Salt. HEAT and garlic, garlic garlic. The nice crunch of the peanuts and green onion works out perfectly too.

This may be the ultimate beer food and that says something.

I’m not going to say exactly how many wings I had because A – I don’t remember 2) it was a lot and &) I want to keep that for my own memory bank.

Make some wings people. Try new flavors.

If I was able to coax each one of you to consume wings within 8 hours of reading this then my work here is finished.

Thanks for stopping by.

PEACE.