Sunday Gravy with yeah right: A Very Unfair Wing Challenge

Good morning folks!

Welcome to the goddamn dog days of summer. Hope y’all are staying cool enough out there. I won’t even comment on our local weather because I’ve seen the temperatures raging across this entire godforsaken, doomed fucking planet and wish I could provide happy thoughts and good news.

But that would be incorrect and Pollyannaish and short-sighted and stupid. You all are intelligent enough.

Truth is we’re fucked. As a species we’re goddamn doomed. And you know what? We earned every goddamn bit of it.

I’ve actually dropped down on one knee and apologized to my granddaughters for the shit world I’m handing over to them.

We had a damn good thing here and we, the over-indulging, over-eating, over-consuming, corpulent fucking assholes that we are just wouldn’t fucking stop. We couldn’t stop taking, and taking and taking and well just fucking look at us now.

Sorry about the diatribe but when I see my potential retirement destination burning up like the very state I’m trying to get away from? Well it just put me in a raw mood.

I’m used to seeing California burn the fuck up but Portugal and France? That brought the realness fucking home with a fucking exclamation point.

While it has been seasonal weather here in Southern California so far I know we’ll get our asses pounded by the heat later in the year. Our “summer” is September and October and we won’t just skate on the heat. It’s coming.

On to happier thoughts.

Work is going good. The running two department thing is working out pretty well. I’m actually kind of enjoying work again and not just “going through the motions.” It has indeed re-invigorated me and to see the effort and response of the new crew is really damn cool. They had a few outstanding issues that were vehicle-related or HR related and such, that had been unaddressed, in some cases for a year or two. First thing I did was resolve those items first.

The “learning the ins and outs” will come with time, it always does, but if you address things that impact the people directly first? It gets their attention and definitely buys you some serious fucking cachet and respect.

It’s a good team and I’m honored to lead them.

Enough of the goddamn preamble let’s get to the kitchen.

Part of the reason for the work discussion is because the very inspiration for todays meal was from my second in command of my original team.

He’s a great guy, terrific employee and is seriously starting to come around as a cook.

During the pandemic I would get to work at 11:00 AM and send the rest of the staff home. Before leaving for home this dude would talk about what he was cooking, had cooked or was thinking about cooking and I would always discuss, share and give recipes and suggestions.

During that time his cooking skills really took off.

So when just a couple of weeks ago he told me about some wings that he had made, I did the “E.F. Hutton” thing and paid fucking attention.

He first told me about how he bakes his wings which will always get my attention because baked wings kick ass and are substantially easier to clean up than fried wings.

Then he told me about a sauce he found at the store that he really liked. Went on and on about it he did.

It was this one.

Yes, that really is a Buffalo Wild Wings sauce. Parmesan, garlic and Italian herbs it says. 

I did indeed find it at my local store and figured why the fuck not? I love me some wings and this sounded easy as shit to do.

I like a variety of flavors when I eat wings so I figured I could also throw a quick something-something together with ingredients I already had on hand.

Having no Frank’s sauce and nothing of its like on hand I completely flashed back to various Asian styles of wings we’ve cooked in the past and came up with a Korean style sauce that featured a few familiar players.

Like these.

From the left we have Korean fish sauce – or black anchovy sauce to be precise – soy sauce, garlic, sesame oil, sambal, hoisin and some honey.

I didn’t say it was going to be a fair wing challenge.

Especially after adding some of this to the sauce.

Boy did that gochugaru give a dynamite smoky punch to the dick with its simmering heat.

I didn’t really measure the ingredients just started with a few tablespoons of hoisin and added the other ingredients to taste. 

Let’s see how that sauce turned out.

Perfect consistency with the familiar profiles of sweet, spicy, sour and a little bitter.

Awesome.

A record scratch came when I checked the ingredient list of the BWW sauce and saw this.

Hoo boy.

Again, this is why I read the nutritional labels on grocery items.

Let’s get fucking busy.

Guess we’re going to need some protein. Procure your ass some wings.

See that little sticker on the left that says “Buy One Get One?” Want to know whose dumb ass only bought the one package?

Mea Culpa.

Also want to know who went back to the goddamn store two days later and bought 2 packages to put in the freezer?

Damn right. Shit I was thinking about throwing down some wings later today. As far as wings are concerned I don’t need a hell of a lot of persuasion.

Remove the wings from the package and give them a rinse.

Let’s take a closer look.

I originally thought I was buying “party wings” which are the kind already divided into sections but I can fuck around with whole wings too. Plus these still had a decent chunk of breast meat on the ends of the wings.

We’ll cook the flats connected to the drumettes but we’re going to trim off the wing tips.

That’s looking real nice there.

Prior to baking you are going to make certain that your wings are as DRY AS POSSIBLE! This is key to getting a crispy skin on the wings while baking. Hell, if you’re making a grocery list for cooking these just be sure to include paper towels on the list.

This is not an optional step.

Be sure to fully line your baking pan with foil.

This will make the pan infinitely easier to clean afterwards.

Lightly season the wings on both sides. Your choice here. Some simple salt and pepper would do, maybe some cayenne.

As per usual I simply used some “essence.” Be sure to get both sides.

You don’t have to go too crazy here since the wing challenge today is based on the sauces. We’re judging sauce on sauce action here so don’t over-season for the initial bake.

Now get them on the baking rack.

Important tip! Start with the skin side down, then after flipping it will allow the skin to get extra crispy.

Then into a preheated 400 degree oven. We’re going 25 minutes, flip over, 25 minutes, done.

Here they are after the first 25 minutes.

Back into the oven after the flip yielding this.

Shit man! I could eat the fuck out of these as is! The skin crisps up real nice. Hell yes you could grab a plate and get the fuck after it right now! That’s not why we’re here today however, that’s a different episode.

While I could indeed simply eat nothing but wings like a goddamn savage I figured we could at the very least make a half ass attempt at a meal here.

Here’s the half-assedness right now.

TOTS!

They will conveniently cook during the last 25 minutes that the wings are baking. Plus wings and tots are kind of epic together. You can dip the tots in the wing sauces!

I’m sure you can figure out how to sauce your wings so I don’t have an action shot of the wings being dipped into the two sauces.

I gave both types of wings a right proper dousing of sauce for proper judging protocols.

Time to plate up.

I’m sure you can tell which one is which.

Here’s another angle for aesthetic reasons.

That’s kind of sexy looking.

Thanks for tuning in folks. I appreciate you all stopping by…..

What?

How did they compare?

Do you really need to ask?

The Korean style wings were fantastic. Sticky, salty, spicy, funky, tangy, crispy, sour, smoky. That sauce was born to be put on a chicken wing.

You better believe my ass will be making these exact wings again in the very near future. Shit, maybe even later today. A motherfucking showstopper.

Alright folks, there we go. Another episode of Sunday Gr….

Really?

You just have to know?

Alright.

That store bought sauce fucking sucked.

Deep, thorough and hard suckage. All of the suck. See those descriptors I dropped right up there for the Korean style wings? None of them applied here. That’s not true. They were indeed nice and crispy.

This is a public service announcement to keep your goddamn money in your pocket and avoid this fucking bottle of sauce like a dose of COVID. 

The sauce was too thick, it was cloying, it was too oily. It felt like it didn’t know what it wanted to be when it grew up. The good news was I only had to consume it on one wing and that was more than enough.

It was like half sauce and half salad dressing.

I did not like this sauce Sam I Am.

I did bring the remaining sauce in to work to give back to my 2nd in charge to enjoy.

Flawless Victory for the homemade sauce though.

Epic beatdown.

Regardless of the varying degree of the outcomes this was really fun to do and you absolutely at the very least need to use the baking technique for your wings. Killer application.

Now we’re officially done for the day.

Hope to see you all here next week because I’ve got a real authentic recipe that I’ve been wanting to make for years and finally made it happen.

It will be swell.

Be safe and for Godsakes stay cool out there.

Thanks for stopping by.

PEACE!