Sunday Gravy with yeah right: Peri Peri Wings or “Adios Buffalo!”

Good Sunday morning everyone!

If you’re dealing with World Cup withdrawals be sure to remember, ALL 32 NFL teams are going to be fully in training camp by this coming Tuesday. I would say we’re almost there but I ain’t taking SHIT for granted after the offseason I’ve had.

Got a dead solid keeper of a recipe for you today and my 2nd of two dynamite wing recipes presented to you fine folks this season.

Honestly? This fucking recipe may be even BETTER than the last one and that’s saying A LOT!

Remember these?

Those were our Creole baked wings. And they are drool-worthy delicious. The recipe today?

May make you forget Buffalo wings even exist.

I said it.

Most of you are very aware of my Portuguese fascination and we will be demonstrating some more of that here today.

If you remember back a few years – oddly enough PRIOR to my first trip to Portugal – I even made “Piri Piri Chicken” right damn here on Sunday Gravy.

To clear up some obvious confusion, Peri Peri can also be spelled Piri Piri. Same shit different name.

In Portugal itself it’s called “Piri Piri”…

but the rest of the world calls it Peri Peri. That’s primarily due to one particular worldwide restaurant chain.

How many of you have heard of the restaurant Nando’s?

I know several of you East coast people should be familiar along with the European travelers of us in the bunch. It’s fucking massive in England. Like a regular goddamn institution. In the US there are locations in DC, Georgia, Illinois, Maryland, Texas and Virginia. I already spied a few locations in Chicago and I may have to hit one up when I’m visiting there for our upcoming “DFOCON Chicago Style.”

Here, I’ll let Nando’s website give you the history:

“The story of PERi-PERi is the story of Nando’s…
For centuries, the people of Southeast Africa have used PERi-PERi to bring fire to their food. It’s in Mozambique’s rich soil and blistering sunshine that the African Bird’s Eye Chilli grows into its fiery best. When Portuguese explorers arrived there, they were enchanted by its flavour. They added a squeeze of lemon and a kick of garlic and turned PERi-PERi into a very well-travelled spice. Which is how, many years later, it ended up in Rosettenville, Johannesburg.

One afternoon in 1987, two friends went for lunch at a humble Portuguese eatery. As their meal drew to a close, they knew they’d tasted something that had to be shared. PERi-PERi was about to make one more journey, from Rosettenville to the world. Thank you for sharing it with us.

As they say in Mozambique, bom proveito!”

While my earlier effort with the piri piri sauce featured cooking the whole motherfucking chicken I felt like we could really up the flavor quotient by just focusing on a single cut of the bird.

Any guesses which cut?

Let’s make some wings.

recipe very freely adapted from MyGorgeousRecipes.com

You will require a pound or two of chicken wings cut into drumettes and flats with tips removed

Marinade

2 tablespoon olive oil or more as needed.

2 tablespoon fresh squeezed lemon juice

2 tablespoon smoked paprika

2 teaspoon Peri Peri sauce. Use Nando’s if you can find it.

1 teaspoon red pepper flakes

4 cloves of garlic minced

1 tablespoon dried oregano

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon black pepper

Basting Sauce

1 tablespoon of butter melted

1/4 cup or more peri peri sauce

Grab your sauce. And since we’ve already pimped the shit out of Nando’s why not bring it full circle.

Procure yourself a shitload of fresh chicken wings. You can use frozen but why?

Wait, are these?

Shit. Get your knife out. You’ve got work to do.

I was really proud of myself right here. Two full packages of whole wings broken the fuck down into wing parts and not even a nick of a cut.

Doesn’t mean I wasn’t thinking about it at the time, I’ve just got a ton of hacking experience up my sleeves is all.

Let’s go ahead and build the marinade.

You know what’s fucked up? I had just bought a new package of dried oregano. At the grocery store we have the “Latino foods” section and there are little cellophane packets of chilies and spices and such and I always get my dried oregano that way. It’s much cheaper. This particular packet was from a brand I hadn’t used before and these motherfuckers left their goddamn sticks in the packet along with the dried oregano leaves.

That’s some lazy shit right there. Be better than that, random dried spice guys.

Then again I obviously could have checked the CLEAR cellophane packet a little closer before buying,

BUT STILL!

Definitely want some fresh garlic in this marinade.

Using the fresh garlic and the fresh squeezed lemon really makes this marinade “Pop.” It’s well worth the extra effort.

Slather that marinade all over the wings.

Get grubby! Get your hands in there and really work over those wings. No unflavored spots today!

Cover with plastic wrap and let sit for an hour or overnight, or as long as you can. These went about 3 hours give or take before cooking.

For the cooking preparation, we will be baking these wings today.

The technique goes like this; we will cook the wings in three stages. The first stage will be in a 300 degree oven for 20 minutes. Then we will flip the wings, crank the oven to 425 and cook for 15 minutes more. Final stage we will flip the wings again, baste them with the basting sauce and cook them for an additional 15 minutes with the oven still on 425.

Got it? 20 minutes of 300, flip, 15 minutes at 425 degrees, flip, baste and 15 more minutes at 425 giving us a total of 50 minutes of oven time.

While the chicken is cooking during stage 2 of that process we will begin to build the finishing sauce.

This part is basically similar to how you make a Buffalo sauce if you’re using Franks Hot Sauce and butter. This shit is so much better though. In fact I’m willing to bet that Franks sauce was INSPIRED by peri peri sauce and you AIN’T going to convince my ass otherwise!

The sauce will be slathered on for the last 15 minutes of cooking time.

Let’s see how they turned out.

Maybe some cheesy tots?

Let me at ’em.

Let’s make art from that photo.

You will want to eat every fucking one of these wings. You will empty that disposable pan and you will build a mini Golgotha from the pile of discarded chicken bones.

These are INSANE! I want more of them right now just from looking at that photo.

I never need to eat another Buffalo wing ever. I want these. ONLY THESE!

Mother FUCKER! 

Pretty obvious that I like my wings isn’t it.

Make these for a group.

Become fucking legendary!

Our fun holidays for today: July 26th is National Aunt and Uncle’s Day, National Parents Day, National All or Nothing Day (?), National Bagelfest Day, National Disability Independence Day and National Coffee Milkshake Day.

Enjoy responsibly.

It’s hot out there folks. Stay cool and hydrate and when we meet again it will be August!

Football soon come!

See you next Sunday.