Sunday Gravy with yeah right: Sweet and Spicy Thai Style Chicken Wings

Good morning everyone!

Hope everybody remains healthy and masked up out there.

Here’s a little tidbit for you: the NFL season is supposed to start in just a little over 5 weeks.

Holy shit.

That happened fast. I say “supposed” to start for obvious reasons.

I hope I’m not being overly pessimistic about this but I’m having a hard time envisioning the season playing out as currently outlined. Shit is too out of control out there.

Take a look at what’s going on with baseball and that should be a good indicator if this season will reach a conclusion uninterrupted.

By the way? The Miami Marlins need to be fucking contracted for deciding as a team to play a baseball game against the Phillies when they KNEW they had infected players.

Anyway, with the approaching NFL season you have a lot of action coming up on our little corner of the internet here at [DFO]. We will have our NFL team previews – one for every team! – written by our usual gang of idiots. We will also have some season predictions and of course you have our world famous gameday open threads, complete with Scotchys’ Hobo Killin’ Time!

See! Reasons for optimism in a fully fucked up world.

As we get closer to the season kick-off I like to start giving out some possible game day food ideas that are football friendly and reasonably easy to prepare in case you want to try one of these recipes for an NFL game day.

Last week you may remember that we did “grilled gochujang ribs”

which absolutely qualifies as a possible game day menu item.

I consider a dish “game day” worthy if it’s fairly simple in preparation which allows you to keep an eye on the game, also if it can even be prepped in advance and brought to a tailgate party to finish.

Remember tailgating?

No?

It’s this thing where a bunch of fans get together and cook and drink?

Nothing?

Goddamn pandemic.

Another reason why I brought up last weeks’ dish is because of its flavor profile and ethnic flavor influence. That shit was so fucking delicious that I couldn’t get it out of my head. The combination of lime, garlic, scallions, ginger and the heat from the sauces? Fucking delightful.

I think I was still eating some of those ribs when I started thinking about other types of protein that would benefit from a little Asian influence.

My brain went DIRECTLY to chicken wings.

All y’all regular readers know of my affinity for the wing. Shit man, I’m not even linking to all of the previous wing recipes, just use that handy search mode up there on the top of the page if you want to browse my wing recipe collection.

Now there’s one flavor we haven’t done before that may actually be one of the best recipes yet.

Sweet and Spicy Thai Style Wings!

Got your attention didn’t it?

Not only insanely delicious but ridiculously simple and as game day friendly as possible.

These could easily be pre-cooked, transported to a gathering and then finished on the grill or you can just cook them in the oven at home.

You’re gonna love this shit.

Let’s get after this bastard.

Sweet and Spicy Thai Style Wings!

A couple of pounds of chicken wings

3/4 cup of Sweet and Spicy Thai Sauce

3 large tablespoons of chili garlic paste

2 tablespoons of soy sauce.

1 tablespoon of sesame oil

5 scallions chopped plus 2 more scallions minced – for garnish

6 cloves of garlic chopped

Juice of 1 lime

(1) 2″ piece of ginger chopped and sliced.

Salt and pepper to taste.

Recommended equipment:

Yep, one of those disposable pans again. Trust me.

Todays preparation is going to be all oven cooking. You could very easily do the pre-cook in the oven and do the final “sauced” step on the grill and it would be incredible.

I was just being lazy today.

First thing to do is put on your PPE and head down to the grocery and procure your ass some wings.

Hey now.

It’s going to be important to let the wings get to room temperature and then get ’em in the oven. Creates a more consistent cook for each wing.

Some of these next steps will look eerily familiar to you if you read the gochujang rib recipe. Like I said, shit got stuck in my head.

We are once again going to be mincing the garlic, ginger, scallions and lime juice together as the base for the sauce.

Here they are now!

Since we will be pulsing these together in a food processor there isn’t any need to stress too hard over mincing them first.

First noticeable data point when comparing to last weeks rib recipe: there is A LOT more garlic in this recipe. A fuckload more. We want the garlic to be front and center and smacking the bejesus out of your tongue with each bite.

Peel and slice the ginger kind of thin. Ginger is the more firm of the components and it will blend easier this way.

Like that! That’s real nice right there.

Break out your handy-goddamn-dandy food processor and get the garlic, ginger, scallions and lime juice in there.

Then we will blend up.

This will only require a couple of pulses. You will get a serious olfactory assault when you take the lid off of the food processor. Ginger and lime notes and THERE IT IS! Garlic dammit!

Now let’s get our sauces to the party.

Most of you should be familiar with this baby.

That’s chili garlic sauce from Huy Fong foods which is located right here in Southern California. Yes, this is the same company that makes sriracha.

You eagle-eyed readers may have noticed that I don’t use sriracha much in my recipe collection.

Like fucking ever.

I’m fine with sriracha and harbor no grudges against its use. It just feels like it’s been over-saturated at this point. Every goddamn recipe on Diners, Drive-ins and Dives uses sriracha and honestly it feels kind of lazy.

Make your own damn sauce instead of using the same shit everybody else is currently using. Or use that chili garlic sauce above instead. Another option would be sambal oelek. Same basic shit without the name caché of sriracha.

It will greatly eliminate the “poseur” potential when discussing the preparation of your wings.

Our next sauce may look exotic at first but I bet you can easily find this in your ethnic “Asian” food section of your regular old grocery store.

That’s our sweet Thai chili sauce. Combine the 2 chili sauces together and mix.

Now add in the sesame oil and the minced ginger, garlic, scallion, lime concoction and mix it up well.

Oh baby look at all of that garlic!

Now its time to assemble.

Preheat your oven to 365 degrees. Yes three SIXTY five.

Take your disposable aluminum pan and place it on top of a much sturdier baking sheet. Flimsy fucking thing, remember? Lube that pan up well with some oil. Any type of vegetable oil will do.

Now get your chicken in there.

Yes there are also 2 boneless skinless chicken breasts in that pan. That’s cuz one of todays meal consumers doesn’t like eating chicken off the bone for some damn reason.

I actually thought this was a singularly odd food fetish to have but as it turns out it’s not that uncommon at all.

The hell happened to us, man? We used to be a more adventurous species.

Anyway, season the chicken – both sides – with salt and pepper and into the preheated oven they go.

The cooking process goes like this: 15 minutes and flip. Fifteen minutes and flip. Sauce all over. Fifteen minutes to finish.

Here they are after the first flip

And here’s where we stand after the 2nd flip right before saucing.

Looking kinda pale ain’t they?

Well, let’s sauce those fuckers up.

Do a bunch of mixing and stirring here. We want each piece to be fully coated and garlic saturated.

Finally we get ’em out of the oven after the last 15 minutes of cooking time.

Boom!

For service mince up those other 2 scallions. Fine mince here. Definitely for presentation but it also adds a nice oniony burst to the wings.

Grab a plate, get some wings on there, scatter some scallions on top.

Go to fucking town!

I’m not going to give you any side dish recommendations or full menu ideas because sometimes you just need a big ass plate of wings and a shit ton of beers.

We’ve got this little mom and pop owned pizza place right around the corner and they make a really kickass plate of seasoned fries so we grabbed a couple of orders of those to serve alongside.

I never once said we were eating healthy today. Trust me, if we’re cooking healthy you will know from the goddamn get-go.

Grab an entire roll of paper towels and dive in face first.

All of the words in the title of the recipe are there. Sweet? Check! Spicy? Shit yes. But you already know what’s taking all of the food glory. Damn right it’s the garlic. The punch of the fresh garlic is all over this plate of wings. Soo fucking good and sooo fucking perfect with many many cold frosty beverages.

This is about as easy a recipe as I’ll give you and when you compare ease of preparation with overall taste satisfaction?

This baby is a goddamn winner.

As always, thanks for spending some time with Sunday Gravy. You folks are my weekly inspiration for this feature.

Be safe. Be well. Be smart. Wear a goddamn mask and wash your filthy hands you heathens!

Take care.

PEACE and UNITY!