If Buffalo Have Wings, Why Can't They Fly?

If you don't know the story of Buffalo wings, blah blah blah, fried and dipped in hot sauce blah blah.

Traditional Buffalo wings are deep fried until cripsy without the aid of flour, breading, or batter. The naked, golden brown, crispy wings are then dipped in hot sauce enriched with butter. The butter emulifies into the hot sauce, thickening it and adding much richness and mmm. These wings are served with celery sticks and blue cheese dressing to cool you off.

Most wings you find, whether or not they bear the "Buffalo" moniker, do not fit this template. Ranch dressing, which is cheaper and more available than blue cheese (and less scary to people who scare easily), has become the norm. So has breading. Most bars and restaurants get their wings breaded, par-fried, and frozen from a food supplier. Why? It's cheap and easy (much like the patrons of such unscrupulous bars). The thick coating of breading provides a satisfying crunch while filling up diners with less meat. This has become increasingly important as the chicken market has skewed towards wings.

The Chicken Market: Like any other product that is sold in an open market, chicken is subject to the whims of supply and demand. Sometimes, the greater population prefers once portion over another. For many many years, chicken wings were considered a throw-away cut and sold at a discount to the price of whole chicken while legs cost about as much as whole chicken (by weight) and breast, especially "boneless, skinless", brought a significant premium. The cheapness of wings has increased the popularity of wings which, in turn, increased the price of wings so that they now sell at a premium to whole chickens. As wings got more expensive, cost-conscious eateries found a way to give you less chicken and more breading on your plate.

Even worse, some enterprising restaurateurs have decided that anything fried and sauced can be called a "wing". "Boneless wings" are not wings but dried out chunks of chicken breast liberally coated in breading, making them even cheaper than proper wings. When servers ask me if I want my wings "traditional or boneless", I have trouble not saying "I'll have the ones that are wings".

Now that I've ranted about other people's wings, it's time to talk about my wings.

The culinary school that I attended hosts an annual wing cook-off (in addition to several other cook-offs) in one of its dorms. Small teams were given the challenge of making the best wings for a group of VERY discriminating tasters. My friends Torin and Colton entered the contest and sought to create a new recipe. I helped a little.

They did apply a light flouring to the wings, however they did not use wheat flour but a blend of rice and tapioca flours. This provides a pleasant crisp to the wings without weighing them down. It also helps absorb more sauce. The wings were then deep-fried until golden-brown and tender. Apply a little salt to the drained wings. Then toss in the sauce.

What sauce? My friends created a sauce combining sambal (a spicy, coarse chili garlic sauce), tamarind concentrate, honey, and a bit of water to thin it out. The wings were delicious but lacked sufficient depth of flavor. I added some smoked Spanish paprika, also known as pimenton, to the mix, rounding out the deliciousness of the wings. In traditional South-Eastern Asian cuisine, most dishes combine the five tastes of sweet, sour, salty, spicy, and Umami (savory, aka deliciousness). The honey provides sweet, the tamarind provides sour, the salt provides salt (shockingly), the sambal provides spicy, and the smoke flavor in the pimenton provides Umami. Thus, all things are in balance.




Namaste.