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Good Eats: The Wing and I
At the Good Drinks bar, barman Alton contemplates bar... food! There are fried cheese sticks and nacho platters and loaded potato skins, but none of them can touch Buffalo Chicken Wings. Supposedly, they began life as an improvisation at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York late one night in 1964. They’ve zipped across the world ever since. Alton discusses cutting the chicken wing, cooking it (you cannot just roast it) the use of butter instead of margarine, and what he believes is the correct ratio of hot sauce – and other ingredients – in Buffalo Wings. Realizing that such heat is not for everyone, Alton also devises Orange Glazed Chicken Wings that marry sweet and sour, salt and spice in a delicious glaze.
| 8.3/10 (3 Votes cast) |
Episode Info
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Episode number: 11x14 Production Number: EA1119 Airdate: Wednesday January 30th, 2008 Writer: Alton Brown
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Recap
Alton returns to the Good Drinks bar, where he notes that while bars may not be fonts of culinary creativity, they are places of culinary comfort. Many popular dishes saw their introductions in such places – the nacho platter, loaded potato skins, stuffed mushrooms and fried cheese sticks have all become classic bar grub. None of them, Alton claims, can touch Buffalo Chicken Wings, aka Hot Wings...Read the full recap
Episode Notes
Cards
- The Anchor Bar serves more than 70,000 pounds of chicken every month.
- Cool and dry in the refrigerator for at least one hour before roasting in the oven.
- Margarine is named for margaric acid, a saturated fat discovered in 1813 which doesn’t occur in nature.
- The tabasco pepper is a small red chile that originated in Tabasco, Mexico.
Locations: McCollum Airport, Kennesaw, GA; a grocery store.
Experts: Michael Lacy, Professor of Poultry Science, University of Georgia.
Episode Quotes
Alton: Most folks don’t think of bars as bastions of culinary creativity, but if you think about it, they are bastions of culinary comfort, and many an endearing and enduring dish has been introduced to a grateful world across a wide expanse of mahogany, tin, zinc, leather, teak or oak.
Alton: And what Mrs. Bellisimo is said to have invented that night is nothing short of... (Good Eats theme plays)
Alton: Since there is such a high demand for breast meat in this country, wings are relatively cheap.
Alton: Wings are covered with skin, and that skin will stick to a hot piece of metal like a tongue to a winter flagpole.
Alton: Hi, would you like to try my new hot sauce?
Customer: No, thanks.
Alton: I don’t blame you.
Customer: What’s that supposed to mean?!?
Alton: Nothing. It’s just... really hot.
Customer: Whatever.
(He walks off, and Alton whistles a jaunty tune, knowing what’s coming.)
Customer: You know, I do want to try it!
Alton: No, you don’t.
Customer: What, you don’t think I can handle it?
Alton: Oh, come on, sir – a man of your stature can handle – no.
Customer’s Girlfriend: C’mon, pumpkin, let’s go. You know what spicy food does to you.
Customer: You, too, huh, honey? You just take this (hands her the shopping basket) and you see what your man’s made of!
Alton: (Holding out the try and speaking unenthusiastically.) Don’t. Stop. Don’t do it.
Customer’s Girlfriend: Do you think this is going to impress me?
Alton: Actually, if a recent sociological studies are correct... yes!
Customer: No, thanks.
Alton: I don’t blame you.
Customer: What’s that supposed to mean?!?
Alton: Nothing. It’s just... really hot.
Customer: Whatever.
(He walks off, and Alton whistles a jaunty tune, knowing what’s coming.)
Customer: You know, I do want to try it!
Alton: No, you don’t.
Customer: What, you don’t think I can handle it?
Alton: Oh, come on, sir – a man of your stature can handle – no.
Customer’s Girlfriend: C’mon, pumpkin, let’s go. You know what spicy food does to you.
Customer: You, too, huh, honey? You just take this (hands her the shopping basket) and you see what your man’s made of!
Alton: (Holding out the try and speaking unenthusiastically.) Don’t. Stop. Don’t do it.
Customer’s Girlfriend: Do you think this is going to impress me?
Alton: Actually, if a recent sociological studies are correct... yes!
Alton: I know. Forty minutes at 425º F seems extreme for items this small, but keep in mind there’s still a fair amount of fat left in those little jewels, and some tough connective tissue that needed to soften. As for the skin? It is very crisp.
Alton: The technique of coating a food in a sugar-based glazed has been practiced in China since... I don’t know, since Confucius was a kid.
Alton: The humble, almost completely useless chicken wing shows that it still does have a reason to exist. My hope is that one day chicken breeders will embrace this magnificent appendage and breed us a bird with wings like... (The camera pans to a model of a chicken with enormous wings. A raptor’s cry underscores this display.) If that day ever comes, I’ll be waiting, hot sauce in hand.
Episode Goofs
Alton compares the usefulness of chicken wings to that of the human appendix in a way suggesting the human appendix is useless, or nearly so. Scientists no longer believe this true, although it was the prevailing wisdom for years, and people generally develop no serious side effects following appendectomy. More recent research suggests the appendix plays roles in fetal development, may serve a lymphatic role, and even serves as a kind of “safe harbor” for beneficial gut flora, enabling them to repopulate the lumen of the large bowel following an infection response (diarrhea) that largely clears them out.
Cultural References
This episode’s title, The Wing and I, comes from a musical play entitled The King and I which is in turn from a book (and movie) entitled “Anna and the King of Siam.” In the 1860s, a British woman named Anna Leonowens went to Siam – now Thailand – to teach English to the royal children and others at court during the reign on Mongkut. She kept diaries of her experiences. In 1944, Margaret Landon drew on these diaries to create the novel. Afterwards, there arose considerable debate about the accuracy of the diaries; historians know that many things Anna asserted were simply untrue. The picture of a chicken on Alton’s blackboard/refrigerator wears a crown, further alluding to this story.
Alton claims chicken skin will stick to hot metal like a tongue to a winter flagpole. There is little doubt he’s referring to a scene from 1983’s A Christmas Story which featured exactly such a scene: a child named Flick, egged on by others, touched an ice cold metal flag pole with his tongue, which promptly froze there, trapping the lad. The other children abandoned him when recess ended, leaving him to await rescue until a teacher happened to notice his absence from class.
Episode References
The Good Drinks bar returns. It appeared previously in School of Hard Nogs and Raising the Bar.
Analysis
Because this episode covers a single specific recipe, Alton goes into far more detail than usual, describing the techniques and tools as well as the ingredients. This is, again, a strength of Good Eats.
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