The Wing and I - 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.

Supposedly, their story begins in 1964 with Teressa Bellisimo and the Anchor Bar, on Main Street in Buffalo, New York. Her son and several friends appeared near closing time, and she needed to come up with a quick meal. What she came up with was certainly... Good Eats!

Aloft in a small plane, Alton talks a little bit about wings, mentioning Bernoulli’s principle relating pressure and velocity. The wings on fixed-wing aircraft do not provide propulsion, but a bird’s wings do (Alton pauses to silence some loud avian passengers in the back of his plane). That requires joints, muscles, ligaments, all of which can be tasty – and troublesome. Of course, as aviators go, chickens aren’t near the top of the list; their wings are about as useful as our appendix.

Alton brings in an expert: Professor Michael Lacy of the University of Georgia, to discuss why chickens cannot fly. It turns out they evolved from ground dwelling birds called Red Jungle Fowl, originally from Southeast Asia. These birds used their wings to escape predators and occasionally to catch bugs. Scientists believe this is how the dinosaurs that evolved into birds first used their wings. In other words, they didn’t devolve, they never evolved. The Red Jungle Fowl can still fly a few hundred feet at a time, but modern chickens, bred for specific and desirable cooking characteristics, cannot fly even that much.

The high demand for breast meat has kept wings relatively cheap. Alton purchases a “pre-wrapped party pack” which contains, well, a lot of wings. Sure, he could cut the wings off every whole chicken he cooks for a year and freeze those to collect wings, but... the party pack is far easier.

Pulling out an X-Ray, Alton notes how the chicken wing has three segments, each hinged to the others. The first section, normally attached at the shoulder, is the drumette and houses the humerus bone. Next comes the flat, containing the ulna and the radius, and finally is the wintip, or nubbin – a culinary wasteland.

Alton grabs a stiff-bladed boning knife; it has a nice curved tip. A short chef’s knife or a paring knife will work in a pinch. He fist slices off the nubbin; one may use that in a stockpot or simply discard it. To cut the joint between the drumette and the flat, Alton squeezes them together to open that joint and then cuts down to separate it. Laying the wing flat, he slices the rest of the way through, separating the segments.

To ensure a crisp skin, the pieces must be bone dry when they hit the heat. That means a few hours in the chill chest, uncovered. As Alton prepares to stash his wings, arrayed in a large bowl, a lawn gnome appears to “protect him from himself.” He advises Alton to stash the wings on the bottom shelf, away from cooked food and in a high sided container. Also, he must ensure (with a thermometer) that the temperature remains outside of the danger zone. Alton also notes that he spread his wings out on a steamer to help improve the air circulation.

Most bars fry their wings in deep fat fryers. These devices typically draw a lot of current, making them a poor choice for the home, as Alton demonstrates by turning a pair of them on and plunging the kitchen into darkness. Fortunately, wings have enough fat to deep fry themselves under the right conditions. Wings have a fatty skin that will stick to metal, so Alton uses a well-lubricated cooling rack in a half-sheet pan.

Crisp needs heat – 425º of it. There may be some smoke... when Alton returns, the oven is full of smoke! The fat has rendered out of the meat and pyrolyzed. But while a lower temperature for a longer period of time will yield crisp skin without smoke, it will dry the meat. Alton needs another approach.

With a half dozen fans working to clear the air in the background, Alton decides he needs a two part cooking approach: a wet method, involving some steam to render out the fat. Using his trusty workbench, he arranges several vegetable steamers of the “leaf” variety in a stack, held apart by locking nuts. He arranges the wings on these and lowers that into a tall pot where simmers about an inch and a half of water. Ten minutes (time enough for Alton to put away his fans) should be enough.

Donning protective gear, Alton removes his chicken wings from the steamer. The water in the bottom contains plenty of “schmaltz” – a sign much of the fat has rendered out of the meat. Alton transfers his wings to a cooling rack on a half-sheet pan lined with a paper towel (they’ll continue to drip for awhile). He swaps the paper towel for parchment and then roasts his wings at 425º for 20 minutes.

While they roast, Alton talks sauce. The original recipe sauce, so legend claims, consists of bottled hot sauce and margarine (a butter substitute that doctors have recently learned may actually be worse for people, because it contains trans fats). Butter, despite its saturated fat content, is at least real food (and darn tasty). Alton melts 3 ounces, cutting the stick into several pieces, at low power. Melting butter at high power causes the water inside to boil, creating eruptions. He tosses in some minced garlic, too – warming that with the butter helps open up the flavors.

While that warms, Alton contemplates capsaicin. Just a decade ago, there were few hot sauces available – maybe some from Texas, some from Louisiana, and perhaps one or two others. Today? Dozens of sauces from all over the planet crowd shelves. This might be a consequence of ethnic cuisine, making its way into the mainstream, or it might be the baby boomers. The baby boomers have begun to enter middle age, the point past which taste buds begin to disappear. But hot sauce can stimulate those remaining buds, and what people will pay for, appears in stores. And then there’s the theory that consumption of hot foods is part of mating rituals.

Alton sets up a small table with little cups of “AB’s Rocket Hot Sauce” to test this theory. When a young couple wanders by, he uses a dash of reverse psychology to trick the man into downing three or four of the small cups, over the objections of his girlfriend. A few seconds later, the capsaicin starts binding to his taste buds, producing a complex array of sensations interpreted as “pain” by the brain. As the lad succumbs, Alton offers him toast, which he grabs by the handful. When that proves inadequate, Alton sends him to the sour cream aisle. As he races in search of relief, his girlfriend realizes (with a nudge from Alton) that this display of machismo means he really does love her! She races off to help...

After twenty minutes, Alton flips his wings to ensure an even cook and slides them back in the over for another twenty minutes. While he awaits them, he turns to the sauce. The amount of hot sauce is a matter of personal preference, of course, but Alton has found a recipe that produces the right amount of heat without burying the flavor: butter, hot sauce, kosher salt and garlic. He whisks all that together in a large bowl. Then it’s back to the oven to retrieve his wings. Forty minutes at 425º F seems extreme, but there’s fat and connective tissue inside the wings that must soften. The wings go right into the bowl, where Alton tosses them. For the best results, this must happen while the wings are still very hot.

Back at the Good Drinks bar, Alton serves up the wings he just finished. He serves them without celery and dressing, speculating that Mrs. Bellisimo probably included those as a counterpoint to the fiery wings, and selected them because they were handy. Alton prefers not to stop for a salad (that’s a different show) when he wants wings!

For those who don’t like the hot sauce and butter combination, Alton offers another tasty wing recipe. The idea of coating foods in a sugary glaze has been around for some time, originating in China quite some time ago. The key to success is balance: sweet and sour, salt and spice, and so forth. For the salty, Alton will use soy sauce, and for the spice, some red pepper flake. Honey and orange juice will contribute the sweet and for the sour, Alton goes with rice wine vinegar. Finally, he selects Hoisin sauce, which contains elements from all these teams, to help unite these flavors. Alton adds all of this to a small saucepan, where he heats it to drive off water and concentrate sugars. When the bubbles begin to stack on each other, the glaze is nearly done – take care with the heat at this point to avoid burning the sugars.

Alton allows it to cool for five minutes. This thickens the glaze and reduces the mobility of the water in it, so that there’s less chance of softening the crusty skins. When it’s cool, Alton extracts another batch of steamed and roasted wings from his oven and tosses them lightly.

Share this article with your friends