Ok… so I am starting my low carb life again on Monday and looking forward to wings in Frank’s Hot Sauce. I always make mine in the oven but they lack the crispy-ness of bar wings/etc.
Any tips- just can’t deep fry or add breading :)?
feel free to skip the breading (order them naked at Hooter’s for a try). You can dust them with flour or not, I do just a little to avoid oil splashes. Deep frying is the way to go for wings, IMO. If you are going to flour them, remember to salt and pepper your flour.
Try grilling?
You want crispy, you’re basically stuck with deep frying.
basically. Except that you are not stuck with deep frying, you are blessed with it 
It seems to me (thus no cite) that I heard the original recipe was to deep fry the bare wings (no coating), and then toss with a mixture of melted margerine and the official hot sauce.
Helps a lot, doesn’t it?
As said, deep frying is the only way to get really crispy wings, but you can get slightly crispy wings using the broiler. Put the wings on a pan not on the top level of the oven, but one level lower. Broil for 10-15 minutes a side, depending on how big the wings are. Remember to salt and pepper them beforehand. A very light coating of oil will help, but careful, too much oil will make them soggy, so just a quick spritz from Pam is all it takes.
Many restaurants make the outside of chicken crispy by broiling at a very high heat for the first 10 minutes, then turning the oven down. I heard a chef talking about it on CBC radio.
I like my wings crispy, and I agree that the only true way to do it is by frying them. One can get them fairly crispy if sauce is conducive to “caramelizing,” for lack of a better word, and broiling them. It’s easy to overcook them this way though. Is frying out because of dietary concerns or lack of a deep fryer?
You have to deep fry them. Period. But that’s been established. If your concern against deep frying is health, well, I have to say the chicken wings themselves would be a much bigger concern. Properly deep-fried food don’t absorb much of the frying oil at all.
Grilled wings marinated in Frank’s are really tasty, too. They’re not exactly crispy in the same way deep-fried wings are, but they are yummy.
Puly is wise. Alton Brown has a few things to say in regards to deep frying. The thrust of it supports Puly’s assertions.
Fry right.
I’ve read that - with particular reference to French Fries fried in very hot oil - due to the expansion of gases on the surface of the fry, very little oil at all even comes into contact with the potato during cooking. It is the act of removing them from the oil that allows absorbtion. I presume the same applies to chicken wings, albeit with different absorbtion properties.
If someone can come up with a way of removing objects from a frier without touching the oil, they’ll make a fortune.
I just bought a deep fryer at Big Lots for $20. Best investment ever. So far, the only thing preventing me from inhaling all the fried goodness is heat. Otherwise, I’m your huckleberry.
I’m pretty sure oil is ok for the Adkin’s Diet. If it is, a deep fryer is your bestest friend in the whole wide world. I am amazed at how much easier it is to fry things with an actual fryer.
Yes, one of the first things we tried was a fried Twinkie, yes, it was very good, yes, I expected to drop dead immediately.
(as far as breading goes, on Adkins, many folks use crushed pork rinds and it works great)
:eek:
but god forbid they eat a banana, that could kill them.
I hate eating chicken wings that aren’t crispy enough (urg - rubbery skin). Luckily, I’ve found a way to cook chicken wings in the oven that comes out quite crispy (although not quite as good as deep fried).
I was cooking a large amount of wings in the oven (about 80-100) and I was trying to cook as many as possible at once so I’d have to do fewer batches. I couldn’t fit many of them on the two trays I had (cookie sheets). So I also put some of the wings in a cast iron fry pan. The ones in the cast iron pan turned out much crispier than the others. I think the weight of the pan and its high sides retained more heat or something.
So that’s my preferred wing cooking method now. Lightly coat the bottom of the cast iron pan with oil (I use canola - high smoke point) and toss in the wings. Bake at about 350 for about 45 minutes.
Edited to add: I keep the pan in the oven while it’s preheating, as I’m not sure if it would be good to add a cold cast iron pan directly into a hot oven.
The key is that the instant the food is done, lift the basket out of the oil, give it a few good shakes, and dump the food onto a blotter of some kind. In most of the kitchens I’ve cooked in, this is just a large metal bowl lined with a few layers of paper towels.
Then, serve it immediately. If you’re getting soggy deep-fried food, it’s because the cook either lifted the basket out of the oil and then left it hanging over the oil, or the food sat too long after cooking. In the latter case, it’s not necessarily the oil making it soggy — often it’s the moisture inside the food itself slowly escaping and softening the breading.
Dirty oil (as in it needed to be changed, or at least filtered, a couple days ago) can also cause soggy food. Additionally, it’s best if the food is frozen when placed into the hot oil. Thawed food will come out of the fryer already soggy. We discovered this in one small restaurant where I was a cook. We were getting complaints about the fries not being crispy. I figured out that it was because we kept a supply of fries in a pan in the refrigerator for easy access (that’s how they were doing it before I started working there). I pointed this out, and suggested we switch to keeping the fries frozen until needed, and the problem was instantly fixed.
My experience is exactly opposite. Thawed chicken wings are crispier than cooking from frozen which, for most home fryers, drops the temp of the oil way too much and causes sogginess. The key to deep frying is to “surprise” your food with the heat.
Try reading the freaking book - you can have ‘good’ carbs - the kind that are found in the WHOLE fruit or vegetable, you know, like with FIBER and actual micronutrients. It is the over purified or over sweetend yucky crap that is discouraged.
Once you have gotten down to your desired weight, you can add carbs back in until you hit the point that you start to gain weight, then back it off 3-5 g carbs. I can actually do about 80 g carbs before I start to gain weight. That is a LOT of vegetation and fruits, and whole grains/legumes. And to be honest, I dont think I have ever eaten more than 7 or 8 slices of bacon in one sitting in my life.
I guess I hit a sore spot. Nothing against Atkins. I saw my father do it for a couple of years. I always thought it was beyond insane, but he lost the weight he wanted to lose, so I guess it does work, at least sometimes.
I did see him pining for our fruits while he ate eggs and bacon, though. I am just more into sensible eating than into hacking my body. But, hey, whatever gets each one the results we want.