There are some foods that people take for granted, and a good batch of chicken wings is one. There are lots of ways to prepare wings, but by and large most wing recipes have one thing in common: they’re greasy and over-powered with some kind of sauce – all you taste is bbq-flavoured greasy fat. But it doesn’t have to be this way!
Although wings aren’t one of the foods you would think of when you think of a healthy meal, there are ways to prepare the wings to maximize the flavour, crispiness, and also reduce the amount of fat you end up consuming in the end. The key: steaming the wings before baking. Steaming the wings helps cook out much of the grease that comes in the dark meat of wings, which in turn makes the baking process cleaner and ultimately healthier. Best of all, by steaming out the grease, the moisture content of the wings is also lowered without taking much moisture out of the actual meat itself, which in turn lets the baking process add a nice crispiness to the wings
Don’t believe me? Give it a try! Here’s how to make crispy, tasty, and (relatively) healthy chicken wings.
Chicken Wings – courtesy Good Eats with Alton Brown
- Steam chicken wings for 10 minutes
- Lay out some paper towels on a baking pan
- Place wings on baking pan, pat them down to absorb some of the moisture
- Put the pan of wings into the fridge, let it sit for 1 hr
- Preheat oven to 425
- Take wings out of the fridge, replace the paper towels with parchment paper or aluminum foil
- Put wings in oven for 20 minutes
- Flip wings, put back in for 20 more minutes
- While baking, prepare the spice, sauce, and garlic butter
- Dry Spicing: brown sugar, salt, 5 spice powder
- Garlic butter: grate a clove of garlic, toss in bowl with butter, microwave butter for 20 seconds
- Mix in light soy sauce, hoysin sauce, sambal into the butter
- Put wings into a bowl large enough to toss them with the sauce and spices
- Dump in the dry spices, toss the wings
- Dump in the sauce, toss the wings again
- That’s it!
Goes well with: salad and garlic bread
