pork
-
Posts
133 -
Joined
-
Last visited
Content Type
Profiles
Forums
Store
Help Articles
Posts posted by pork
-
-
(Excuse the pedantic tone. You guys weren't exactly the target audience for my writing, but it's food related so I figured you wouldn't mind having it here as well.)
Buffalo wings. Tangy, spicy, crispy, chewy morsels of everything that is good about life.
Buffalo Wings...were first prepared at the Anchor Bar on Main Street, near the corner of North Street, in Buffalo, New York on October 3, 1964. Teressa Bellissimo, co-owner of the Anchor Bar with her husband Frank, had the idea of deep frying chicken wings and tossing them in hot sauce for her son Dominic and his friends. One evening, on a spur of the moment, Teressa presented her son with a deep-fried and sauced creation, and they were an instant hit.In order to make buffalo wings you will need:
Frank's Red Hot brand cayenne pepper sauce. No other sauce will do, sorry, not even the sauce they sell at the Anchor Bar. Not even Franks "Buffalo Wing Sauce" which has fake butter stuff in it. You don't need that. You need:
Melted butter.
A deep fryer. Do not even try to bake, broil or grill these things. You can, and they can be good, but do not under any circumstances call them Buffalo wings. Fill that motherfucker to the fill line with oil and preheat to 360 - 370F (180 - 190C)
If you don't have a deep fryer, you can make do with
1. a large heavy pot, a
2. a candy thermometer OR
3. a probe thermometer
4. oil (peanut is good but any deep-fryer-worthy shortening is fine really)
5. a spider
6 - 9 stuff that will be covered later. That picture was from a 2004 post about doing it without a fryer.
But this way is a pain in the ass and you stand a decent chance of setting your house on fire if you don't know what you're doing, so don't.
A bunch of chicken wings, separated into wing and "drummette" sections, wingtips removed.
What? You went to the store on superbowl morning and they didn't have the wings prepared that way, just whole chicken wings? Don't fret, you can do it yourself. I prepped 10 lbs (4.5 kg) this way in about 20 minutes. You just need a sharp chef's knife or boning knife.
Stretch the wing open like a "V" and cut down the middle of the skin flap to the main joint. At this point you could disjoint the wing with both hands, and cut the wing really easily; but, that would take for fucking ever, so
cut into the joint and locate the big white ball of cartilige. Try to cut through that instead of hacking through the bones themselves. It's much easier.
Pretty soon you won't have to open the skin to know where to cut it easily.
Cut the wingtip off at the other end of the wing section, also through the joint.
There you go. "Drumette," wing, and wingtip. Throw the drumette and wing into the bigass bowl of soon-to-be-delicious wings.
Put the wingtips into a freezer bag for your next batch of chicken stock or court-bullion. OK! Lets cook!
Working in smallish batches, throw the wings in the fryer. How small depends on how small your fryer is. Use a thermometer if you need to, you don't want the temperature of the fryer to go under 300F (150C) or so when they go in. My fryer holds a gallon and a half of oil, so I can fry a pound to a pound and a half of wings at a time, tops.
When you first put them in, they will occasionally want to stick to the bottom of the basket. Wait at least a minute or two before dislodging the pieces, or you will tear the skin. With a commercial fryer, you can dislodge them by pulling the basket out, waiting a few seconds for it to drain, and bashing the basket against the backsplash of the fryer in a stabbing motion. I don't recommend this with a home fryer. Use long metal tongs.
After about 5 minutes (your mileage will vary) the wings will start to float. Conventional wisdom says they are done at this point. They're not.
After about 8-9 minutes the chicken will start getting crispy brown patches around places where the skin is cut or sticking out. This is a good thing. How brown they get total will depend a lot on how new your oil is. In these pictures I am working with brand new blended vegetable/peanut oil, so these will not get all that dark.
After 10 minutes, I'm done. (My fryer was running a little cool. I recall them taking no more than 8 in a commercial fryer.)
Drain the wings completely, tipping the basket to allow oil to run off the edges of the wire. Wiggle the basket to get them loose if they're stuck. Put the basket on its rest for a second.
Put sauce and butter in a metal bowl with the wings and toss to coat. See below for ratio.
The sauce-to-butter ratio is a matter of taste. You will want to experiment. I like mine mostly sauce. I used to have a six-year-old regular at my bar (the boss' daughter) that liked them very mild. Since you are working in batches, even if you make too much sauce in your wing-tossing bowl, it can go into the next batch. No big deal. Don't bother to clarify the butter, but do try to avoid getting mostly whey from the bottom of the pot, this will make the wings soggy.
Rough ratios, each for 1 lb of wings:
Hot: 1 oz butter, 3 oz sauce, pinch of crushed red pepper (optional). Sauce should be fairly red. I usually go with a touch higher ratio, but again, that's my personal taste.
Medium: 2 oz butter, 2 oz sauce. Sauce should be orange.
Mild: 3 oz butter, 1 oz sauce. Sauce should be on the orange side of yellow.
MEGA DEATH HOT BALL CUTTER ATOMIC: Fuck, put whatever you want in there. I ain't eating that shit. Tabasco can be added to a batch of "extra hot" if you must, but any hotter and you might as well be eating fried turds, because you can't taste anything with pure capsicum extract or whatever you wannabe toughguys get on your wings.
Ok, just to make sure we're on the same page here.
DO NOT EVEN THINK ABOUT RANCH DRESSING.
I love ranch dressing. Just don't put it on my beloved wings, ok? Put your wife to work and have her make some blue cheese dressing. You didn't go to all that trouble to drench these fuckers in stale Kraft cheese and sodium benzoate, did you?
Blue Cheese dressing:
2.5 oz (70g) blue cheese (Saga or Maytag is fine, no need to get too fancy here.)
4 tbsp buttermilk
3 tbsp sour cream
2 tbsp mayonnaise
1 tbsp vinegar (whatever kind you like is ok)
1/4 tsp sugar
1/4 tsp garlic powder
salt and pepper to taste
mash all ingredients together and refrigerate at least an hour or three for the flavors to come together. Then taste and adjust seasoning, buttermilk, and/or vinegar levels to your preference.
I usually add a little more buttermilk and vinegar when the dressing is intended for wings, allowing for maximum dippage.
Serve with celery sticks. I wish I had plated some, but I was headed to a superbowl party. Here is some of my output:
They should really be served RIGHT THEN, hot. But since I was going to a party I let the wings cool on a wire rack. Any attempt to "keep them hot" will result in the nuclear hot insides steaming the crispy skin you spent so much time making. Better cold and crisp in my book. To be fair though, buffalo wings simply do not travel well and do not keep well. (They don't spoil, they just dry out.) So you're better off making them when you're hosting the party.
Make sure you evaluate each batch for "quality control."
Enjoy with beer, football, and friends!
-
It is possible (this has happened to me) that your electric company estimated your bill instead of actually checking your meter (based on a warmer month) then, at the end of December, actually checked your meter, realized they had undercharged you, and put the extra on the bill. They may even have split the undercharges over the two months to avoid angry phone calls for sudden $800 jumps in the bill. Check the bill carefully (they may or may not disclose this practice on the bill with an asterisk or some other tiny mark and some fine print.)
Failing that, call them and ask.
-
Ha actually wrote the word terrific. Repeatedly. I found THAT entertaining. I wonder if his descriptions of menu items were as overwrought as his usual writing style is!
Nothing can ever touch the overuse of the word "beautiful" by every single person on the food network.
-
-
What Andiesenji's scale is doing, if I'm following the description correctly, is converting from weight to volume, which is how liquid measures are usually given. This can be done easily if the density of the liquid is known. My guess is the scale assumes the same density as water
has anyone said "a pint's a pound the world around" yet?
-
Don't know if this makes it count as "real cooking", but Steingarten was doing it at home on "the making of iron chef america" last night.
-
Nicoise salad. Forgot to put the egg on it, didn't miss it, it was so good. Joy of Cooking recipe adaptation for the french potato salad. White wine/tarragon/dijon/olive oil dressing. JoC proportions again, roughly. Leftover good seasons italian vinegaratte on the blanched and shocked haricots.
-
This "practice" is not limited to "restaurants." I see flagrant "violations" of the "English" language "everywhere." I, too, "hate" to see "quotation marks" being "misused."
-
I made pho last night but regrettably did not take pictures!
-
I haven't been yet. Pork - do they carry fresh rice noodles in addition to dried?
Update: Yes. Several kinds of fresh noodles.
Also noted that you can get head-on shrimp there, which I haven't been able to find at all out here in the burbs.
-
Spinnish and Lettish. She has a MASTER'S in Education, people!!
Sounds like she has a Ph.D in Scotch to me!
-
yeah that's where it is.
go to http://maps.google.com
and enter "cedar dr and harry byrd hwy, sterling va" in the search box and it'll give you a map.
I didn't see any fresh noodles, but it is possible they have them. I didn't check out the fridge case too closely. That section, although they do sell milk and queso fresco, is a little thin.
-
If anyone is in the Sterling area and knows where the Food Lion used to be on route 7...it's gone. I'm sure you are weeping copiously at the loss.
In its place there is now a "Grand Mart" which is a crazy 80% Asian 20% latino market. It's great! Nobody speaks english, but they have great produce (both red and green thai chiles in stock!)
There are TONS of all kinds of asian products on the shelves. Lots of dried mushrooms and seaweed. Every kind of noodle that exists. Prices are excellent. Meats look good, great selection of cuts you usually don't see. Chicken feet, pigs trotters, stock bones, great stuff.
The whole place smells like fish due to the fish being in the open. To be honest, the cut fish looked pretty skanky. The whole fish were of varying degrees of freshness. I'd buy fish whole there if at all, at least you can check the eyes and gills. They do have live blue crabs and THREE kinds of live snails.
Anyway, I was pleasantly surprised to find it there since good asian markets are in short supply in Loudoun Co. Also, I was really amused when, standing in line, bopping slightly to the music over the loudspeakers, I realized that the lyrics of the song I was listening to were "Shake that ass, girl, shake that ass, girl."
That shit wouldn't play at Food Lion, that's for sure!
-
And for those who must defend spending money on expensive restaurant dinners, here's the merit in doing that: You don't have to find a place to keep them. You don't have to dust them. You don't have to spend money maintaining them. You don't have to insure them, board them, or put them in winter storage. And you can still enjoy them when you're over 40 and you have bad knees.
Also, although we refrain from throwing it in people's faces (as much as we'd like to) my wife and I just use this:
Regular people spend a shitload of money eating out a hell of a lot more than we do. They happily dump $50 a night into feeding their family at Applebees and suchlike crap troughs. We spend maybe half that and get gourmet food every night, and with the savings, can justify going out for a $300 dinner now and again.
I still use the bourdainism "TGI McFunster's" to describe those places and laugh at the people that eat there.
Of course, karma being karma, on Monday, my first day of work at a new office, my coworkers took me to lunch at Applebees.
I didn't say a word though, becuase that wouldn't be polite. Actually the burger and fries were just fine, really. I didn't have the intestinal fortitude to try the "cheap steak smothered in crap" special of the day for your amusement, sorry! 
-
G. Gordon Liddy pointed out on his radio show once that there is no such thing as "crispy." The word "crisp" is and always has been sufficient.
(I disagree with a lot of the man's politics, but he's a fascinating and intelligent talk-show-host)
-
hahaha interesting! Thanks!
I don't know why I wanted to know; just did.
-
I will never again attempt to reduce beef stock and wine to demi glace while drinking heavily and the wife is already asleep.
"Honey? What's that smell?"
-
read it a coupla times, loved it. was looking for a name.
-
Scratch that, I think Nigella and Giada, but they'd have to be naked.
-
Funny that this topic only has 10 posts over four years, considering the author is a member of the forum.
I just found the topic because I was considering "Bourdain and Bigfoot" as an answer to the "what two culinarians would you want to dine with" thread. That made me wonder "who is bigfoot anyway" after all these years, because I am not in the NY scene and never knew. One search, and here I am in the thread for KC.
So, who the hell is bigfoot anyway?
-
I'd go for Jefferson too, but with Ben Franklin and lots of beer.
-
there's the condiment 'bar' I keep in the storage tower in my cubicle
Hah! I am not alone. Mine contains: Peppermill, olive oil, Frank's Red Hot, Tabasco, red wine vinegar, oregano (for italian subs), green death (pickled thai chiles), sriracha, sesame oil, soy sauce, and a good paring knife.
I have threatened to write a cookbook "The Cubcle Gourmet." Any takers or contributers?Count me in!
I like to make a hot-pot out of ramen and whatever vegetables I have at home, with grilled chicken. Whenever I fire up the grill, I do an extra batch of chicken breasts, lightly marinated. I slice, portion, and freeze them for lunchtime soups and salads. Then I show up at work with a package of ramen noodles and a plastic container usually containing julienned carrots/celery, green onions, dried black mushrooms, and any other leftovers that will work. I refresh and slice the mushroom, make the noodles, then add the chicken and veg and some soy sauce, sesame oil, and a little sriracha for heat.
Then, sitting at the counter, everyone gushes about how gourmet my lunches are, and I say "hey, it's just ramen noodles. I got the recipe off the front of the packet." and show them the "serving suggestion" picture.
Maybe I'm easily amused.
My co-workers kind of roll their eyes at my food obsession, yet they hang around my desk hoping for offers of tastes of my lunch or whatever I have. It annoys me, but my Asian background always leads me to ask, "Do you want to try some?" even if I only have just enough to fill my tummy. One of these days, I'm going to grow a background and protect my food like it should be protected!
My wife and I used to work at the same office (that's where we met) so we'd often share my "gourmet" lunches. She used to get irritated at the questioning too. I never do, I love talking about ingredients, etc. It's my nature I guess. I usually offer tastes as well, but I'm not asian or anything.
The guy in the cube across from mine was though, he was cambodian, really cool guy. One day he said to me, "you look like a white man, but you eat like a yellow man."
I took it as a supreme compliment.
-
Jasmine Cafe
Wow, I totally neglected Lake Anne plaza.
Cafe Montmartre has been a favorite of mine for years. An ecclectic mix of traditional french and vietnamese. It was originally just french, but the vietnamese owners (very nice people) have been adding some vietnamese dishes to the specials menu of late.
The dining room is austere and kind of noisy, seeing as the entire shopping center is made of concrete. The chairs aren't especially comfortable either, but I usually only go there in the summer when you can sit outside on the much more comfortable plastic lawn furniture.
I'm trying to be descriptive, but the furniture isn't what you go for. It's a great place for ordering a couple of artichokes vinegarette, a salmon carpaccio, and a few bottles of wine and eat and drink with friends and watch the children play in the fountain.
-
Sorry for the hellbump, but this is where I live, so rather than a new topic....
Sylvanas: best pizza in the area, bar none. Unfortunately went out of business last year, but I assume the Med. themed place opening in the same location will be the same restaurant.
Local chain of kabob houses called Moby Dick's has FANTASTIC kabobs, fresh naan (or whatever the persians call that bread), raita, and they have torshi, which just makes the meal for me. It's a spicy pickled vegetable relishy vinegary goodness that makes my mouth water as I type this.
I was heartened the other day, as I went to the brand new Moby Dick's in Ashburn, to see that it was entirely full of customers, and the Jerry's Subs and Pizza (crap) next door was entirely empty.
I will second the Thai Luong recommendation. Best thai dumplings I've ever tasted. Great pad thai, excellent softshell crab, whole crispy fish... Also, I've seen more than one restaurant thaw chicken in the pot sink overnight. Wouldn't stop me from eating there.
The usual recommendations you hear: Clyde's, Morton's, etc, are decent enough I guess, but I never go because I find them boring.
If you want a burger I highly recommend any of the Five Guys Burgers and Fries locations.
I also love Anita's, been going there since it was a one-room shack in Vienna. Delicious texmex.
Recently at at Le Canard in Vienna. Nice place, and they serve a GREAT duck liver pate with the bread and butter. Some standard fare, Duck a'la Orange etc. My mixed grill entree was tasty but the venison chop came med-well instead of med-rare as I ordered it.
Fois gras terrine was a little grey at the edges, but made of pretty much solid fois gras, which made me wonder why they made a terrine out of it. Scraps? Back to the entree, the veg was ok, the quail tasty, the duck sausage a bit dry.Probably don't need another recommendation for L'Auberge, but I do love that place.
Also highly recommend the Indian place in falls church, Haandi. It's consistently on the 100 best and 100 best bargain lists. Get the lamb skewers, some raita, some chutney, and some naan, and you will be in heaven.
The best local chinese (hunan style) used to be Cheng's on route 7, but they're under new management and the quality has taken a nosedive. Never order szechuan there anyway, unless you really want a huge plate of stirfried carrots. So I'm learning to make my own.
At least the most recent Cook's Illustrated has a fantastic hot-and-sour soup recipe.More props for Da Dominico in Tysons. Great atmosphere, you feel like Henry Hill whenever you walk into that place. It is also not unusual for the owner/manager/whoever that old italian guy is in the tux to suddenly start belting out some great opera music. Really impresses a date!
Oh, pricy, but good, Maggiano's in Tyson's makes some good Italian-American classics. Family style joint, huge portions. Mushroom ravioli is great there. Lots of interesting breads too, since it is also a bakery. It's about the only place I'll eat at in the mall unprompted. Oh, wait, downstairs at the City Grill, they make a pretty good salad with gorgonzola, spicy pecans, ...mmm some other stuff with a tasty vinegrette. Pricy for a burger joint though.
I don't normally go to Sweetwater to eat, but I do eat apps there at the bar. The crab fritters with lobster butter are scrumptious. The chop salad with buttermilk dressing and grilled corn is pretty good too.
If this thread picks up again I'm sure I have more, but I'm getting hungry!
Buffalo Wings
in Cooking
Posted · Edited by pork (log)
I have a fantastic wife. She got it for me, ordered online. She knows my disdain for "consumer" models of just about anything.
it's pretty much this one: http://www.anvilworld.com/products/Product...8719;=50&ID=127
but with the large single basket.
edit: holy crap, I never looked it up before. That thing cost me three hundred smackers!