Duvel

I understand that Frank’s is the “traditional” hot sauce used. I checked and Frank’s seems to be much milder than - say - Tabasco. Is is desirable to have a milder sauce for this - which then even gets more muted with equal (?) parts butter ? And how does that fit together with the trend to have extra hot stuff drizzled over your wings ?

I will need to make the deboned chicken wing at least once for this Cook-Off … your version sounds like a perfect opportunity 🤗

Wow - I am very impressed and even more happy with all the submissions we’ve had already in this Cook-Off. I know for certain that quite some members working behind the scenes on “their” wings, so we will be seeing more exciting versions in the upcoming weeks 🥳 … One thing that I found very interesting is that so far we haven’t had any “classic” hot wings (if that label exists) and no discussion on the topic of hot sauces / butter / you name it that goes on these. Maybe that’s just my personal curiosity and for you it’s more of a standard item (or am I being biased here) ? After all, how many food items have spawned an entire talkshow, running now for 17 seasons: (other than Gordon’s wimpy performance here, check out Padma’s take on it or the episode with Will Ferrell) So - how do you prepare & serve your classic hot wings ?

Delicious, but not the chicken part of the month 😝

I am sure there are minor differences, but Brezel is simply the German word for what you would call a (soft) pretzel …

Lazy weekday dinner: Wurstsalat, Brezel, beer …

Yes, it qualifies 🥳 I am looking forward to see what you make out of these …

Yeap - that’s the stuff. Fantastic !

If that isn’t a sign to participate in …

Giuvetsi of lamb, that I prepared already on Sunday, accompanied by potato Knödel instead of the usual Kitharaki because the little one asked for it. Works pretty well, too …

Here are some blends I like to put on meat (mostly) … A well balanced “italian” mix, popular in German households A spicy and complex Turkish mix, meant for minced meat, but great on any kind of grilled stuff … ”Chinese BBQ” Technically “just” Shichimi Togarashi, bit with a strong yuzu-mandarine note. Great on grilled poultry.

Damn straight - I pity the fool that is satisfied with 5 spices … This always reminds me of this scene … “8 spices ? Some must be double …”

Dynamite sauce ?!

Sure: Equal parts whole Sichuan pepper, cumin seeds, (brown) sugar, MSG “substitute”*, chili powder, salt. Plus 1/3 part of fennel seeds, broken star anise, black cardamom, cloves and Kampot pepper corns** All toasted in a hot pan and pulverized in a suitable blender. * MSG “substitute”: 1 part dried mushrooms, 1/2 part Kombu, 1/5 part MSG (my addition) ** my addition

It does. As @chefmd explained, the “stock” made from boiling onion skins is not only colored, but is used (at least in Russia and Germany) to color eggs naturally. Red onions work great, too. It’s a nice activity for kids …

I do the same for chicken soup …

So, tonight … Mission Chinese’s Chongqing chicken wings (pp. 135). Part of the story is that you pretreat the wings to achieve the perfect crisp wing. This idea goes pretty much along the lines what @Smithy has reported here: precooking the chicken and getting the desired crispiness in a second fry. Same idea as for french fries, actually. Bowien takes the idea one step further and tries to dry out / denature the skin by freezing the precooked wings overnight. Let’s see … The wings get salted, coated in oil and baked in a 180 oC oven for about 15 min without browning. After cooling the precooked wings get frozen in an open sheet pan overnight. 2h before serving they are taken out and thaw on the counter top. Meanwhile the spice mixture gets prepared. The recipe calls for a natural MSG substitute made from dried mushrooms & kombu, that I made in situ with the rest. I added some MSG just to make sure 😝. Spices get toasted and pulverized. The wings are fried, tossed in a generous amount of the spice mix and served with just toasted chilis. Manöverkritik: This is a great dish. Because of the fantastic spice mix. It hit all the right notes, the combination of spices, the chilis, the sping onions. Coated in the mix, the wings were great. The rest of the family got their wings freshly fried au nature and unanimously declared that they very much prefer baked wings. I have to say that for the elaborate pretreatment the crispiness was just ok. That being said, coated in the spice mixture they were lovely and my lips & tongue are still numb while I am writing this. Next time baked wings + spice mix and we’ve got a keeper …

I wonder when they will come up with an autonomous camera-equipped indoor drone for us cooking aficionados. I mean, cooking is at least as dynamic as mountain biking or kite surfing …

Regular canned tuna in olive oil. A fairly common brand in Spain but according to our resident canned tuna expert far superior to what German supermarkets offer* and thus imported in large quantities from Spain 😉 * I can’t comment on that but it is tasty and has a pretty good price to quality ratio …

A premiere this year: Pizza & movie night 🥳 Mushroom & Lachsschinken (raw, cured & smoked pork loin, ‘cause that what we had) Tuna & onions Spiced minced meat (think sausage), mushrooms & olives All enjoyed while watching “Encanto” on Disney+. Definitely not heir best work … And while the oven was hot I prebaked some wings for tomorrow’s Chongqing chicken wings as per recipe by Mission Chinese. Looking forward to those 🤗

I had that pie a couple of times. Tasty indeed. But they are smart enough to follow your previous mantra and obscure most of the green of their brussel sprout leaves by charring them … On a more serious note: I tried to replicate that pizza, but my set-up in HK never really allowed me to char the leaves properly. I talked to the the guys at Motorino Wan Chai and they confirmed that the leaves go on the pizza as is, not preblanched as I would have thought. Maybe a job for the Ooni once it gets warmer.

These look great - I like the idea of the spicy dipping sauce borrowed from chicken rice. And congrats to converting your wife to wings - well done 🥳

That‘s easy to mitigate by participating in the Wings Cook-Off … 🎶 Trust in me, buy some wings, go to town, and buy some wings …

Never - with that much green on it ?! „Healthy flatbread“ 😜 …

I think with the ketjap manis you are going pretty much in the direction of ayam bakar. In fact, if you substitute the Chinese vinegar with tamarind, maybe galangal for ginger and add some coriander and you are basically there …