Duvel

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 …

I am not sure if I would dare to debone the wing in its uncooked state - usually when I attempt to do something like this, the results look like Freddy Kruger met the poultry aisle of the supermarket. In my mind I always thought there must be a cheaters version, something along the lines of MCs „SV and then the bones basically slips out of it“. I haven’t tried it though, but I feel this Cook-Off is going to be the time …

The IKEA Snaps is actually pretty good. Their dill & elderflower ones are my favourites, while for caraway I prefer German brands … They also sell Cider (both from apple and pear), several beers and Glögg, their mulled wine (both red and white, currently discounted 😝).

I went there today, but just got the Matjes, the oatmeal cookies with chocolate and a (small) bottle of dill Snaps …

37 ?!

Great choice 👍

How do you debone them ? Do you follow MCs protocol of SV, deboning and deep frying, or do you have any other technique to recommend ?

@Shelby: Ronnie is a lucky guy to have you - on his birthday and on the other 364 days of the year. Tonight, comfort food spree continues. Temperatures dropped again and due to humidity coming down from the forests it has been super foggy. It feels at least 5 oC colder that it is … Cordon bleu, Kochkäse, lingonberry jam, regular & sweet potato fries (commercial), kitchen sink salad. It hit all the notes required 🤗

Perfect !

That looks soooo good … and thanks for posting your method. If I may: what else is going on on that plate ?

It‘s gotten very cold … Time for Erbseneintopf, made from dried & peeled (or peeled & dried ?) green peas, served with vinegar, mustard and a great Bockwurst. Nothing much to look at, but after two full plates I now feel the heat radiating from my stomach. Comfort food at its best ☺️

I do this with rotisserie chicken or any bird where I strip off the meat with my (clean) hands. Haven’t thought of using the wing bones after consumption - maybe because of „contamination“ with spices and little return from little bones, but in principle … why not ?

For sure it does … 🤗

Nice job, @Kerala ! How does Kenji‘s method perform in terms of retaining the crispiness of the wing after being sauced ? I understand the goal was to get the thin crackly layer on the outside of the wing, but does it persist in the hot sauce/butter environment ? I am preparing now for the Mission Chinese method, that Kenji also referenced, which consists of prebaking, freezing and then deep-frying. But the „Chongqing chicken wings“ that Bowien makes are essentially dusted with a spice mixture rather than being sauced, so I guess the end result with retain its crispiness quite well …

Sorry, my wording was imprecise. The usage of carrageenan in several commercial applications is banned or restricted, amongst them formula, unprocessed meats, several dairy applications. Thresholds have been defined (75 mg/kg bw/d) and are temporary, until more conclusive data has been generated. Major concern is the difference of the toxicological essay of the high molecular weight carrageenan a, which are deemed unproblematic, and the lower MW aggregates, that have proven toxicity. The latter are a degradation product, thus a delayed toxicity cannot be ruled out. Food-grade carrageenan is available, and you can use it at your own discretion. You may compare the situation to sodium nitrite: around for hundreds of years, used in traditional products, you can purchase it freely, it can be used under conditions in some commercial applications while it is banned for many others. YMMV.

That’s the spirit - whatever it takes 😉