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 …
