So far in the new year, I'm continuing to be sadly neglectful to this little blog. But, I was very excited to work on these tasty wings for Super Bowl Sunday last week!
Our Lets Lunch group picked foods to eat while watching sports on tv this month -- just in time for last week's Super Bowl (or, the Stupid Bowl as I often refer to it).
I love Super Bowl wings. Ever year, whether I'm with a big group, a small group, or if, like this year, it's just me and my husband, I like to go all out for chicken wings for the Super Bowl.
Some years I make buffalo wings, other year's I've made sticky teriyaki wings. This year I went with Korean Fried Chicken again and also pulled together a curry-spiced wing recipe for Lets Lunch.
I borrowed some techniques for battering and frying chicken from this Serious Eats Food Lab post. I thought it worked well for the curry wings, but ultimately may not have been worth it for the Korean wings.
To start, I gave each pound of wings a couple hours of soaking in a buttermilk bath spiced with salt, pepper and coarsely chopped garlic (about 8 cloves for each batch). The curry spiced wings also got a tablespoon of sweet curry powder. After a few hours, I drained the wings from the buttermilk.
This is the step I borrowed from Serious Eats: coating the wings in a mix of corn starch, baking soda and salt. I think for the curry wings it added a nice crispness to the end result. It made less of an impact on the Korean wings, because of the gochuchang sauce that gets added at the end.
The other aspect I borrowed from Serious Eats was in the batter, though, instead of following the recommendation for using half water and half vodka, I took a chance with a beer batter. This was absolutely the right choice (I used about 3/4 of a Blue Moon) and it was delicious. After prepping and frying the Korean wings, I mixed a tablespoon of Moroccan spice rub, a tablespoon of sweet curry powder, and a teaspoon of cayenne pepper into the batter for the second half.
It took about a bottle and a half of mixed peanut and canola oils to fill my wok to acceptable frying levels. In the past, I have sometimes steamed the wings first to ensure that they cook completely. This year, I went with a slightly longer frying time (around 10-12 minutes) to get a nicely browned outside on the wings.
In the end, the Korean wings get tossed with a sweet and spicy gochuchang sauce and topped with toasted sesame seeds and green onions. The curry wings get an aggressive salting as soon as they're removed from the wok.
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Lets Lunch is a digital monthly meet up of food bloggers and writers.
Check out other posts from around the web here or on the hashtag #LetsLunch
Cheryl's Mongolian Buuz at A Tiger in the Kitchen
Annabelle's Idiazabal and Black Pepper Gougeres at Glass of Fancy
Grace's Taiwanese Beef Sliders at HapaMama
Jill's Spiced Pecans at Eating My Words
Karen's Sporting Eats at GeoFooding
Linda's Trio of Salsas from Oaxaca at Spicebox Travels
Lisa's Sausage Rolls at Monday Morning Cooking Club
Lucy's Crabcakes with Chipotle Mayo and Citrus Salad at A Cook and Her Books
Rashda's Finger Lickin’ Good Curried Ribs at Hot Curries & Cold Beer
