Recipe: Korean Buffalo Wings (aka Epic Fail)

I would hardly call myself a football fan, but enjoy spending Superbowl Sunday with friends and having an excuse to eat wings. I loove buffalo wings! Yet I only have a soft spot for the ones with crispy skin, immersed in sauce. And that usually means they’re deep fried. Sometimes, twice!

Fortunately, I came across a recipe that said I could make wings with a crispy skin WITHOUT frying! So I followed that recipe, then made my own Korean sauce, along with some pickled radish. Look at this photo below. Doesn’t it look awesome?

It’s too bad. Cuz I ended up throwing out the entire thing.

Here’s what happened: In order to get the skin to be crispy, the recipe calls for 1 tablespoon of baking powder and 1 tablespoon of salt for 4 pounds of chicken. I only had 2 pounds of chicken yet used about 3 tablespoons of each! I’m not sure what I was thinking! What resulted was inedible chicken that sat in large amounts of salt for 18 hours. I couldn’t just take off the skin because it was soaked into the meat. I was so so sad.

Please please please don’t let my mistake stop you from trying out this delicious Korean spicy and sweet sauce! I was really happy with the sauce. It had a good amount of heat and sweet flavors with slightly nutty undertones from the sesame oil. If you’re a fan of crispy skin like me, you will not be disappointed by this no fry method of making chicken wings!

Recipe: Korean Style Buffalo Wings
Chicken recipe from Serious Eats, sauce recipe by Esther

Makes 24 buffalo wings
(Requires at least 8 hours of prep. time so plan ahead!)

Ingredients:

2 pounds of chicken wings
1 tablespoon of baking powder
1 tablespoon of kosher salt
3 tablespoons of gochujang (red pepper paste)
1 tablespoon of rice vinegar
2 teaspoons of soy sauce
1 tablespoon of sesame oil
2 tablespoons of honey
4 cloves of garlic
2 stalks of celery sticks, cut into 3″ pieces
Sprinkle of sesame seeds (optional)

Procedure:

1. Line rimmed baking sheet with aluminum foil, and set rack inside (this is important – otherwise, the chicken will stick to the foil). Carefully dry chicken wings with paper towels. Place 1/3 of wings in large bowl, sprinkle with 1 teaspoon baking powder and 1 teaspoon salt, and toss until thoroughly and evenly coated. Place on rack, leaving slight space between each wing. Repeat with remaining two batches of wings. (Your chicken wings should NOT look like mine in the photo above.)

2. Place baking sheet with wings in refrigerator and allow to rest, uncovered, at least 8 hours, and up to 18 hours.

3. Adjust oven rack to upper-middle position and preheat oven to 450°F. Add chicken wings and cook for 8 minutes. Flip wings and continue to cook until crisp and golden brown, 5 to 7 minutes longer.

4. Meanwhile, using a food processor, combine Gochujang, rice vinegar, soy sauce, sesame oil, honey, 5 cloves of garlic (If you don’t have a food processor, don’t worry. Just mince the garlic finely and mix together).

5. In a large bowl, toss sauce and wings together. Serve with celery sticks and pickled Korean radish.

Pickled Korean radish recipe: With 3 cups of cubed radish, combine 1.5 tablespoons of sugar and 2 tablespoons of vinegar. Cover and refrigerate overnight.