The Best Oven-Baked Chicken Wings! from 100 Days of Real Food: On a Budget by Lisa Leake (William Morrow).
Photo: Lindsey Rose Johnson / Morrow
Oven-baked Thai Wings with Jaew, a type of dipping sauce.
Oven-baked Guava Habanero Wings.
Oven-baked chicken Wing Dings.
Moroccan Sticky Wings with Pearled Spelt Pilaf from Comfort: Food to Soothe the Soul by John Waite (Kyle Books).
Photo: Nassima Rothacker / Kyle Books
Why fry when delicious wings can fly out of the oven?
Football season has arrived, kicking off our collective appetites for chicken wings.
And what’s not to love? Salt, spice, crunchy fat and skin — there’s a reason everyone in America appreciates Buffalo. (Hint: It’s not the Bills.)
But not everyone in America has access to a deep fryer, a crucial piece of equipment for re-creating Buffalo’s signature bite. That’s not such a bad thing. Deep fryers are a pain to clean, and they belch out vaporized fat that sticks to everything and splatter all over the counters and floor.
Who needs that, especially when you have a perfectly good oven? Baked chicken wings — don’t call them “Buffalo” unless you want enraged New Yorkers on your porch with a pitchfork — have a slew of advantages.
Not only do you avoid the inevitable oil slick in your kitchen, you’re less likely to over- or under-cook dinner in an oven. The wings are easier to prepare in large batches and require less attention while cooking. And, frankly, they’re also more delicious thanks to the way an oven’s radiant heat concentrates flavors and lets sauces slowly penetrate into the meat.
The National Chicken Council projected America would down a record 1.35 billion wings during 2018’s Super Bowl weekend alone. That was a 20 billion jump from the year before.
This week, we’re doing our part to keep that pace aloft with a half-dozen recipes, all of which favor the oven over the fryer.
Want it spicy? Turn up the heat with a guava and habanero sauce bursting with fresh fruit flavor. If you have vegetarians at the party, we’ve got them covered, too, with a recipe subbing in cauliflower florets for the wings. We even get global with the flavors, tapping the pantries of Morocco and Thailand for inspiration.
Sure, there are some compromises. Oven-baked wings will never have the distinctive crunch of their fried counterparts. And the alleged nutritional benefits of baking over frying are nominal at best, just a few calories per serving. But more time watching the game and less time cooking and cleaning in the kitchen? Now that’s something to crow about.
Paul Stephen is a staff writer in the San Antonio and Bexar County area. Read him on our free site, mySA.com, and on our subscriber site, ExpressNews.com. | pstephen@express-news.net | Twitter: @pjbites | Instagram: @pjstephen
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