American cuisine

Buffalo wings

Name: Buffalo wings
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 50 min
Total time: 65 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: American cuisine
Ingredients: 1.2 kg Chicken wings; 1 tbsp Baking powder; 150 ml Hot pepper sauce; 80 g Butter; 1 tbsp White vinegar; 1 tsp Garlic powder; to taste Celery sticks; to taste Blue cheese dip; to taste Salt

Unbreaded wings in a sauce of hot pepper sauce and butter. Salt draws the moisture out before baking.

Prep: 15 min
Cook: 50 min
Total: 65 min
Difficulty: Easy

Servings

Units

Ingredients

Chicken wings — split at the joint1.2 kg
Baking powder1 tbsp
Hot pepper sauce150 ml
Butter80 g
White vinegar1 tbsp
Garlic powder1 tsp
Celery sticksto taste
Blue cheese dipto taste
Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1
Dry the wings with kitchen paper, salt them and leave them uncovered on a rack in the fridge for at least four hours, better overnight.
240 min
2
Dust with the baking powder and toss so the coating is thin and even. Too much leaves a soapy taste.
5 min
3
Spread them on a rack over a tray and bake at 120 °C for twenty minutes: the fat renders out.
20 min
4
Raise the oven to 220 °C and bake another twenty-five minutes, to a deep gold and a crisp.
25 min
5
Melt the butter, take it off the heat and whisk in the pepper sauce, vinegar and garlic powder to an even emulsion.
4 min
6
Toss the hot wings with the sauce in a bowl and serve immediately with celery and blue cheese dip.
2 min

About the dish

Real Buffalo wings are not breaded. The crunch comes from dry skin rather than flour: the wings are salted and left uncovered in the fridge for hours so the moisture evaporates.

Baking powder in the dusting is not a gimmick. An alkaline surface speeds the Maillard reaction and breaks down the skin proteins, which turn glassy and crisp even in an oven.

The sauce is exactly two things: a cayenne pepper sauce and butter, whisked into an emulsion. Anything beyond that moves away from the original.

Worth knowing

— Both temperature stages are essential. The low one renders the fat, the high one builds the crust; at a single temperature you get either greasy or dry.
— Whisk the sauce into butter already off the heat. Over a flame the emulsion splits and the wings end up coated in oil and sauce separately.
— Sauce the wings just before serving. Ten minutes in it and the skin dampens and the crunch is gone.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories: 620 kcal
Protein: 42 g
Fat: 48 g
Carbs: 3 g

Useful for this recipe

Oven Temperature Converter