As we wind up Christmas and head full steam into the New Year I thought it might be nice to tie up a few loose ends from stories I have posted here recently.
First, you have to know about the wings!
You may recall a reader named Lea sent me her recipe for some sticky brown sugar and soy sauce based wings. I wrote about my effort to make them, per her directions, but I must confess that I strayed just a bit from what she e-mailed me.
Of course, they were good, but not nearly as good as they could have been. On top of that, I made a mess in the oven.
You will be happy to know that for Christmas, my good neighbors Gus and Ruby gave me a little oven guard kinda thing that you actually place on the bottom of the oven. Then, if you have an offensive mistake like I made, you can pull this cover out, wipe it off and the mess is gone.
Lea was kind enough to e-mail me with where I went wrong on her recipe. It turns out, I was supposed to marinate the wings in the glass pan and cook them in the same glass pan without emptying out the marinade. I tried this and two wonderful things happened. First, no spills in the oven.
More importantly, the wings came out awesome, and I am quite certain that the Cowboys actually won their game as a result of my wings being so incredible. I'm sorry, Lea's wings!
A few days ago, I reported about our little dog, Panda, going to live in New Jersey with my daughter and her husband. Good news: The dog made it to New Jersey without incident and she loves the snow. Better news: My daughter is very happy to have her little dogie and it made for a Merry Christmas. Best news: Panda no longer wakes me up at 4am to play.
And finally, this past week this blog went over 10,000 hits. I know for many of the blogs I read, this is chump change. They get 10,000 hits in a day or a week or at least a month. But for a guy just telling goofy stories about places my wife and I go to eat or posting pictures of goofy things I see in my town, it is a true sign that either you people like what you see and read, or you are simply bored silly. Either way, I appreciate it and hope you will continue to stop by.
A while back I wrote here about how I had made my very own BBQ Wings. One reader, Lea, was nice enough to send me the recipe that she and her husband use for the purpose of stuffing their gullets full of the popular snack.
So, having waited the obligatory several weeks before recreating the mess in the kitchen, I had the plan to try Lea's brown sugar and soy sauce based baked wings during the Cowboys-Eagles game.
In case you don't get Newsweek, let me just break the news that the Cowboys lost, no doubt a direct result of Tony Romo having Jessica Simpson sitting in on the game and sending in the plays - such greats as "Throw it to the man in the green uniform." I like Jessica Simpson. I'm sure Tony Romo likes her. But let that goofy blonde (no offense to other blondes) go make a movie or sing at a concert, and keep her ass away from Tony for at least 24 hours prior to each game, and until at least a few minutes after the 4th quarter. Nuff Said!
So the problem was, I was trying to make wings and watch a game and make a second set of wings using the recipe I had reported about here.
So, Lea's recipe is simple. Get yourself some wings.
Whip up a mixture of equal parts Brown Sugar (my wife quickly raises her hand and says, "That's me!") and soy sauce. In this case, I used a cup of each. Take that mixture and pour it over the wings and then let them marinate in the refrigerator for about half an hour. 
I ended up using a gallon bag instead of a glass pan. This may have proved to be a mistake later. It turns out that this particular recipe results in really sticky wings that you have to turn a few times. 
So you may be able to look at the picture of my wings going into the oven and figure out the HUGE mistake I made. 
As my version of Lea's wings were working on the first side in the oven at 350, I was preparing the other wings so I could fry them up on the stove top. And I was making a huge mess as well.
After 30 minutes in the oven, I turned the brown sugar and soy sauce wings and saw the enormous spillage that was occurring in the oven. I might mention that at this point, the Cowboys were already losing. And for whatever reason, I kept trying to watch the game in the living room while cooking in the kitchen at the same time.
I think in the end, I overcooked the wings in the oven and the wings in the frying pan. But, you can't over cook chicken, and I went through with the sampling of each. 
I really enjoyed the brown sugar and soy recipe Lea sent me and in fact, my wife gave them the thumbs up. That gets her the official Tasty Treat and a big thanks for the tip. 
Oh, in case you were wondering about my faux paux in the oven - I should have cooked these puppies in a pan, not on a cookie sheet. The mixture of soy and brown sugar sort of bubbled up and resulted in a little spillage in the oven. Not to worry, I was able to get the mess fully cleaned before my wife could see that I had defaced her baking area. Thankfully, regular Christmas Cookie baking continues unabated.
I could eat me some yard bird every day of the week. My dad has a long history as the King of the Barbecued Chicken making his own special sauce and knowing just when to turn the bird and just when to pull it. Sadly, I was not blessed with this skill and though I love chicken and love to cook on the grill, most would agree that as a general rule, my chicken is always either undercooked to the point of e-coli concerns, or burnt to the point that people politely choose the steak or the sausage.
But, I still love me some chicken and like many people, enjoy a wing or two with a beer. Given my poor scorecard in the chicken department, I have never really tried to make my own wings but rather relied on buying frozen, pre-made, stick 'em in the oven brands or the occasional trip to Pizza Hut for their version.
But today, during our trip to HEB Plus I had somewhat of a thought go through my mind as we passed by the chicken section; wings! I picked up a pack of pre-cut, ready to cook chicken wings, and in the back of my mind, I figured if I chickened out, my wife could always fry them up. She has no problem with making chicken.
Anyway, I get home and immediately consult the Google and magically find a web page all about hot stuff and a step by step instruction on making Hot Wings. You should note (as I learned during the course of my research) there is a difference between wings or Hot Wings and Buffalo Wings. Do not get these two confused; Buffalo Wings do not get breaded (floured).
So, either go to the link here and learn how the pros do it, or sit back and watch me step by step produce the BEST wings I have tasted, bar none. And I ain't kidding'. 
I mixed me up some flour, some paprika, some pepper and some salt. After cleaning off the chicken, I gave them a good toss in the flour mixture then, and this is important, then I go ahead and throw them in the fridge for an hour or so.
Next, get the ol' skillet going with the oil of your choice - I chose a Motorcraft Synthetic Blend (just kidding). Get your oil heated up and get ready for some frying action. I started the stove on high, but found pretty quickly that I needed to lower it down quite a bit to avoid the huge splatter action. Plus, I had read that you should cook them for 12 minutes, but they were going way too fast at the higher heat.
Just as they were starting to get golden, I took an ice pick (you can use a fork) and poked each of the wings before turning them over.
I ended up settling on about 9 minutes to cook the wings and of course, your cooking time may vary. But when I pulled the first batch out, I knew they were good to go.
As I was frying the subsequent batches (I cooked them 6 wings at a time), I started heating up my wing sauce. I must tell you that I stared at the sauce selection for about 5 minutes. Some of your traditional Hooter's sauce or the Anchor Bar brand are almost $5.00 a bottle. Given this was my first try, I was more interested in a bottle of sauce in the $1.79 range.
I ended up with Frank's RedHot Buffalo Wing Sauce and let me tell you, it was a good choice. I heated up a pan with a few tablespoons of better and poured in the sauce to get it all warm and ready to receive the now fried wings.
I know that the standard procedure is to sort of toss the wings in a bowl with the sauce just so you get the outside of the skin coated, but instead, I plopped the wings in the sauce pan, six at a time to let them get good and wet.
Next, I set them back in my holding tray so any excess sauce could drip off.
When everything was said and done, it was go time! I'm telling you, for the price of the package of wings (about $3.50), the cost of the sauce (about $2.50) and the bottle of Bleu Cheese dressing - you gotta use Bleu Cheese, not Ranch ($1.79), and of course the mess I had to clean up in the kitchen, this was one tasty treat, and I don't mean maybe.
Now that I've done it, I'll be sure to try different flavors. Tell me about your wings and your favorite sauce.
As we wind up Christmas and head full steam into the New Year I thought it might be nice to tie up a few loose ends from stories I have posted here recently.
Lea was kind enough to e-mail me with where I went wrong on her recipe. It turns out, I was supposed to marinate the wings in the glass pan and cook them in the same glass pan without emptying out the marinade. I tried this and two wonderful things happened. First, no spills in the oven.
More importantly, the wings came out awesome, and I am quite certain that the Cowboys actually won their game as a result of my wings being so incredible. I'm sorry, Lea's wings!
A few days ago, I reported about our little dog, Panda, going to live in New Jersey with my daughter and her husband. Good news: The dog made it to New Jersey without incident and she loves the snow. Better news: My daughter is very happy to have her little dogie and it made for a Merry Christmas. Best news: Panda no longer wakes me up at 4am to play.
And finally, this past week this blog went over 10,000 hits. I know for many of the blogs I read, this is chump change. They get 10,000 hits in a day or a week or at least a month. But for a guy just telling goofy stories about places my wife and I go to eat or posting pictures of goofy things I see in my town, it is a true sign that either you people like what you see and read, or you are simply bored silly. Either way, I appreciate it and hope you will continue to stop by.
