When assigned an appetizer to bring to a clambake, what’s the first thing that comes to mind? Quick! It’s not chicken wings, is it? Yeah, I know, but that’s what I brought anyway (if only I had taken a picture because they were so, so beautiful).
I’ve had — and made — chicken wings about a gazillion ways, but I wanted to try a recipe I’ve never done before, and you can’t go wrong with Tyler Florence. His teriyaki chicken wings with sesame and cilantro were divine, and met rave reviews, with one exception.
With just a few tips and tweaks, you’ll be able to make these wings easily and to everyone’s taste satisfaction.
The sauce was completely, utterly perfect. Tyler Florence’s unique twist on teriyaki sauce uses grapefruit juice and everything fresh: giant chunks of garlic, red chiles and ginger, all boiled down with the rest of the ingredients. I would change nothing about this recipe, but I did find that when I doubled the recipe, I ended up with a ton of extra sauce (sitting now in my fridge, waiting for the next use). If you’re doubling the amount of wings, you probably only need to 1.5 times the sauce.
Speaking of doubling the recipe, there were some other little quirks I found; mainly that the cooking times were way off. It took much, much longer than 20 minutes for the sauce to boil down and thicken, and much longer for the wings to get crispy as well, so leave yourself enough time.
One thing I don’t know how to fix is the way the wings stubbornly stuck to the pan. I sprayed the pans first, even though that wasn’t called for in the recipe, and after crisping them up, they are swimming in the melted skin fat, for crying out loud. How they stuck then is beyond me, and then they stuck even worse after they were sauced and glazed. I scraped my little heart out with a spatula and saved most of them, but I’d sure like a trick for this piece.
Although everyone loved the wings, I did have some complaints from the cilantro-haters in my family. Yeah, I know it’s just wrong to hate cilantro, but it happens, and it happens a lot in my family. Instead of judging them, let’s just accommodate for them. Heck, they accommodate for my mayophobia with gourmet potato salads that are mayonnaise-free, so it’s the least I can do. Next time, I’ll serve up a platter sprinkled generously with cilantro and sesame seeds as Tyler suggests, and I’ll also serve a plate plain. Incidentally, I used much less cilantro than the recipe called for (and still got complaints), so you may want to cut back a bit.
All in all, these were pretty easy to make and were a big hit with the crowd. I’d definitely make them again.
Clacked by Debbie McDuffee
on Aug 03, 2009 @ 12:00 EST5EDT
A) Cilantro is gross.
2) Do you think parchment paper would work, or would the greasy chicken just stick to that? I think the stuff is kind of magic and use it for baking all the time.