Crispy Southern Wings and Baby Buck Sauce

 

I love cooking for friends & it’s great when lots of the prep can be done beforehand so that when everyone shows up there’s not much left to do but finish off any cooking, crack open a couple of cool beers & sit down for a good catch up over a tasty feed! These wings are the perfect starter for just that!

Your first step towards good crispy chicken wings is to source some decent wings, cut as you’d like them! A good butcher will prepare the wings for you by separating the wing into three components. The tip can be saved to prepare stock with. The two other parts will form a small drumstick & winglet. I reckon the winglets are the best bits! My own butcher, Owen McMahon does his own chicken wings in the shop so sometimes, I’ll ask him to hang on to the drumsticks and I’ll take the winglets but if I’m making a big batch for sharing I’ll take the lot for any friends that prefer the drumsticks.

For extra crispy wings there are a few key things you need to do to get it right. The first step involves drying, salting and freezing the wings. It’s not difficult, and what it’ll do is help extract a lot of moisture from the chicken skin allowing it to crisp nicely. After thawing the salted wings, you’ll need to dry them again and lightly re-salt before deep- frying them in the first of two cooking steps. Once the fried wings crisp up, they can be re-frozen for another day, or tossed immediately into the sauce and roasted in a pre-heated oven before serving.

The sauce I’ve used here is a southern-mustard sauce from my favourite BBQ masters, Red Dog foods. Barbara-Ann and Paul VanGelder who are behind Red Dog Foods do some awesome hot sauces & rubs but I laid off the heat this time and opted for a sweeter but tangy sauce with an English mustard kick. You could also try Bucky wing sauce from Hollah preserves, it’s a lovely sticky sauce perfect for crispy wings!

 

Red Dog’s Southern Sauce with English Mustard.

The cheesy dipping sauce. Oh this sauce. This might just be the best bit of the whole dish! Hot chicken wings are traditionally served up with a blue cheese dip. This time though I wanted to try something different and used Mike’s Fancy Cheese‘s Baby Buck. This delicious cheese is made from raw cow’s milk in exactly the same process as their blue cheese, Young Buck but instead of adding the “bluing” strain of bacteria, the cheese is briefly left to ferment naturally and the result is a beautifully crumbly, cheese with a tangy apricot taste. It’s incredible. Using this as the base for the dipping sauce was perfect with the sweet, tangy southern sauce and knocked back a little bit of the heat from the mustard. A perfect little pairing!

 

 

Crispy Southern Wings and Baby Buck Sauce

Ingredients:

24 Chicken Wings, cut into winglets

Sea Salt Flakes

Red Dog Southern Sauce http://reddogfoods.co.uk/product/southern-sauce-2/

Oil for frying

 

For the sauce:

2 Tablespoons crème fraiche

100mL Milk

100g Baby Buck, grated or crumbled

 

Method:

Preparation Time: 48 hrs

Cooking Time: 30 minutes

100% Delicious!

 

Method

Dry the chicken wings on kitchen roll to absorb any liquid.

Place the wings skin side up onto a sheet of baking paper on a tray and sprinkle with sea salt before placing in a freezer overnight.

Thaw the wings in a fridge overnight.

Dry the wings again using kitchen roll to absorb any liquid.

Re-salt the wings lightly before deep frying in hot oil at 180°C until golden & crispy.

Toss the wings in Red Dog’s Southern Sauce and place in a pre-heated oven at 180°C for 8-10 minutes.

Whisk the milk, crème fraiche and baby buck together before serving drizzled over the saucy wings.

You know the drill by now, serve this up in good company and you’re set!

 

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SculleryMade produces artisan goods using quality, local ingredients in Belfast. For recipe ideas using local ingredients check out our blog http://scullery-made.com 

For local artisan ingredients that inspire our blog, visit the Farmer’s market at The Inns, Inns Market on the last Saturday of every month at BT8 7HN!

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