Sweet and Sour Wing Glaze Recipe

Alton Brown shares secrets for making perfect sweet-and-sour glazed wings.

Sweet and Sour Wing Glaze Recipe There you go, I know you’re wondering where the celery and blue cheese dressing are. Well, they are in your refrigerator. I know there are those who would argue that the celery and dressing were put with the wings because Mrs. Belissimo knew that they heated the wings would need some cooling balance. Well, I don’t think it diminishes her genius. One bit to suggest that being a good host is she just grabs what she had. I think it was probably a happy accident and it’s not the one that I’m inclined to perpetuate. Well, I want to get my ream on I don’t want to stop for a salad. That’s a different show. Now, I realized that the hot sauce and butter approach may not be for everyone but that’s no reason not to tear off your wings. The technique of coating a food in sugar based glaze has been practiced in China since, I don’t know, Confucius was a kid. The secret to success is to strike a balance of sweetness, sour, salt spice it’s a yin yang kind of thing. Here’s how I see it. At the salty, we will get from one tablespoon of soy sauce, spice from a half a teaspoon of red pepper flake, the sweet from two teaspoons of honey and a 6-ounce can of frozen orange juice concentrate. The sour will be one teaspoon of rice wine vinegar and we’ll also use three tablespoons of Hoisin Sauce. Okay, now Hoisin usually contains fermented soybean paste like miso, vinegar, garlic various chilies and other flavorings and sometimes sesame oil. In other words, it contains components of all the teams put together and then some. Combine the four mentioned ingredients in a small saucepan and bring to a simmer over medium high heat. The goal is to slowly drive away the water content and therefore increase the sugar content creating about half a cup or so of a finished glaze. Now, remember as the sugar content increases so will the possibility of burning which is while we’re doing this over well not full flame. When you see the bubbles start to kind of stock up on each other you know that you’re getting very, very close. So manage your flame accordingly. Our glaze is done but it is not yet ready to meet our wings. Go ahead and transfer to your great big tossing bowl and then let this cool down for five minutes. That will thicken the glaze and because the water content will be a little less mobile it will be a lot less likely to soften the crust on our wings. You did steam cool enough, perfectly roast the pan of wing pieces, right? Good. There you go and thus the humble, almost completely useless chicken wings show that it still does have a reason to exist. My hope is that one day chicken breeders will embrace this magnificent appendage and breed us a bird with wings like. If that day ever comes I’ll be waiting, hot sauce in hand. See you next time.