Baked chicken wings

If there’s one thing I follow to a T, it’s not following recipes. I always go off script at some point. Today, it’s because I had to work with what I’ve got. So when I decided to look up a chicken wing recipe instead of doing the usual adding whatever I feel like and hoping of the best, I came across this recipe. I was craving fried chicken last week, which is when I ordered the chicken, so I looked up crispy chicken wings and decided to go with this.

Now, I didn’t really make that many changes to the chicken rub. I actually patted the chicken dry (which I rarely do) but swapped the paprika for Kashmiri chilli powder.

First, I made the sauce. The recipe says it shouldn’t be hot when adding it to the chicken, and also there was distant thunder and I wanted to get it out of the way.

For the sauce, I added 40g Gourmet Twist’s harissa mix, 20g tomato paste, around 3 tbsp white sugar, and 1 tbsp water to a saucepan. I also tossed in 2/3 of a nai miris, chopped. Then I brought this to a boil before taking it off the heat and letting it cool.

Moving on to the chicken, I cleaned and cut 1kg chicken wings. Then dried them and rubbed in a mix of 2 tbsp baking powder, 1 tsp salt, 1 tsp pepper, 1.5 tsp Kashmiri chili powder, and two cloves of minced garlic.

I baked the wings for around 40 mins at 220C. After the first 20 minutes, I turned them, and once again at the 30 minute mark. I did make sure none of them overlapped in the pan.

Once the wings were out of the oven, I mixed in the sauce and then enjoyed a lovely dinner of chicken wings, fries, and buttered bread.

The sauce is at times spicy, at times sweet, and at times sour (the good kind of sour). It’s thick and coats the chicken well. And the chicken is tender and lovely. Definitely making this again. I also feel like it would be amazing with fried fish or batter-fried cauliflower/mushroom/prawns.