Cantonese crispy garlic chicken wings
Chinese Cooking Demystified · ♥ 5.8K likes · 175.1K views · 9 min video
Read about wings in the BrightCulinary Book
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Ingredients
Method
Techniques
- 500 g pre-peeled garlic
- 100 g light soy sauce
- 100 g fish sauce
- 45 g salt
- 15 g chicken bouillon powder
- 1 tsp garlic powder
- 1 pint water
Blitz 500 g garlic with the light soy sauce, fish sauce, salt, chicken bouillon powder, optional garlic powder and a pint of water in a blender.
- 20–30 whole chicken wings
- 1 pint water
Put 20 to 30 wings in a pot with the marinade and another pint of water to submerge them, cover, and marinate 30 minutes to overnight; an hour here.
Uncover and bring to a boil over a high flame, about five minutes, then boil one minute more.
- 12 g maltose
- 36 g white vinegar
Make the crispy skin liquid: scoop out about 15 g of maltose and mix it with white vinegar at one to three, plus about 3 g of lemon; mix patiently.
The crispy skin liquid
- 3 g lemon
Lift the wings out, rinse off stray marinade with hot water, toss gently with the crispy skin liquid and lay them skin side up on a baking sheet, brushing the excess over the top.
Dry the wings six to eight hours in front of a fan, or 18 to 24 hours in the fridge, until dry and leathery.
- oil
Oil ladling method: lower four or five wings skin side down on a spider into 130C oil over a medium low flame, a minute per side; then raise the flame towards 170C and ladle the oil over them a minute, flip skin side up and ladle about three minutes more to a dark golden brown.
Shallow fry method: two centimetres of oil at about 130C over a medium flame, wings skin side down about five minutes until golden, then flipped for three minutes more. Keep a lid handy in case the oil pops.
Oven method: dunk the wings in oil, return them to the baking tray and bake at 230C for 12 minutes with the convection fan on. Drier and less evenly crispy than frying.
The oven version, compared
- 25 g deep fried garlic
- 30 g garlic
- 30 g shallot
- 1 inch oil
For the garlic sand, finely mince 30 g of garlic and 30 g of shallot and fry them slowly in about an inch of oil in a small saucepan over medium, dropping the heat if it bubbles too fast, 30 to 40 minutes until dry, hard and golden; strain onto paper towels and keep the garlic oil.
- 25 g breadcrumbs
- 5 g chicken powder
- ¼ tsp salt
- ¼ tsp sugar
- ¼ tsp MSG
In a saucepan over a low flame, mix the breadcrumbs, chicken powder, a quarter teaspoon each of salt, sugar and MSG and the deep fried garlic for a couple of minutes until evenly incorporated.
Layer the garlic sand over the serving plate, set the wings on it and sprinkle a little more over the top.
Mixing the sand and plating