If you love eating chicken wings and enjoy Asian-style flavours, today’s recipe is definitely for you.
I called it Sticky Yummy Wings because the mix of ingredients used to make them provides a deep, savoury, give-me-more kind of flavour. Those ingredients also give the wings a pleasing, sticky coating that you can happily lick off your fingers while eating.
For the recipe, I used a mix of chicken wingettes, the middle part of the wing, and chicken drumettes, the meatier portion of the wing. They are sold that way at many grocery stores, but package sizes can vary.
In my recipe, I use 30 of those wings, an amount that nicely fit on the 18- by 13-inch baking sheet I cooked them on. You’ll likely need to buy more than one package of those wings to get that amount, but if you have any leftovers, you could freeze them for another time.
Before I started baking the wings, I first coated them with a thin layer of cornstarch that helps to seal and lock the juices in the chicken and also helps ensure the sauce you coat the wings with will adhere to them.
The sauce is an easy-to-make one that heated and combines sweet, sour, spicy and salty things, such as orange marmalade, ginger, hot chili sauce, mustard, soy sauce and rice vinegar.
You can serve the wings as a snack or an appetizer, perhaps while watching the Grey Cup this weekend. You can also serve the wings as a meal with such sides as steamed rice and a steamed green vegetable, such as broccoli, broccolini or baby bok choy.
Sticky Yummy Asian-style Wings
Baked wings glazed with an orange sauce spiked with ginger, soy sauce, rice vinegar and chili sauce.
Preparation time: 35 minutes
Cooking time: 40 minutes
Makes: 30 wings
1/2 cup orange marmalade (see Note 1)
2 Tbsp ketchup
2 Tbsp orange juice
1 Tbsp Dijon mustard
1 Tbsp soy sauce
2 tsp rice vinegar
2 large garlic cloves, minced
2 tsp finely chopped fresh ginger
2 tsp sriracha or other smooth hot chili sauce, or to taste
1/3 cup cornstarch
30 chicken wingettes and/or drumettes
• salt and freshly ground black pepper, to taste
1 green onion, very thinly sliced
1 Tbsp roasted sesame seeds (see Note 2)
Start making the sauce for the wings by combining the marmalade, ketchup, juice, soy sauce, mustard, vinegar, garlic, ginger and sriracha in a small pot. Set the pot aside for now.
Preheat oven to 400 F. Line a large, sided baking sheet with parchment paper (my pan was 18- x 13- inches).
Place the cornstarch in a wide, shallow bowl or pieplate. Pat the chicken wings dry with paper towel. Now season the chicken with salt and pepper, and then roll and coat the wings, one at a time, in the cornstarch. Aggressively shake the excess cornstarch off each wing (you just want a thin coating of it), and then set them of the baking sheet, not touching.
Bake the wings 20 minutes, and then remove the pan from oven. Turn each wing over, and then set the baking sheet back in the oven and bake the wings 10 minutes more, until light golden.
When wings are three minutes from being cooked to that stage, set the sauce over medium-high heat and bring to a simmer.
When the wings have cooked for 30 minutes, remove them from the oven and transfer to a heatproof bowl. Add the simmering sauce and gently toss to coat each wing. Arrange the wings back on the baking sheet and top with any sauce left in the bowl. Bake the wings 10 minutes more, or until richly glazed with the sauce, sticky and delicious.
Arrange the wings on a serving platter. Spoon any sauce left in the pan over them, sprinkle with green onions and sesame seeds, and serve.
Note 1: I used Smucker’s brand marmalade when making this recipe. It’s sold in the jam aisle of most grocery stores. It has appealing shreds of orange in it that nicely enhance the flavour of wings.
Note 2: Rich golden-coloured roasted sesame seeds are sold in the Asian foods aisle of most grocery stores. If you wanted to toast your own sesame seeds, place raw sesame seeds in a non-stick skillet set over medium heat. Cook the seeds, swirl the pan from time to time, until lightly toasted and golden, about three to four minutes.
Eric Akis is the author of eight cookbooks. His columns appear in the Life section Wednesday and Sunday.
