Buffalo Wings...at home!

Like a beacon of hope in the darkness, today when I checked my e-mail, I had a weekly update from allrecipes, and included in the food offerings was a recipe for Buffalo Wings.  I could pretty much live off Buffalo Wings and BBQ if it was healthy to do so.  Sadly, it's not, even if you eat celery with your wings.

As an aside, one of my pet peeves on recipe websites are when people give a recipe a 5 star rating, then you read their review and they changed just about everything about the recipe.  I'm fine with minor tweaks, but check this one out from the Buffalo Wing Recipe I used (note, I left the typos and spelling errors):

"This recipe is pretty basic with most wing cooks. I on the other hand jazz them up with the Frank's hot sauce, or you can use your favorite. Add the juice of 1/2 a lemon juice and garlic. If you want to mello the flavor, add a half a stick of butter. Heat all those ingredients up togetherand pour over the wings when they come out of the peanut oil. If you really want to have what I call "rip your lips off hot" add a small amount of chilli powder and or cayanne to that mix. Now your talkin' cookin' HOTWINGS, "GMAN" style"

Seriously!  Just post your own recipe...geez!  And really, if you are going to claim that your cooking is good enough to be called GMAN style, then learn how to spell CAYENNE and CHILI correctly!

Ok, glad I got that off my chest...now back to the topic at hand.  I made this recipe for wings tonight.  I did have to tweak it because I didn't want to deep fry the wings in a gallon of peanut oil.  And really, who wants to buy a gallon of peanut oil?  So I "pan fried" them.  Here's what I did:

Ingredients:
Enough peanut oil to fill an electric skillet or cast iron skillet to 1/4" depth of oil
25 wings
1/3 cup unsalted melted butter
1/2 cup Frank's RedHot
1 Tablespoon Garlic Powder
1 Tablespoon Black Pepper
1 Teaspoon Red Pepper Flakes

Directions:

1. Preheat the oil to 375 degrees (I used my electric skillet for this).
2. Prep the wings by rinsing with cold water.  Pat the wings dry and gently add them, 1 at a time, to the oil.  Cook for 10 minutes, then flip to the other side and cook for another 10 minutes.  This should get it done, but you can check with a meat thermometer.  The wings should be at 180 degrees.
3. Add the melted butter, Frank's RedHot, Garlic Powder, Black Pepper and Red Pepper Flakes to a bowl and mix until combined. 
4. Add the cooked wings to the sauce and toss to coat.
5. Serve with celery, carrots, blue cheese, ranch, or whatever else floats your boat.

This turned out to be a really good wing (see picture above of the actual wings I prepared tonight).  It's not what I understand the flavor of a "traditional" Buffalo Wing to be, but I've never actually eaten a Buffalo Wing in Buffalo, NY, so perhaps I don't know what the true flavor is.  That said, I really liked these wings and I will make them again.  They have plenty of heat (my lips were burning when I finished, but it's a good burn), but the garlic powder adds a nice twist.  Think "traditional wing" with a garlic/pepper kick and that will get you close.  I am so excited that it is possible to make really good wings at home, without a deep fryer!

If I was making these for a large group, I'd probably make multiple batches to tweak the spiciness.  For a more mild wing, I would think leaving out some of the black pepper of all of the red pepper would do the trick.  For a hotter wing, more red pepper would git 'r done.  Try these out as Super Bowl Sunday approaches!