- [Babish] This episode is brought to you by Cash App.
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Using it to request the $50 your weird cousin owes you.
Actually finally getting that $50.
Coffee and good stoneware mugs.
The painting that makes you feel something.
A comprehensive skincare routine.
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- "Marge Simpson's wasabi Buffalo wings"?
- Oh! "An Eastern twist on a Western New York favorite."
(all munching happily)
- These wings are going straight to my thighs,
and I say bon voyage!
- [Babish] Hey, what's up, guys?
Welcome back to "Binging with Babish," where this week,
I got a whole lot of chicken,
specifically whole chicken wings,
and we're well past overdue for a refresher
on how to break those down.
For those of you who remember 2017's Lemon Pepper Wet video,
this is an whole chicken wing.
To break this down into its more familiar parts,
we're gonna locate the joint between the drum and the wing,
cutting down through the skin to the joint,
breaking the joint open, and cutting between the bones,
repeating with the wing tip
until you have three distinct chicken pieces.
Easy as that.
Now all you gotta do is repeat it 24 times.
Now, with this much chicken,
I'm not just gonna fry it up and paint it green.
I'm gonna try out a bunch of things with it.
So I got the wings and drumettes here,
and the wing tips can be prepared,
but I like them better for making stock.
Now on to my scientific process,
which is less scientific and more of a process.
I'm starting by simply patting dry
and lightly salting some wings to be stored on a wire rack,
set in a rimmed baking sheet, uncovered in the fridge.
This should desiccate the skin and help make it more crisp.
Next up, since this is "an Eastern twist
on a Western New York favorite,"
I'm making a base of karaage or corn starch dredge.
A cup of corn starch, two tablespoons of flour,
a teaspoon of baking powder, a tablespoon of kosher salt,
and a tiny whisk coming to the rescue
to make all of our different powders
evenly distributed and homogenous.
Now, to coat the chicken, you wanna drop it in the dredge
and sort of press and massage, making sure
that every nook and/or cranny is thoroughly coated.
Next up, I wanted to try potato starch,
but the deliveryman brought me potato flakes,
and I was like, hey, that could work.
Same formula as before,
but with instant mashed potatoes instead of corn starch.
Now, since these guys are big and flaky,
I'm gonna make sure to really press it
onto the surface of the chicken.
I have no earthly idea what this is gonna do,
but fried potato flakes kinda sounds right to me.
So we'll do this, and we'll fry it, and we'll eat it.
It'll probably be good.
Next and last, since we're well and truly
in (beep)-it-let's-try-it mode,
what about a little bit of both,
combining the corn starch and the potato flake mixture?
I totally only did this
to use up the extra space on the tray.
I doubt that it will have any bearing on my findings
or that I will have any findings at all,
but it does produce a pretty platter of poultry.
So over here, we got plain skin,
next to that, the lightly seasoned corn starch dredge,
then the potato flake dredge,
and then whatever this is on the end.
I don't know about you guys, but I'm excited,
especially because this is an experiment
within an experiment,
because I'm gonna desiccate these guys
in the fridge overnight and I'm gonna try making them
the day of to see if there's any difference.
Next up, obviously, we gotta talk sauce.
What really Buffalos hot sauce is the butter,
usually in a ratio of two to one Frank's Red Hot to butter.
Things like garlic or Worcestershire sauce might be added,
but the basic framework for us to work within is thus.
The first and easiest move is to buy some green hot sauce
and Buffalo-ify it, but the sauce isn't just green.
It's wasabi sauce.
So we need to add some wasabi paste.
That's coming out of this tube weird, for some reason.
I'm gonna start with about a tablespoon
and adjust the taste once I've added the butter.
So let's see how this turns out.
I cannot imagine this is gonna be anything good.
It's not bad at all.
It's actually very...
It's very good.
Like, to the point where I'm ready to stop here.
It is wasabi Buffalo sauce incarnate.
So, moving on,
let's obviously make our own green hot sauce from scratch.
As you can see, I have assembled here
before you every kind of green pepper except...
Oh, my God.
Did I forget the most perfect pepper for this situation?
One of my favorites that's green,
spicy, flavorful, and Japanese.
That's right, shishitos.
Ultimately, I want a sauce
with a nice balance of flavor and heat,
and since only about one in 10 shishitos are spicy,
I'm adding about five or six jalapenos for heat,
plus one poblano pepper and two Italian frying peppers.
Before these guys head under the broiler,
we're gonna take off their stems,
realize that our fridge door has been open this entire time,
go back and fake the final stem being ripped off,
and the audience will never be the wiser.
These guys are headed under a broiler set to maximum power,
about five minutes or until deeply charred
but not blackened on one side.
Flip everybody over, put 'em back
underneath the broiler, and repeat.
Now, you wanna take off any skin that is,
like, fully carbonized, like, shiny black
to prevent any acrid or bitter flavors,
but most of these guys are good
to go straight into the blender,
where we're gonna make a pepper mash, and like it or not,
with this particular lens, you're gonna see some face.
I'm also gonna add three or four garlic cloves,
and I'm starting with half a cup of distilled water.
Why distilled?
Because once we've ground this up
in our blender or food processor
into what I think is rather an attractive paste,
we're going to ferment it, or, more, accurately,
I'm not going to ferment it, but you might want to.
Simply fill a sanitized jar about 3/4 of the way
with pepper paste, cover it with a cheesecloth
or a sheet of paper towel, and then somehow,
even though you don't have any rubber bands or string,
you need to affix it to the jar.
In a pinch, a USB-A to USB-micro cable will work.
Then let ferment at room temperature
for anywhere from seven to 21 days.
I'll let you guys know how this stuff works out
in a few weeks on Instagram.
For now, we're pretending
that our still-delicious pepper paste is fully fermented,
adding 1/2 cup of sushi rice vinegar
and a tablespoon each soy sauce and fish sauce.
Let's do about two cups' worth of pepper paste,
which we're now gonna blend
into as smooth as possible a liquid,
adjusting with more vinegar as necessary
until it is pourable.
We're straining out any solids through a fine mesh sieve,
adding a generous squeeze of wasabi paste,
two to three tablespoons,
depending on how much you want your nose to hurt,
tasting for seasoning, and this stuff rocks.
Shishito wasabi hot sauce is...
I wish I could air mail you each a bottle of this stuff,
but this is the only bowl of it in existence.
Little more vinegar for a Frank's-like consistency,
and we're ready to start frying.
I got our overnight wings, our day-of wings,
and two quarts of peanut oil heated
between 350 to 375 degrees Fahrenheit.
Add the wings and fry for five to eight minutes
until golden brown and crisp.
Now, something that I found out right away
is that the potato-coated chicken browned more quickly
and more deeply than its non-potato counterparts.
As you can see, both the potato flake batch
and the half-and-half batch browned more significantly
and developed a cragglier surface.
Corn starch versions are a little paler
but still nice and crisp,
and the only wings that seemed to benefit
from an overnight rest in the fridge were the naked ones.
Not only are the potato-coated wings really crisp,
their faster cooker time means no overcooked chicken.
But how do they sauce?
Potato coating is great on its own
but not so great with the sauce.
It gets a little soft.
But on its own, it adds almost like a French fly flavor
to the chicken, so there's a strong case to hang onto that
for the next time you're making fried chicken.
But now it's time
to see how our green pepper sauce Buffalo-fies.
I'm tossing it with the good ol'-fashioned skin wing,
which really held up the best to the sauce.
Is it neon Nickelodeon gack green? No.
Is it a really, genuinely good wasabi Buffalo wing? Yes.
It entered the coveted cleaned-and-separated-bone club.
But hey, why not?
That was cool.
Why not add that brighter green wasabi stuff
that we made earlier?
It didn't add much to the flavor,
but it didn't hurt it that badly, either.
But even with that addition,
just a warning: I'm probably gonna have
to Photoshop the thumbnail on this video,
because once we've sauced and tossed all of our wings
and arranged them into not quite the same pattern
as Marge had them but close as I can get,
you will see that they're a bit of a brownish kind of green,
little less accurate,
maybe a little more appetizing looking, and 100% delicious.
I'm just gonna walk very slowly and make sure
that nobody notices the huge bald spot
in the back of the plate.
Thanks again to Cash App.
That's money. That's Cash App.
Download Cash App from the App Store or Google Play Store
today to add your $Cashtag to the 80 million and counting.
(upbeat music)