I can eat wings every day, all day, all the time. I love wings. I love lemon pepper wings,
and that is what drove me to create my own version,
lemon Scotch bonnet pepper wings. So it's obviously much hotter, because a Scotch bonnet is
sort of the cousin of a habanero. Habaneros are hot, just hot hot. Scotch bonnets are hot, but
they have sort of like a little vinegar tang to them. They've got a very unique taste and flavor,
that coupled with a nice clarified butter, some lemon zest and lemon juice and tossing
your smoked wings in there, is a new level of flavor that you're going to absolutely enjoy.
When it comes to wings you can use any wood that you want,
it just really depends on your flavor profile. But if you want that really, really good smokiness,
add in simple pecan blocks, chunks or chips. It's really going to make a difference. It gives it a
different color, and that's something you may want to consider as well when you're doing your cook.
These are our baffle plates. Stack them up, lay them on one side.
I personally like to have them stacked closer to me so that when I open up the
lid I'm not getting hit with high heat; keep the heat at the back.
Close her up. Let it come up to temp. We're going to cook
at roughly 275 to 300, and then we're going to finish off at 350.
Now, if you enjoy heat, you can use as many peppers as you want. If this is your first
time making it, I would go ahead and start simple: one pepper. These things are very hot. Today we're
just going to use three and we're going to half them. Then we're going to put them onto the blaze,
let it get charred up, let the oils release, let that flavor of the smoke get in there a bit,
set it to the side later and use it for our sauce. If you're trying to range exactly where the Scotch
bonnet falls, a little comparison for you. Your average jalapeno is anywhere between 2,500 to
8,000 Scovilles. Scovilles is how you measure heat. Now, your average Scotch bonnet pepper
starts at about 100,000 Scoville and can get all the way up to 350. So it's quite a bit hotter,
so that's why I suggest if you're just getting in and flavor and heat is a big thing for you,
start with one, one and a half. You know. But if you're all in, three, four, five,
six. Get in there and just have fun with it. You're really going to enjoy it, I promise you.
Now, the star of the show are the wings. We've had these brining, very simple brine. You can use one
gallon of water, half a cup of salt, half a cup of sugar. I don't use sugar for this particular
recipe because sugar infused with the meat, it's going to get it a little darker than I want. I'm
going to save the sugar for the honey that we're going to use for our sauce a little bit later.
So once they've been brined, rinse them. We're not going to add any other salt, but we can add a few
other things to step it up a bit. You can use a binder: olive oil, avocado oil, anything that
has a high smoke temp, so grape seed. Or like me, get yourself some mustard, toss and a little apple
cider vinegar, a little bit of white distilled vinegar, mix it in, get a nice and smooth,
pour it over and blend. It's going to really work with the flavors that we've got going.
Let's mix this up.
All right, now we've got our wings fully coated with our binder.
Time to hit it with some seasoning. Some coarse black pepper,
really good in there. This is going to help add some texture, really good mouthfeel.
Good deal. Then just grab your favorite poultry rub. I'm using my Good Feathers
rub. You can use whatever you have at home, or maybe make your own blend. Get creative with it.
My rub has citrus notes, so it's going to complement the sauce.
All right, guys, we've got a great coating on our wings. It's time to put them onto the smoker.
Let's go.
We've got it right at about 300 now. Because as it's opened, all that heat is coming out,
but it's going to shoot right back up very quickly. We're going to set our wings
on the cook portion. Remember we set up two zone cooking. We've got our baffle plates
double stacked closest to us so we're not getting hit in the face with heat.
We don't want to overcrowd, but we want to make sure we fit as many of our wings on
here as possible. It's okay to do multiple cooks, multiple rounds of it. No worries.
A great way to add some additional flavor for this dish would be roasting off your
Scotch bonnet peppers. So if you enjoy heat, obviously having them raw like that is going to
bring out a lot. But if you really, really like it, plus a layer of flavor, roast the
Scotch bonnets off on your smoker. Let those oils start to release and secrete. Leave the seeds in.
And if you are just starting off, if you can't handle heat, half a pepper, half a pepper for
this whole thing. If you like heat, you're all about it, it's not going to be too overwhelming,
four to five seeds in all. Roast them. It's just going to add so much more and it's really,
really enjoyable, at least for me it is. It's one of those dishes that that
one ingredient can bring it up and up or tame it down. And if it becomes too much,
add a little bit more lemon juice and a little bit more butter to it to help knock down that heat.
But for true rich, just good solid, consistent burn, four to five roasted peppers added to the
sauce will really change the entire dynamic of the flavor. So we're going to let the peppers
smoke for roughly three to five minutes, and we're going to have the wings cook
for roughly 45 minutes to an hour or until they temp fully cooked 165 degrees internal.
Everyone loves an amazing bite through crispy wing, but it's how do you achieve it? Well, here
we cooked our wings at roughly 300 degrees for a majority of the cook 30 to 40 minutes. Then when
it came time to move those wings over to our sear side because that fat has become nicely rendered,
we keep it there for roughly five to seven minutes. Let that high heat crisp up and
tighten the exterior part of our chicken wing, get it nice and crunchy, so much so, that even
after you toss your wings in sauce, you still get that crunchy bite through sensation that everyone
loves and enjoys with a nice set of wings. And while these are getting the final bit of heat,
that final bit of crunchiness, I'm going to toss on one stick of butter right up front. We're
going to let it melt down a little bit, and we're going to go ahead and start working on our sauce.
All right, guys, we're going to get started on making our sauce.
We've got the butter on. It's rendering down, it's melting. It's getting some
smokey flavor. We're going to go ahead and start blitzing, blending, immersion blender,
fine chop and strain. Whichever method works for you, whatever you have handy,
it'll come out the same. We've got our charred and smoked Scotch bonnet peppers. Remember we
took three peppers, half of them, then grilled them and smoked them. Plop these right in here.
And this is a very simple base. We're going with a principle of
fat, heat, salt. We've got our heat. We're going to add our fat: some olive oil.
Saltiness we've already taken care of with our wings and the brine and the rubs,
so we're going to go ahead and supplement in some sweet. You can use honey. You can use molasses,
maple syrup, some rendered down brown sugar, whatever your flavor profile is. Just experiment
and see what you enjoy the most. There we go. Perfect, perfect.
Some chicken stock here just so we can loosen it up. And let's add in some acid.
And we're going to save this because we're going to want to zest this
once we've coated our wings. So we're going to save our squeezed lemon,
get the zest, get those oils. It's very rich, very aromatic.
And our rub is highlighted with citrus notes, so it's just going to work very well.
Perfect. And let's not forget our butter,
which has been rendered down. It's nice and clarified, and all that means is you
can see the separation of the fats. So we're going to add this to our mixture.
Perfect. There we go. You can see on your container how it's slightly lacing. That's from
our oils, our fats doing its thing. It's going to be really good. All right, guys, we've got our
sauce made. I'm going to go ahead and run over to our blaze, grab our wings, toss them, and serve.
All right, guys, we've got our wings. They're fully cooked. They smell delicious.
We're just going to take them to the next level with our sauce.
Nice generous pour here. We've worked hard on it, we want to enjoy it.
Then just give them a quick toss,
make sure they're nice and evenly coated. Ah, I wish you guys could smell this.
I promise you, they smell even better than they look.
Very nice. It's up to you, depending how much you like your guests,
you can tuck some of these away to the side for later, you know? No one has to know.
Quick cook. So for this, the garnish is the lemon zest because it adds that brightness
and complements the lemon juice and the acidity that we used for our pepper sauce. Our lemon
Scotch bonnet pepper wings, getting those oils released right on top as the wings are hot,
as the fat is still hot and sizzling, really releases an amazing aromatic flavor and sense,
and just really adds to the bite through, the taste of the entire dish as a great brightness to
complement the heat of our Scotch bonnet peppers. And I promise you, once you start cooking with a
Scotch bonnet and you get that particular flavor profile in there, you'll never ever forget it.
It is a very unique sense of heat and a very unique sense of flavor. The skin is perfect,
heat from that Scotch bonnet pepper. All right, I know you're supposed to share
with the crew. I'm not, just not. On the next. I promise I gotcha on the next one.