Sous vide fried chicken wings

A week ago, I was reading someone's post about doing sous vide chicken wings and I knew I just had to have some.  I've long had a special love for wings, which unfortunately, makes me a rather picky wing eater.  I also love spicy food, so when I order 'inferno' wings, I expect to be sweating at some point.  Usually, this just isn't the case - especially in Chicago.   Warning, do not order those in NOLA... I once had an order that I literally couldn't finish.  My head was throbbing they were so hot.

So tonight was the Sunday night Saints game which I had prepared for by buying, vacuum sealing, and freezing a dozen wings earlier this week.  For tonight's adventure, I thawed the bag and set the temperature for the crock pot to 140 F.  I did this at the start of the 3pm games just to make sure I had plenty of time.

After about 3 hours, I took the wings out and cooled the bag off in water before putting them in the fridge.  My idea was to get them cold, then put them in smoking hot peanut oil to really fry the outside skin without cooking the meat too much.

Once they were cool, I pulled them out and opened the bag.  As usual with sous vide, what comes out of the bag isn't exactly visually appealing.  And to be honest, I'm sure the chickens being slaughtered for my dinner wasn't pretty either.  Thankfully, all that matters to me is some good eats.

Since water and oil aren't really friends, I washed the congealed juices off and patted the wings to get them as dry as possible.  Unfortunately, since I'm not using a fryer, I had too much oil in so with the oil so hot, that first wing dropped in and caused the oil to give me a slight emergency.  No worries, I quickly picked up the overflowing pot and dumped some oil into a nearby pan.  Should have know better.

Also, since I'm experimenting, I wanted to do some naked and then some with a cornstarch/flour dusting.  After 3 minutes or so, I pulled the first 3 wings out.  The result... fantastic crunchy exterior as witnessed by the tiny bubbles fried into the skin:

A few more batches went in naked, then I dusted a few with the flour mixture.  I was curious how these would turn out, but surprisingly after 4 minutes, they looked good:

It's kind of hard to see in the photo, but I really liked that thin coating.  Typical fried chicken has the eggwash dredge which creates a much thicker crust.  While I like that for larger pieces, I tend to think breading like that on wings soaks up too much of the sauce.  For me, this results in what seems to be two tastes - saucy breading followed by not so saucy meat.

Once they were all fried, I tossed some Crystal Wing Sauce with some melted unsalted butter in a metal bowl.  After tossing all the wings, the appeared to all look nice - the sauce was holding to them, but not really soaking them:

Perfect timing as I can hear the kickoff (along with my neighbors I'm sure... tonight's Saints game will be in thundering surround sound.)

I quickly put some Kraft Roka dressing in a ramekin (all I had, I should have prepared better for the sauce) and headed for the couch with a kitchen towel instead of a napkin.. I'm expecting this to be messy.   So after sampling each type - all I can say is that every place that serves wings should sous vide them first.  My goodness, the outside has a light crunch and the meat is incredibly tender without being greasy at all.  Also, with the 'breading' being such a light coating, it wasn't too noticeable of a difference of coated vs naked.  Both held the sauce without being soggy.  Not sure I can convey how tender the meat is, but basically the meat just slid off the bone:

In conclusion, while I understand most bars don't have the time or care to spend the energy cooking their wings twice - this method really makes for stand out wings.  The meat remains juicy, but not greasy and the bath in the peanut oil makes for an incredibly thin, crunchy exterior that holds the sauce without getting soggy.  I'm pretty sure this is the way I'll go for all future wings that I make.  I wish I could say the game was as good.  It sucked, Saints lost in a painful, primetime way.  Ugh.

Sous Vide chuck blade steaks

Now that I'm getting the hang of the sous vide setup, I figured it was time to make what drew me to this method of cooking to begin with:  tender cheap steak.   Let's be honest, I hate spending more money that I have to.  That's really why I started cooking to begin with - working at fine dining restaurants and realizing typical food cost is about 15-20% - the rest goes for the linens, piano dude, fancy plates, etc.  In other words I could afford to impress girls with good food and wine if I did it myself.

So when I realized that there was a method of cooking that turned inexpensive cuts of meat into succulent morsels of happiness, I was intrigued.   So to test this, I decided to get two 8oz cuts of chuck blade steak to see just how much magic this DIY setup could conjure. 

Thankfully my local Dominick's even had them on sale for $4.29/lb - good start.  Next, I used the jaccard to tenderize them a bit - something I usually do anyway.  Not sure how much it ever helps, but whatever, its kind of fun to use and it can't hurt.

 That's pretty much it.  I sealed them in ziplog bags using the underwater method to remove all the air  (once again too lazy to pull out the vacuum sealer) and then prepared the water.  I wanted to cook these to medium rare so I set the temperature to 134 F, waited for the water to get up to temp, then dropped the bag into the crockpot.   Since this method of cooking is so imprecise, I'm thinking 8 or 9 hours.  Some people have suggested up to 24 hours - I'm a bit leary of that long since I don't want to end up with mush for dinner.

8 hours later, I put a potato in the oven and sauteed some mushrooms with red wine,beef stock, and some herbs.  After an hour, I did a rough mash of the potato with some butter, cream, and white truffle oil just to be fancy.  Heated up the mushroom reduction and pulled out the steaks.

  

  Yeah, not very appetizing as expected.  Good thing I've got a cast iron skillet smoking hot and a blow torch handy.  After a couple minutes of sizzle, things are looking up:

And that's it.  Time to plate up and trip over the dog for the upteenth time.  I love her company, but laying smack dab in the middle of the kitchen while I cook gets a bit annoying.  Being she's the only girl in the house this evening, she gets to stay sprawled out while catching chunks of potato I'm tossing to her...


The result... the steak was fork tender although it could have gone a few more hours to melt all the connective tissue.  The fat melted as expected, just a couple pieces that were too chewy and went to Bella.  Overall I think it was a smashing success.  This dinner ended up at under $5 for the food cost and sure as shit blew away a value meal at McDonalds for the same price.

So tonight was the infamous first chicken and whiskey night.  Every sous vide cookbook has this "hey don't sue me, but the low temperatures can kill you" obligatory message.  Fuck it, I've eaten pizza out of the dumpster at Crusty's in Pensacola just trying to make it back for my turn at Legend of Zelda, I'm good.

First step, acquire chicken after a long day's work.  Got to Dominick's and there were sheets of plastic over all the produce and meat.. fumigation perhaps?   Mexican guy says they lost power and I believe him... he's excited about the idea that everything looks "infected".  Check out with 5 items at one of the self kiosk things and have to wait because I bought cough syrup as part of my 5 item purchase.  Whatever.  She tells me 90% of all people that use the self checkout have alcohol.  I'm shocked its not 100%.

Cough syrup, Jack, good honey, and a squirt from the plastic lemon thingy.  On ice, with hot water for the mixer.  Drink is set.. time to cook.  I do an impromptu brine eyeballing it.  Actually feels good to taste the brine and have the too salty warm water sooth my throat.  Adjust with superfine sugar, toss in chicken, then bag up with brine using the crockpot liner in the sink where the hot water is warming it up to get rid of all the air.  Screw it, no vacuum packing tonight - straight up zip lock bags in hot water.

The tiny crock thingy is emptied of water, and reheated with the tap water (fall with radiator heat = good hot water).   Takes about 17 minutes give or take to come up to 140 with crockpot on high.  I plug in the crockpot at 137 and let the timer thingy take charge.   They say 2 hours, it's now 9pm and yeah, I have nothing to do except play PS3 and write this.  Update: Got my ass kicked because of too much whiskey so its easier to write this.  At least there's a backspace key.

9:38 and I check the meat.  YUCK!  Such nasty bags of chicken are brewing in there.   The fat is turning yellow, I take a few photos which remind me of the garbage pail kids.   I'm cooking what they would eat.

10:04 and the chicken is much more bland and white.  Not nasty, just white - reminds me of the frogs at Mother Hubbards, bet they wouldn't like to be in 140 degree water.  At least they are starting to look edible - white chicken can't be that bad. 

11:19 The result was pretty freaking amazing... perfectly cooked chicken slathered in a marsala and mushroom reduction.  I guess the point is the chicken isn't anywhere near the powdered type that we've all had.  Succulent and juicy with toppings.  Happiness.

  

And somehow it all turned out A-OK.  3 bags of chicken I could easily sell for six bucks a pop and I got to play with a blow torch and somehow didn't burn the place down.  Life really doesn't get any better than that.  And Bella got big leftovers like she's used to...

Update Leftovers:

The best part about all this experimentation is having the makings for leftovers.  In this case, I sliced the chicken and did a quick sear, and then finished off with a Picatta reduction.   It really is hard to describe how tender this chicken is - even after spending a day in the fridge...