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.