Daily Archives: March 24, 2012
Mmm…hot wings with blue cheese dressing
These hot wings are all the rage these days and there are tons of recipes out there so I won’t link to any one in particular, just give a general sense of how to put it together. Cut the wings at the joints, discard the tips or save for a stock later on. (I keep a plastic bag in the freezer and add bones and chicken scraps to it until there is enough for a good stock.) I used an overnight marinade for these: A cup of cider vinegar, a squeeze of honey, a slug of hot sauce, a sprinkle of garlic power and cayenne pepper. A tsp of salt can’t hurt it, and several grinds of fresh black pepper. I tossed in a Tsp of ground chipotle peppers just for fun.
Drain the chicken when you are ready to fry them, and dredge the pieces in seasoned flour. Shake off the excess. I used my counter top deep fryer but a half inch of oil in a cast iron skillet will do a good job, turn the pieces once after 2 or 3 minutes so both sides get nice and brown. I made up a hot wing sauce to douse these with from butter and hot sauce. Kick up the sauce with whatever looks good to you, a splash of vinegar, more chili powder, black pepper, onion powder and garlic powder, just whatever you have. A generous slug of honey is popular. Bring it all to a simmer while stirring to combine, then pour it over the cooling fried wing pieces in a big bowl and toss to coat.
I used a recipe Emeril put out for the blue cheese dip. Pretty much followed it exactly as written except I had no heavy cream and went with a splash of half and half. My wings look better that the wings he made! Ha!
Mmm… biscuits and spicy sausage gravy
Had a yen for biscuits and gravy this morning so I started some biscuits working. Preheat the oven to 425. Mix 4-1/2 tsp of baking powder, 1/2 tsp salt and 2 cups of flour together and then cut in 3 Tbsp of shortening or butter, then stir in about a cup of milk or buttermilk. Dough should be soft but not sticky. Roll it to 1/2″ and cut rounds with your biscuit cutter. They’ll take ~12 minutes, give or take. Brush tops with milk for a little browner biscuit, these today didn’t get any.
I started the sausage frying, noted the package said “hot sausage”. Hmm, I bet I can do something more along that general line. Sprinkled in a good Tbsp of red pepper flakes while they were browning. Remove the browned sausage to a bowl, leaving the grease in the pan, and add some flour. I think I used a couple of Tbsp. Stir that around to absorb the grease and brown a bit, then dump in a cup of milk and stir, scraping the bottom with a spatula to get all the good bits off, finish with a whisk to break up any lumps. I finished the presentation off with a couple of grinds of the Tex-Mex spice combo I like, it has dried chili peppers, black pepper, cumin, salt, and a few other things in it.

