Chicken wing recipes that are full of flavour, texture and life
You know you’re old when... no it’s not the obvious realisations of saggy things, but when you look at teenage girls and sigh with falling shoulders at how gorgeous they would be if they didn’t wear all that stuff on their faces/heads/bodies.
I used to nod at my mother’s auto-rewind of “Would you not leave yourself alone”, as I slathered on my pink and blue eyeliner for school mid-spraying my back-combed hair with half a can of cement-hold hairspray and swaggering off out the door in a school skirt so tight you could see the pattern on my underwear through it.
But then that’s also the preserve of the yoof, to do whatever they like and wear fairy wings to college, but at least dye your hair blue and get some face piercings while you can get away with it.
Many parents sigh at me that their teens can’t cook, won’t cook and I wonder how they are meant to pick up these skills without being shown at home in the kitchen.
Everybody is time poor, and many are time poor and money poor, busy at the treadmill of meeting zero every month.
Happily, I went beyond zero for a minute and took an opportunity to get out of the country for a few days and the first question on my lips when I’m going away is, “can my kids take care of themselves?
"Do I have to batch-cook for a pair of enormous young men who have life skills and social lives and pressing engagements (mostly to play Dungeons and Dragons), or can they, heaven forbid, cook for themselves?”
Naturally, Granny stepped in with a meal, but otherwise I insisted they do their own thing.
The small fella who eats meat, was left mince and spuds and is well able to knock out a decent shepherd’s pie, big enough for three days, that he eats in one go.
The vegan is now versed in a lentil bolognese, veggie sausages, and piling large amounts of sauerkraut and hummus on anything that doesn’t walk.
Kids can cook, cooking is easy and necessary for a good life, unless you have a cast-iron constitution and can eat sausage rolls 24/7, in which case I wish I was you.
After shepherd’s pie, the one food my youngest could live on, is chicken wings.
Being vegan, making veggie equivalents of everyday food was something to aim for and since finding this recipe, I’m happy to have some junk food back in our lives.
These wings are taking the blogging community by storm because they are full of flavour, texture and life with zingy sauces and they are not made from the wings of many birds.
No, cauliflowers don’t have wings but that’s OK, neither do buffalo.
1 head cauliflower cut into ‘wing sized’ pieces
Batter: 200g plain flour, use gluten free if you like
125ml rice milk or almond milk
125ml water
2tsp garlic powder
2 tsp onion powder
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp smoked paprika, this gives the smokiness often related to meat
Sea salt and pepper
Preheat the oven to 180C
Whisk all the ingredients for the batter together in a large bowl until they are well mixed.
Take two large roasting trays and line them with baking or parchment paper.
Dip the cauliflower wings in the batter and lay the pieces on the trays.
Pop the trays in the oven and bake the wings for 25 minutes, turning them once.
You can either dowse your wings now in Frank’s Hot Sauce which you can get in supermarkets — yay! — or you can make a fab ranch dressing by mixing up the ingredients to follow — or do both at the same time:
250g Hellmans vegan mayo
2 tsp apple cider vinegar
A small bunch each of fresh dill, parsley and chives
Sea salt and pepper
Lay the wings out with some celery sticks and your dippy sauce and get stuck in!
First up, wings made of wings? Any eejit can make these.
1kg/2lb chicken wings, each cut into two pieces
60ml/ 2floz soy sauce, we always use Kikkoman for the best flavour and it’s naturally fermented
2 tblsp fresh ginger, chopped
4 tblsp runny honey
1 tsp five spice powder
Preheat the oven to 200C/425F
Mix all the sauce ingredients in a large bowl and add in the wings, give everything a good mix to coat. Leave them for an hour if you can, before cooking.
Tip the chicken wings into a large roasting tin, if they overlap, it’s better to use two tins or they will stew instead of roast.
Cover with foil and pop them in the oven.
Roast the wings and take them out after 30 minutes, remove the foil and turn them over, return the foil and put them back in the oven for 20 minutes.
Remove the foil and let them colour for 10 minutes.
Turn off the oven and let the wings rest in the cooling oven for 20 mins.
This resting time makes all the difference and will give you wings that fall off the bone like they should.
www.valskitchen.com
