Boneless chicken wings

birthday cake

My large birthday party event was last night and one of the big hits in my opinion was the boneless chicken wings.  Crispy, tender little bits of chicken with sauce to dip in.  This is a pretty easy recipe to do and seems to come out well.  First, the sauces.  You will need buffalo and blue cheese sauce and you may want to include a bbq sauce as well.  The Buffalo sauce is a mixture of butter and Franks Red Hot.  A 50- 50 mix get you the flavor without a lot of heat.  More butter will make less heat; less butter leads to more heat.  If you like it even hotter you can and ground red pepper  as well. 

Buffalo sauce

½ cup of butter

½ cup of franks red hot

1 teaspoon of brown sugar

1 tablespoon of vinegar

3 tablespoons of flour

Melt the butter in a small sauce pan.  Add the flour and mix well.  Add the rest of the ingredients mix well and set aside. 

The blue cheese recipe I use is a super-secret recipe acquired form one of the first restaurants ever to serve wings.  I will see if I can get the owner to share the recipe and story sometime.

For the wings I use boneless chicken breast.  You can find it on sale everywhere and it is very easy to work with.  I know the meat from your mass market places do not taste as good but we will fix some of that.

Chicken wings

6 boneless chicken breasts

¼ cup salt

¼ cup sugar

½ cup all-purpose flour

4 egg whites

½ cup corn starch

¼ cup cornmeal

¼ (more) all-purpose flour

Take your chicken breast and slice them crosswise about the width of a wing.  Take all the sliced up chicken and put it in a picture.  To the picture add salt and sugar and shake until dissolved.  Let this sit in the fridge at least an hour.  Take them out and drain them in a colander until dry.  Take three dishes and put them on your counter. To the first add just flour, to the second add the egg whites, and to the third add corn starch, cornmeal and flour.  Beat the egg whites to break them up a bit.  Take a rimmed baking sheet with a rack and set it near your work area.  Take a piece of chicken and roll it in the flour until dry.  Then roll it in the egg whites until all wet.  Then roll it in the mixed flours until dry, set it on the rack.  Repeat the process until all chicken is coated.  Set your deep fryer for 360 and let it warm up.  Cook the chicken until light golden and drain on paper towels.  Warm the buffalo sauce and serve the wings and sauces as dips for the wings. 

Holiday cooking

This Easter we have said good bye to our beloved Grama Dean.  It seems fitting that her death falls in the spring and nowhere near Christmas.  Grama dean was the enchanter of Christmas and all things jolly; possessing nearly every type of decoration and candy that is legally allowed.  As kids, we always looked forward to the wonderful Christmas eves spent on Horner street.  Later in life my kids also looked forward to the same elaborate showing of Christmas joy.  I am including a cherished hand written family recipe with this post for the famous GOO Floppy.  Now I cook and bake and try a lot of different types of food. So having said that and before you comment, yes I have read the recipe and I know it seems simple and maybe a little strange, but it works and it is good.  We spent many a holiday scraping the last of the goo floppy out of the pan.  I know we will all miss Grama this season and I am sure a lot of you out there are missing someone at the table as well.  May God himself join you and take that chair and give you some comfort.  Have a great Easter!

grilling flat bread

Well it is spring and the sun is out, so that means grilling season for a lot of folks.  So I will tell you my favorite thing to grill.  Now if you are a loyal follower you know I am not going to say steak.  And they may be good but I am not going for the burger.  My favorite thing to grill is flat bread or pita bread depending on where you are from.  Now these are really easy to grill and just look cool.  There are a few tricks to make this work out and two of them are simple to remember; 1) hot grill 2) lots of smoke.  So let’s work with the grill first.  Take some wood chips and start them to soaking, they need to soak for about an hour.  Maple, apple, and cherry are all good choices here.  Now, when we start cooking we are going to set one side of the grill to low and one to high.  Once the chips have soaked enough, make a small tinfoil pan for them and place them on the cold side under the cooking grate, as far away as possible.  Now let’s look at the scary, hard to make bread.  Now if you remember I posted a generic bread recipe that works for just about any bread.  And that is exactly what we are going to use for pita bread,

31/2 to 4 cups of flour

1 to 1 ½ cups or water

1 teaspoon salt

1 tablespoon yeast

2 tablespoons sugar

Mix your dry ingredients’ together then add the water.  Mix until it forms a dough ball.  At this point you adjust your water and flour.  If it is a bit too wet, add flour; a bit to dry, add water. Knead dough until soft and elastic.  Let it rise until it is doubled in size.  Time will depend on how warm your house is and how warm the water was.  Now you have dough we are back to the fun stuff.

Make the dough into 8 or 10 round balls a little smaller than a softball.  Roll them flat and that that is it.  Now let’s go to the grill.  Now open your grill, smoke bellows out, breath.  I do cheat a bit and I have been known to take my pizza stone out and put it on the grill.  If you do not have one it is ok it will still work.  Take a wad of paper towels soaked in oil and scrub your grill a bit.  Throw one of your flat breads on the grill.  They usually cook 4 to 5 minutes but it depends on the temperature of the grill.  Close the lid.  When the bread puffs up and get slight grill marks on the bottom it is done.  Take it off with tongs and toss on another.  Now that you can make pita bread, I will look for some Greek recipes.

Fast low carb breakfast

My fast, low carb breakfast is a winner every time.  I would like to say this one has something to do with my talent as a chef but this one is all about the hardware.  When I am doing my breakfast wrap I use two pans.  Both cast iron of course.  The first one is just the right size for the egg and the second one is a nice flat pan for the tortilla. 

So the recipe is like this:

1 or 2 eggs,

¼ cup of cheese

½ cup sausage

1 corn tortilla

Turn on your egg pan and drop in some butter.  Let it melt and coat the pan well.  Turn on the tortilla pan.  Wait for the pans to warm up.  Once the pans are warm you can turn them down to medium.  Spray the bottom of your tortilla with cooking spray drop it on the pan.  Scramble your eggs and drop them and the cheese into your other pan.  Stir a bit with your spatula; do not cook until dry as it should be somewhat firm and wet on top.  Put the egg on the tortilla and turn off the tortilla pan.  Drop the sausage into the small pan loosely break it up.  Cook it until it is all browned put it on the egg; sprinkle some cheese on top and cover.  After about a minute it is ready to eat or wrap it up for the car.  Have a great day