What I Made for Dinner :: Crunchy Sesame Chicken Wings

 
I am not a fan of football by any stretch of the imagination, but we have two boys in the house so our weekend TV-watching is often dominated by sports. I am thrilled that Super Bowl Sunday = the end of football season. There's nothing like celebrating the return of TV-watching for the girls than a chicken wing party masquerading as a Super Bowl party!

I make a different chicken wing recipe every year, and for the last few years I've focused on baked wings. (I tell myself it's because they're healthier, but I'm not fooling anyone.) I found this year's recipe -- Crunchy Sesame Chicken Wings -- from the Splendid Table, but it's originally from Mad Hungry: Feeding Men & Boys by Lucinda Scala Quinn, a cookbook I have at home.

This recipe comes together easily and quickly because there's no huge prep work, marinating, or drying time in the fridge (although the idea intrigues me). Although it's an inefficient use of space to put whole wings on the baking sheets, it really cuts down on prep time. (Have you ever had to break down 20+ wings? It's not too difficult but it's time-consuming, and when I did it a few years ago, my hand ended up hurting from cutting through the joints.) Also, the drumette, wing, and wing tip cut apart really easily after the wings are done baking. I also liked that, besides the wings (which I got at Costco in freezable packs), I already had all of the ingredients at home. I used panko instead of regular breadcrumbs and they turned out great. And the name of the recipe doesn't lie; the outside of the wings end up crunchy and quite tasty.

I will definitely make this again, keeping these points in mind:

• Don't overcoat the chicken with the dry ingredients.
• Flip the wings when you increase the temperature of the oven.

This is to make sure the coating browns and crisps up evenly. I'm speculating that because I had two baking sheets of wings in the oven at the same time and I didn't flip the wings, I got some wings that had patches of white (i.e. uncooked) coating. I had to keep baking those pieces, flipping every once i awhile, to make sure the outside wasn't floury (yuck!). I'm also wondering if using the convection setting on my oven would help with this.

My one regret is that I made too many. It's a strange regret since I like them, but I'm guessing these don't hold their crunch very well after refrigeration. I'll be eating these leftovers all week so I'll have to experiment with various reheating techniques. I'll post an update if I can.