Chili Chicken Wings

Spicy, sour, sweet, sticky, crispy wings. Our take on an Indo-Chinese classic will not disappoint. 

Serves 2

Prep time: 15 minutes

Cooking time: 45 minutes

Ingredients:

• 2lb of chicken wings, split
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tbsp light soy sauce
• 1 tsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp ketchup
• 1 tbsp vinegar
• 1 tsp sugar
• ½ tsp white pepper
• 2 inch piece of ginger
• ½ an onion
• 2 cloves of garlic
• 2 tbsp Hakka-ish Chili Crisp
• 1 tsp cooking oil
• 3 scallions, sliced
• ⅓ cup of water
• 1 tsp of cornstarch, dissolved in 2 tbsp cold water
• 1 tsp crispy shallots (or sesame seeds as an alternative topping)

Method:

1. Preheat your oven to 400f. Toss the wings in the salt and baking powder. Baking powder seems like a weird addition, but this is an amazing trick to get your wings really crispy, because science. 
2. Place the wings on a lined baking dish, and cook in the oven for approx. 45 minutes, turning half way through.
3. While the wings cook, prepare your sauce. Cut the onion into a large dice, so it maintains texture. Chop the garlic, it doesn’t have to be very fine, and cut the ginger into batons. If you don’t want to painstakingly slice the ginger, just grate it.
4. Heat a pan over a high heat, and add the oil. Add the onions, ginger and garlic at the same time, and saute for 15-20 seconds, then add the water. This will drop the temp in the pan so the garlic doesn’t burn. When garlic burns it gets bitter - nobody wants that. 
5. Add the soy, ketchup, vinegar, sugar and white pepper, and bring to a boil. Add the cornstarch slurry (this is the term for cornstarch and water mixed), and stir to avoid lumps. Bring back to a boil one last time, and cook out for 30 seconds. 
6. Finish the sauce with Hakka-ish, and taste for seasoning. The flavours should be really amped up and should almost taste slightly too sweet, sour, spicy and salty, so that it’s perfect when it hits the wings. Each wing is only going to get ~1 tbsp of sauce, so don’t be worried about this.
7. When the wings are golden brown and crisp, toss them through the sauce. If the sauce is a little too thick, add water a couple tablespoons at a time to thin it out. 
8. Finish with the crispy shallots/sesame seeds and scallions, and relentlessly devour them in 30 seconds. 

Notes: The dark soy sauce is optional, as it’s there for colour, not flavour. Feel free to use any vinegar you want, we used black vinegar, but any will do. 

Make it gluten free: Swap the soy sauce for Ooomami Seasoning Salt, and add a little water to compensate, and use a GF vinegar like red wine vinegar.