Claire reveals sauce tricks to get the juiciest wings

I developed a grilled wing recipe. Three different flavors. Gochujang, Korean barbecue inspired. Thai sweet chili fish sauce situation. Lemon pepper parm. Welcome to The Little Things. I am gonna show you a couple tips and tricks that are sometimes either hidden in a recipe or I just think need a little bit of extra explaining or a little bit of extra justification of choices that I make in a recipe when I'm developing something or just in general decisions that I tend to make now. I'm usually around efficiency, saving money, et cetera. So I'm having a big party tomorrow. I wanted to get some chicken wings going. One of these decisions that I've kind of made, I really like don't marinate anymore. The more you get into kind of like the science of protein and cooking and all of that, it just doesn't seem worth it to me anymore. So first things first, I'm gonna just dry these chicken wings while I talk to you. You can absolutely use gloves. I think the best thing that you can do when it comes to cooking with raw meat and chicken especially, I get it. Like it's gross, it looks gross, all these things. But like just get in there, wash your hands well after and you'll be fine. Here I have kosher salt and just granulated sugar and a little bit of cornstarch. Get all of these over here and then everything immediately into my sink. And then I'm just gonna kind of massage these. Here's the thing. I want my chicken wings to have a crispy skin. So salt is a desiccant. So it removes moisture from the skin and cornstarch is also gonna help kind of dry things out and give me like a little bit of a crispy skin. If you're marinating, one, very few things, I think actually only salt can really penetrate down into the protein. Like if you think about it, protein is majority water and this is true of like most things. And so you are spending a lot of money putting expensive ingredients, especially like any oils or anything or anything that has a lot of oil in it. None of that's going to get absorbed because oil and water don't mix. So it just became more and more clear to me like I was wasting spices, herbs, sauces, et cetera and it was really only like penetrating the very, very outer bit. And then also like these are gonna cook for kind of a while on the grill. And so if I was gonna put a bunch of ground spices on them, they would just burn. And so I'm gonna add all my sauces at the end. The salt and sugar and cornstarch are gonna do a lot to just chemically dry out that skin and make it nice and crisp. And then the flavors I'm gonna add later. And I promise you, these are going to be so full of flavor like you will not notice. Yeah, so wash my hands really, really well. I'm gonna get these into my fridge and that's all it is. So this is like a dry brine, which could also be referred to as a cure. Technically needs a higher salt content in order to be a cure, but curing, dry brining, I'll like put up a little definition thing for you. But this is essentially what I'm doing to all of my proteins. The salt is the only thing that's really gonna penetrate that deeply down into the meat. It doesn't risk me wetting the skin too much. It's cheap, it's easy. It's the biggest bang for the buck. So I leave all of my stuff open like at least 24 hours in advance in my fridge. The airflow of the fridge also really helps to kind of like crisp up the skin and make it super dry. If you are struggling with your food sticking, it's almost always because there's too much moisture on the protein. So this is kind of double duty. It's the best technique that I know. So this is a little thing and we'll do more little things tomorrow. I'm doing these at 350 to start for about 30 minutes. And then I'm going to remove the wings, turn up the grill, and then just to finish them off and really get that kind of caramelization that I'm after. So these have been on for 17 minutes and now we're gonna go in and flip them off. Because we took the time to let these sit overnight and really dry out. Like the skins are amazing. That cornstarch is doing something crazy to these in the best way, obviously. So the skin is rendering a lot of that extra fat. Nothing's sticking. We are doing really well. And I'm gonna just leave these on to keep doing their thing. But yeah, as you can see, like these ones don't have as much color. So I'm just gonna kind of, I just want to make sure that most of them are getting this like really gorgeous, goldy color. And then also keep in mind, like the more I'm keeping this open, the more that I am letting the heat out. Stop touching it and close it. Okay. So this first one is going to be like a gochujang, kind of like Korean barbecue inspired one. And I don't know about you guys, but I really came to like love Korean flavors when I lived in Los Angeles. So I'm just gonna grate my ginger in here and as well as my garlic. I'm just gonna use like a normal microplane. I like to put it on the bowl like this cause it just kind of helps me, especially with ginger, it's kind of tough. I also don't skin the ginger. You absolutely can. I don't feel like it makes a massive difference if I'm honest with you. It's a little bit harder on my microplane, sure, or like your grater or whatever, but I really struggle. Like I'm always about efficiency. And if I don't feel like I'm getting a really great result from it, like I'm not gonna do it. And again, this is like home cooking. I'm not working at like a fine dining restaurant where like seeing little flecks of skin are gonna get the plate thrown at me or something like that. So to me, it's not worth it. And so I knock all that off. I did like maybe half an inch of ginger. I like to do my ginger first because the garlic is a lot easier to grate. It's a lot more wet. And I feel like it helps to like clean off some of the bits of ginger in there if you do your garlic after your ginger. And you can do one or two. People are gonna be like, I do five. Like garlic is one of those things where you can always do more if you want. Some brown sugar to get it really nice and caramelly. Some soy sauce. A little bit of sesame oil just to give it that little flavor. And then gochujang is my like ingredient. I think all of them have an ingredient that has like kind of an umami boost to it. Gochujang is one of, and I'm so sorry. My producer on my team, she's Korean American and she's gonna like make fun of me so much for the way I'm pronouncing this, I'm sure of it. But this is just one of those things. It's an ingredient that has a whole bunch of stuff in it, like brown rice sugar, red pepper powder, salt, garlic, rice wine, tapioca syrup. This one's gluten-free, so it has a little bit of different stuff in it. But onion, mustard powder, there's just like a lot in here. So definitely I love an ingredient like that because it can really like just boost everything around it. I've got everything in here and this is it, really. It's just that easy. This can also be done well in advance. Like as you know, I love, especially when I'm hosting, I love to do things way before like my guests get there or way before I really need them. And all these sauces can sit and will be totally fine. So it's just like a nice, thick, kind of a glazy sauce. The only thing I would say about gochujang is like different brands are spicier than others. And so keep an eye out for that, like taste it, make sure it's not too spicy. Or if you guys love spice, just kind of let your guests know that. My next one is going to be like a Thai sweet chili fish sauce situation. So there is something about fish sauce. It's one of those things I didn't start using as much until again, I was in my, you know what I did? So my producer, my executive producer, John, is always telling me that I'll start something and then I don't finish it. So I started that when I was talking about Korean barbecue and like Korean flavors and Korean cuisine in general. And it's very similar with this kind of like Thai Southeast Asian sauce. The point that I'm trying to make is that I didn't really have a lot of experience with different types of Asian cuisine growing up, especially like we just had like your generic Chinese restaurant growing up. And then even in culinary school, I went to school in London. It's a very multicultural place. But even there, I feel like the school was very like a Western, like its ethos was very like Western and we would do different recipes from all over the world. But I feel like I've learned so much more about the different types of Asian cuisine and I'm really just doing one of those things where it's like, I'm just, I feel like I'm just at the start of very much learning as I go. Fish sauce and Thai sweet chili are both ingredients that just pack a very flavorful punch. This is more of like the sweet side. The fish sauce, like I honestly don't even know how to describe it. Like there's so many aromatics in there. There's so many. And even like when you have it raw versus having it like in a cooked sauce, that's also quite different. So I just feel like you get a lot of bang for your buck with those two sauces. And then I'm really just doing this for color. I'm not gonna put too many of the seeds in here. I tested this yesterday and it's quite a spicy chili, but I really just want like nice thin rounds and these don't stick super well when I sauce them on the first time around, but they are a really beautiful garnish. So don't worry too much if like when you're cooking these, they don't stick on too well. It's still gonna look amazing when you put them on the plate. So my chilies are in there. I'm gonna wait to put my Thai basil on after. Basil is an extremely delicate herb. And I would say in general herbs, like I wouldn't really grill or cook many herbs for sure. Like they're all delicate, but basil is like the epitome. Like it's very, very fragile and it browns very quickly. So I want those bright colors. So I'll put it on after I'm done cooking and you'll still get all of that like really nice aromatic release when it hits the hot chicken wings. I'm going to do juice of a lime. Citrus is one of those things where like it is, I'm hard pressed to not wanna put citrus in something. I just, it's another one of those magic things that just gives you so much more. I just love it. And I love the smell of fresh citrus. Like, oh, there's nothing like it. So a bunch of lime, stir this up a little bit. So I'm getting a lot of sweetness from the Thai sweet chili sauce. I'm getting a ton of spice from those chilies. I'm getting a lot of like funkiness from the fish sauce. And then the lime juice is just like a nice acidity to kind of like brighten everything up as well. And then last but not least, my lemon pepper parm. I think what I'm gonna do with this one is more garlic, but I'm also going to use my grater here for my very special zesting technique, which I'll show you. Love a good microplane. I love that it like has these kind of walls that keep everything in. Okay, so when I'm grating lemon or any citrus, I'm sure you've heard, you don't wanna go far down into like the white part, the pithy part of the lemon. I like to do it this way where I have the lemon in one hand, the zester, the grater, whatever. My other hand, and I do it kind of backwards. Like everything else, I've been just kind of like grating it into the bowl, but this way I find you can just have much better control and you're looking, so you can kind of see exactly where you are. And I just find that you get a really nice result and you're not going too far down because you can really see what you're doing. And then again, like these walls are doing a lot of work to just hold up all of that gorgeous lemon zest. And I'm getting every last bit of this. Like I'm not using a lemon pepper seasoning, I'm just using fresh ingredients here. So I really wanna make sure that I'm getting this lemon to pack a punch and really do a lot of the heavy lifting here with the flavor. I was just picking out some of the seeds and rather than using the tip of your knife, if you're thinking about it, like the tip of my knife is quite far from my hand. You have a little bit less control and when you're using something sharp like a knife, you do wanna be careful. It's another reason why I love a knife that doesn't have kind of a fat part here. It just goes, the blade just ends here at a really sharp point. And that gives my hand a much closer to where I'm using the sharp part of the knife. So if I'm using the butt of my knife, I'm able to really get in there with a much more precision. So that's just a small little trick for you. I still might put my hand here just to catch anything. I think I got them all. This is kind of crazy, but what you could do is really push your thumbs in and turn the lemon inside out. You're gonna break it and that's no big deal. If you do that, you can just get a little bit extra, like all of that inside, you can really get in there and kind of break up all of those little cells in the lemon to make sure that you're getting all of the lemon juice out. So that's another little trick. So I'm just gonna go in with the front of my knife, get out some of these, and really get all of the lemons that I can. Lemon juice, I should say. I've seen a lemon juicer or like a citrus juicer online that I really wanna try. Like the traditional one, I just feel like leaves so much on the table. And if you're working in restaurants or that sort of thing, like it's just beat into me that you wanna get as much out of each ingredient as you can. That's the nice thing too about doing this before my guests get here and having it prepped is I can do these kind of steps to really make sure that I'm getting everything that I can out of here. I feel like when your guests are coming or they're already there and you're trying to do these things, even if I don't need to rush, I find myself rushing. So I'm just gonna mix up some of that a little bit, not that I really need to, but I'm gonna use a ton of black pepper and then parm. So another little trick, I always store my parm in parchment. That is because if you store it like in an airtight container or even in plastic wrap, you are going to invite mold. Like you need a little bit of air to touch it so that it continues to stay like dry. If it's in plastic or like a glass container, it's not gonna last as long, I guess is all I should say. So I always wrap mine in parchment like that. And then same deal here. I'm just going to put it over here. And I really like, I prefer a finely grated Parmesan and I already used this one. So I'm not gonna get out a different one to make it bigger because I want a lot of this. I'm not doing it as carefully as before. So if this is more comfortable for you here, feel free. This is a bigger piece of parm and I don't have to be as careful with it. So I'm just gonna really go for it. And this is another one of those ingredients where like, girl, use as much as you want. And I'm gonna put more on afterwards too. I think I say like half a cup, but that really depends on like how fine you're shredding it and everything. You just want like a good amount so that when I put everything in here, it's gonna like really nicely coat it. It's worth it to me to get a hunk of Parmesan and grate it yourself. Of course it is. You know, I'm gonna say that, but it's true. It really does matter. Oh, last ingredient. I am gonna add a little bit of oil to this. Just a little bit of olive oil, just to kind of round things out. And this one's going to be quite dry at this stage, but don't worry. There's gonna be plenty of fat that's gonna come in and this will turn into a nice sauce. Cool. All right, and that's my three sauces. I'm going to do nothing. Dump these into my bowl. So we'll start with the gochujang. I'm gonna just dump them in here. About a third, a third, a third. Get those off to the side. And I wanna work quickly here. I don't wanna leave my grill open for too long. So we're gonna let it heat. And the sugar that we put in all of these is going to caramelize and become amazing and sticky and sweet and just like to die for. You don't wanna totally cook the heck out of these. Like you want that first cook to be on a lower temperature and then really amp it up for this part. So I'm gonna do one more dip in here because if you're gonna go for it, you should just go for it, right? And as you can see, like these are sticky in the absolute best way. They smell insane, you guys. So hard to move that. This is honestly the hardest part. Try to get them. And then just try and keep them separate, obviously, for when you have the spicier ones. Smell on this, you guys. It's unreal. The cheese from the parm has really given me like a really nice, like bubbly texture too as it's melted. Like these look so good. I'm gonna have to put those. They're so pretty. That bright red and green is gonna look amazing on these. While my friends are watching me, they all just showed up and they are gonna watch me because I have to eat on camera. That's just what we do in food media. So I'm going to have a bite of each of these while they look at me and laugh because they wanna be eating these and they love that I'm doing this. Okay, so I'm gonna start with lemon pepper because it's like the lightest spice of all of them. This is really nice. I'm not gonna lie. I just think it's a really nice starter or if you go for something really hot and you just need like a little bit of a break, those are perfect. It's a classic for a reason, lemon pepper. I'm next gonna go with gochujang, this kind of Korean inspired one and like all the sugar caramelized so nicely on these. You hear that? It's so crunchy. I'm saving all of them over there to finish when I'm done with this amazing taste test. And then I'm gonna put a chili on top of mine. I cannot wait for this one. This one I think is my favorite. Right into that fresh chili. I love the fresh basil on top too. It just adds like so much complexity to an already like pretty robust sauce on this one. Yeah, so anyways, I love chicken wings. They're super easy, especially once you do the grilling. Like I'm just, I love a fried chicken wing but I just like not on my time when I'm doing like a million other things. I'm hosting and I have all these different things going on. Chicken wings are amazingly economical especially when you compare them to like beef these days or whatever. So I love to have food ready to go when my guests show up. They can come on in, kind of sample of what we've got. We've got some hot stuff, some cold stuff out like grabbing their drinks or whatever. Like I love having the wings ready, just a bite or two. And then I'll just kind of keep cooking as the night goes on. My grill is still on nice and hot. So I can do, I can throw like my burgers on and kind of see what everyone wants at this point. But I mean, I could do a whole bunch more of these and this could be what we eat tonight. I don't know. I just like to have a big variety. Doing the dry brine yesterday really did a ton of work of heavy lifting for me. And that little thing mixed with the different sauces is exactly what you need to kind of like spice up rather predictable, like backyard barbecue. I feel like it's just like a little bit of a twist on something pretty classic that people really love. So give these a try. Let me know what you think. I'm gonna put some dry shampoo in there. Will my friends make fun of me for doing this? Love you. I'm gonna get the rest of these in. Oh my God, I lost one. Ignore it. And similar thing. We just want to make sure that they're so coated in all of that awesome lemony peppery thing goodness.