memphis dusted oven fried chicken wings

Meathead Goldwyn and J. Kenji Lopez-Alt are two chefs we regularly turn to for inspiration, ideas and techniques. Their cookbooks Meathead: The Science of Great Barbecue and Grilling and The Food Lab: Better Home Cooking Through Science are not only full of wonderful recipes they also breakdown cooking methods and techniques through science. The result is an education in cooking which can be applied to the many great recipes in the books.

I have applied many of Meathead’s techniques when cooking barbecue as well as trying out plenty of his recipes. Recently I barbecued a whole chicken in my WeberQ rubbed with his Memphis Dust rub (you can find my grilled chicken post here).

I am also a big fan of Kenji’s oven-fried chicken wing technique so I came up with the idea of combining the best of both worlds and cook up some oven-fried chicken wings coated with Memphis Dust.

The oven-frying technquie basically involves covering the wings with kosher salt and baking powder, dehydrating the skin by leaving the wings uncovered in the fridge overnight and then cooking them in the oven. You can read Kenji’s in depth discussion on the method here.

directions

Follow Kenji’s method for the chicken wings and rub with Meathead’s Memphis Dust just prior to cooking in the oven. The wings crisp up beautifully and the Dust really enhances the overall flavour.

I made a very simple sauce to go with the wings – equal parts adobo sauce and honey with a splash of soy sauce. Awesome!

For other chicken ideas click here.