A couple of nights ago I had a hankering for fried chicken. I never eat fried chicken from fast-food outlets so was forced to whip up a batch myself. I could only find mini chicken breasts (I prefer wings), didn’t have time for the 24-hour soak in buttermilk, and in a nod to health consciousness (hah!) crumbed but did not batter the chicken.
I served it with potato salad and a sweet-&-hot sesame soy dipping sauce, made with jalapeños from my mini urban garden. Happiness!
I don’t know what it is about my people and chicken. Yeah, I said it – my people. Black people. Brown-skinneded people. Africans. No chicken in Africa is safe, least of all on Christmas Eve night. For all we know there could be a chicken out there which holds the gene for the next evolutionary jump but we’d never know cos the bird’s been eaten. Or will be eaten as soon as the drumsticks get juicy enough. I’ve heard a statistic that holds that out of the top 10 best selling products in South Africa annually, SIX of those are chicken products. And just like Shakira’s hips, statistics don’t lie.
I decided to add to that stereotype by making up some chicken wings. Now, it’s been a long day at work. I’m exhausted. I didn’t even feel like eating but I had marinated the chicken wings this morning so the hard work was all done.
Ok, so I marinated the wings in a Korean-inspired marinade of garlic, soy sauce, sesame oil, a splash of lime juice, a healthy sprinkling of chilli flakes and a dollop of honey:
I stuck the wings into the basket and sprinkled them with sesame seeds and cornflour mixed with salt (the cornflour is good for crispy skin and adds something that makes the chicken irresistible):
I stuck them in the Airfryer at 180* for 8 minutes, took them out, dunked them back in the marinade then tossed them back into the basket, sprinkled with the cornflour mix (shook it through a sieve which made it really easy to get a light, even coat), then stuck them in for a further 8 minutes at the same temperature.
I shook them up one last time then slid them back in for a final 5 minutes at 200*, before serving them up with some naan I happened to find in my fridge:
I’d had grand ideas of serving them with coriander rice but by the time I got round to cooking that just wasn’t going to happen.
Verdict: were they as good as proper double-fried Korean chicken wings? In a way, no. They didn’t have that super thin yet almost glutinous skin you get from double frying chicken coated with corn flour.
But on the other hand, there’s something about the deep fried version that makes me feel uncomfortable and somewhat sick to my stomach, and I didn’t get that with these.
Add to that the convenience of not having a vat of used oil to deal with afterwards, or a whole load of dishes or stove-side grease splatter to tackle, and I think I’ll go for the airfried version any day!
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