Chicken Wings

What do you mean you haven’t heard of David Chang or Momofuku!  This is the kind of hype that the young successful Chef David Chang has brewed up for himself almost seemingly overnight.  Let me just say now that this post inherently contains offensive language due to our subject.

David Chang’s restaurants are located in NYC and have been known for unexpected flavor combinations all revolving around his ancestral Korean cuisine.  While this book is called Momofuku, it examines some of his other endeavors such as Ssäm Bar, Noodle Bar, and Ko.  Since the writing of this book in 2009, David Chang has opened up Má Pêche and Milk Bar to further expand his empire.   

Chef Chang speaks frank and is often acting his bawdy self as he tells us about the rough road to success.  Chang's language doesn’t take a detour toward normalcy just because he has to explain recipes.  Pan-roasted dry-aged rib eye is a perfect example.  Chang says, “it’s not easy, because cooking a piece of meat that costs maybe $40 or $50 takes balls.  If you f**k up, you f****d up a piece of meat that cost a lot of money.  That somebody took care to raise and slaughter and dry-age and butcher.  That makes you an a**hole, especially at Momofuku.”

Don’t let the strong language deter or compel you to read this book.  This guy has an uncanny ability to meld classic cuisine with comfort food and it would be a shame for you to pass up this book.  The recipe I have chosen to take on is lengthy, but I chose it because I wanted to get a recipe on this site that explored a lot of cooking methods.  It took me three days (four if you count the time to prep Pickled Chiles ) to prepare this amazing recipe.  Here are some of the methods we will be exploring:

Brining – using a salt, sugar and water solution to impart flavor and moisture into meats.  This is generally a prior step to smoking most kinds of meat.  Your brining time will depend on the type of protein you're using.  For example, if we want to brine some trout for stove-top smoking, we would probably not want to go any longer than 2 hours. 

Cold-smoking (indoors) – we used our conventional oven as a smoker box for this.  You can use your outdoor grill though.  I would prepare everything you see in this video and just put it all into your grill.  Place the smoke source and the tray of ice on the bottom grate, put the top grate on and place your brined chicken on top.  Cover with the lid and after a few minutes, slide an electric thermometer in through the vent holes.  Keep in mind, you don't need heat, hence cold-smoking.  Cold smoking takes place at a temperature between 80 and 120 degrees F.  This does not cook the food!

Confit – this is an old method originally used to preserve meats during winter months.  We use this to gently poach our chicken wings in fat for flavor and texture.  Be sure to start your confit process on the stovetop first.  As I show in the video, you will turn your flame off once you start to see tiny bubbles making their way to the surface.  By doing this step, the oven won't have to struggle in recovery time to bring that pot of wings up to the desired temperature of 180 degrees F. 

Sauté – The beauty of this recipe is that once everything is prepped through to the confit step, we can serve these wings at any time within a week.  When we want to eat, we will sauté the confited chicken wings over medium-high heat with some of the confit fat or rendered pork fat to brown them and heat through.  We will also make our pan sauce from the pan fond that is left behind.

Chicken Wings

20 chicken wings, with wing tips attached (about 4 ½ pounds)

For the brine:
8 cups lukewarm water

1 cup sugar

1 cup salt
For the confit:

5 cups rendered pork or duck fat or grapeseed or other neutral oil, or more if needed

For the taré sauce:
All of the reserved wing tips
1 tbs unsalted butter or other neutral oil with a high smoke-point
1 cup mirin

1cup sake

1 cup usukuchi (light soy sauce) I used high quality shoyu

Freshly ground black pepper
*The taré sauce that I cooked reduced from 3 cups down to 1.5 cups
Prep for the pan sauce after browning the wings:

6 medium garlic cloves, thinly sliced

5 to 6 Pickled Chiles, seeded and ribs removed – I sliced them thin afterwards
One bunch of scallions sliced, green parts and white parts--I sliced them on a slight bias
*About a 1/2 cup of the prepared taré sauce