Chicken wings

Chicken wings

I made these once and was told “you can get boneless chicken breast these days, you know…”. There were objections to having to pick stuff up with your fingers, and to eating anything with inconvenient things like bones in them. It seems vat-grown protein just can’t come too quickly for some folk. Luckily, as long as they remain unfashionable and full of boney inconvenience, they’re pretty cheap, a big tray costing under thirty bob (Google it: £1.50).

The bonus: cut the wing tips off and save them. When you have a pile of picked-clean bones, boil them up with the wing tips for chicken stock (I bunged a handful of tomatoes into the last batch for a quick and easy soup).

The prep: cut the remaining bits into the two, obvious sections, either side of the hinge joint. In a bowl mix them with: (necessary: soy sauce and sesame oil – yep, just the two essential ingredients, they’re a easy and robust as that); and: (optional: garlic, ginger, chillies, oyster sauce, fish sauce, Schezwan peppercorns, salt, black pepper, look, really, whatever you fancy or have lying around, bung it in, you have to try very hard to spoil these). Leave to stand as long as possible before cooking. Disorganised as ever, that’s not generally very long at all.

Lob them in the oven, gas mark somewhere between five and eight generally works, check them after fifteen minutes and then after every five minutes until they’re all crispy skinned and golden brown and yelling “eat me”. They’re good with some plain boiled rice, or a salad, or on their own while you sit and watch some footy on the telly.

Here’s some from Friday, about halfway through cooking, to accompany the international game:

I had these on their own, splashed with Tabasco, with some kitchen paper on the side to wipe greasy fingers on.

The stock was thick (it was jelly after a few hours in the fridge) and flavourful and made a superb soup with just a handful of cherry tomatoes that had started to go wrinkly, half a tin of plum tomatoes left over from BLISS’ pasta sauce, and a small dollop of crème fraiche at the end.