Fryin' Time

I love chicken wings. Who doesn't? But I don't eat chicken wings on a regular basis. For one thing, they're too expensive at restaurants. Good God, this is a part of the chicken that used to practically be a throw-away scrap, or maybe a source of soup stock at best. But some dude in New York cooks up some chicken wings with some hot sauce, and the next thing you know, wings are more expensive than legs and thighs, and everybody's crazy about them, including me.

What's a guy to do? Well, I could make wings at home.

Frying wings, like in a deep fryer, is best, from a taste standpoint. Not having a deep fryer, I've used a big frying pan, but it's so messy that it's a discouraging option. You can bake the wings, but the skin comes out a little too rubbery and greasy. I grilled some wings once, and that wasn't bad, but the skin still didn't crisp up as much as I wanted.

I'd put baking as third choice. Grilling as second choice, and frying as the undisputed winner.

When we were in North Carolina this summer, my parents have a Fry Daddy, a very popular little deep fryer. I fried some chicken wings for my birthday meal, coated them with my favorite sauce (Frank's RedHot...I'm a purist), and they were borderline perfect. The only thing missing was some butter mixed with the sauce to give it a little extra cling. Those wings were so good that it made me want to buy a deep fryer...

As football season kicked off a few weeks ago, I got the urge once again to make my own perfect wings. Restaurant wings, in addition to being expensive, are hit-and-miss. Some places have good wings, some places have average wings, and some are just plain weak. When I've tried wings at restaurants, they're sometimes too dry, too fatty, not saucy enough, too small, you name it. Maybe I'm just too discriminating. I can live with that.

For some reason, Alex wanted onion rings with his birthday meal. Cristina and I love onion rings, but we eat them, oh, I dunno, once a year maybe? But when he said onion rings, I thought to myself, "hmm, that would be another reason to buy a deep fryer. I could get him some crappy, too sweet, onion rings from Sonic...or I could make some REAL onion rings at home. And chicken wings. And hush puppies..."

So I bought a deep fryer. The place I went to didn't have the Fry Daddy, but I got another model by the same company. A little bigger, but not too big that it takes up too much room for the 353 days of the year that I don't use it.

I bought the biggest sweet onion I could find, some onion ring mix, and we made onion rings.

Alex, fighting through the tears, to help with the onion rings.

We thought these looked like a trumpet, the way they stuck together.

And they were delicious. They were devoured as soon as they came out of the fryer and cooled off enough to eat.

I fried some chicken wings too, and they were, dare I say, perfect (I used butter in the sauce).

Now I'm ready to try my own hush puppies.

And one day, in honor of Steve, I might even deep fry a Mars bar. Stay tuned.