Malaysian Chicken Wings: Two Ways

It's football* season! Have you had your chicken wings yet?

Malaysian Barbecued Chicken Wings and Fragrant Chicken Wings

Chicken wings are a favorite football season food. The National Chicken Council estimates that 2.55 BILLION pounds of chicken wings will be consumed IN 2008. Of that, 90 million pounds were consumed just during Super Bowl weekend alone.

But if you're like me, you've had many a chicken wing that was seriously over-fried, dried out and chewy. Then those hot wings were covered in hot sauce to make up for the lack of any other flavor. Instead of suffering through another batch of fatally flawed wings, try making these two recipes for chicken wings.

Grilled or barbequed chicken wings are very popular in Malaysia. In almost any hawker center or food court, you will often see one stall selling nothing but grilled chicken wings. And they are so yummy. Grilled perfectly with that touch of honey and soy- and oyster-based sauce, they are the perfect anytime snack.

While at the grocery store recently, I saw some chicken wings for sale and immediately thought of this Malaysian barbecued chicken wings recipe. I snapped up the whole tray (about 25 wings total) and brought it home. As I was thinking of how to use up all these wings, I started looking at my other cookbooks and found a second recipe called Fragrant Chicken Wings that sounded good to me .

So instead of marinating my chicken wings in just one marinade, I decided to do them both. The Malaysian Barbecued Chicken Wings recipe I had done before and knew them to be good (try them smoked if you can--it kicks up the flavor even more). The second would be new to me but looking at the ingredients, I knew it would be a winner and I was right.

I recommend that you marinate your chicken overnight for optimum flavor penetration. As a matter of fact, the first recipe can be marinated as long as 3 days. If you want, I'm sure you could use chicken thighs or legs for the marinades but nothing beats the wings, I guarantee!

You can cook the chicken wings on your grill, in your smoker or if it's too cold to fire up your grill (is there such a thing, Nate would ask!), you could bake these and finish them off with a quick broil to give them that nice charred flavor.

Grilled Malaysian Barbecued Chicken Wings

Barbecued Chicken Wings

recipe adapted from "The Food of Malaysia" by Wendy Hutton

Ingredients
6 large chicken wings (I find that you could use up to 10 with the same amount of marinade)
1/2 tsp Chinese wine
1/2 tsp sesame oil
1 Tbsp light soy sauce
2 Tbsp dark soy sauce (I told you, you'd find this sauce useful in many of my recipes, go get thee some!)
2 Tbsp oyster sauce
2 Tbsp honey
salt and pepper to taste (well, I just normally put in a big pinch of kosher salt, and shake my white pepper vigorously for 5 seconds--does that help?)

Method
1. Combine all the ingredients and marinate the chicken wings for 6 hours, up to 3 days. I find a ziplock bag really handy for this purpose--just squeeze out all the air and massage the marinate into the chicken wings. Flip around once or twice before cooking.
2. Grill it on your barbeque until golden brown and cooked or bake at 425 F for about 20-25 mins and finish with a 2-3 minute broil for added color.

Fragrant Chicken Wings

recipe adapted from "Sensational Starters and Finger Foods" by Wendy Hutton

Ingredients
1 kg (2lbs) chicken wings
2 stalks (or 3) lemongrass, outer fibrous layer removed and only bottom third of stalk used
2 (or 4, hee hee) shallots, peeled and roughly chopped
2 large red chillies (more or less depending on how spicy or not you want it)
2-3 cloves garlic (I always add more--4?)
1/2 inch galangal, sliced (I didn't have any so I just used about a thumb-sized piece of ginger instead)
1 Tbsp oil
1/4 tsp tumeric powder
1 Tbsp sugar
1 tsp salt
2 Tbsp fish sauce

Ingredients for Fragrant Chicken Wings

Method
1. In a food processor, grind the lemongrass, shallots, red chillies, garlic, galangal (or ginger) until fine (use the oil to keep the blades turning and to help it become more paste-like).
2. Add the tumeric powder, sugar, salt and fish sauce to the paste.
3. Coat the chicken wings with the marinade, mixing well to ensure even coating. Again, using the ziplock bag method is best for me. Marinate for at least 2 hours but overnight is best.
4. Grill on your barbeque until golden brown and cooked or bake at 425 F for about 20-25 mins and finish with a 2-3 minute broil for added color (didn't I just say this earlier?).

Fragrant Malaysian Chicken Wings

Enjoy!

Cheers, Annie

*American football, that is. Yes, it seems a little weird calling it football when most of the time the ball is being thrown or caught. I've learnt to live with this silliness and correct myself whenever I'm thinking soccer (which is the real football!).

Hungry for more chicken dishes? Click below:

Rendang Chicken

Stir-fried Cumin Chicken (Ayam Goreng Berjintan)

Braised Chicken with 40 cloves of garlic

Thai Green Curry

Roast Chicken with White Bean Stew