Wings, at their best, are a crispy carrier for sauce. Why then do so many recipes start with a liquid marinade? Rather than soaking for flavor, wings should be lightly dehydrated for texture while also increasing surface area for sauce to cling.
Like my kobujime salmon recipe, drying fish or chicken skin overnight is a good starting point, but let’s go a step further with a dry rub of powdered rice kōji — the “national mold” of Japan scientifically known as Aspergillus oryzae (credit for starting my kōji journey to Jeremy Umansky and Rich Shih’s “Koji Alchemy,” which has a Japanese translation releasing this year).
While this recipe would be perfect for an air-fryer or fried the good old-fashioned way, these wings are actually baked. The addition of baking powder makes the skin more alkaline so they brown perfectly in a conventional oven without added oil. For our sauce, a traditional soy and shikuwasa citrus ponzu doesn’t need extra sugar with the addition of mirin. We add a little to make it a glaze along with butter.
These wings are a perfect finger food to enjoy alongside your early-morning football, but with rice and salad, they can easily become a meal or even a great bento filler.
Not a fan of my flavors here? Do what I did and use wings as a canvas for creativity drawn from various sources. I relied on J. Kenji Lopez-Alt of Serious Eats for the idea of dried, baked wings, and the ponzu glaze was inspired by a recent interview of Yukari Sakamoto, author of “Food Sake Tokyo.”
Makes 12-15 wings
Prep time: Overnight
Cook time: 30 minutes
Wings ingredients:
- 30 grams dry rice kōji
- 5 grams baking powder
- 5 grams salt
- 12-15 chicken wings
Ponzu glaze ingredients:
- 30 milliliters soy sauce
- 30 milliliters mirin
- 30 milliliters shikuwasa citrus juice
- 30 grams sugar
- 30 grams butter
Directions:
1. In a spice grinder or mortar and pestle, grind your dry rice kōji to a powder and mix with your baking powder and salt.
2. Pat the chicken wings dry with kitchen paper, then lightly coat with the kōji mix. Place these wings evenly on a rack over a baking sheet, then leave uncovered overnight in the refrigerator.
3. On gameday, heat your oven to 230 degrees Celsius and bake your wings for 20 to 25 minutes, turning halfway until nicely colored and crispy.
4. While the wings bake, combine your soy sauce, mirin, shikuwasa juice and sugar in a small pot and simmer for three minutes. Turn off the heat and add the butter, stirring to combine. Once baked, toss your wings in the sauce to glaze.
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