Sweet & Sour Wings
Like so many others I know, sweet and sour was my go-to at Chinese restaurants in my younger years. I made the small jump to General Tso's sometime in high school, and once that happen I have really left sweet and sour in the rearview mirror. While this ubiquitous American-Chinese restaurant hasn't been completely devoid in my life, it did feel like a throwback when I decided to make sweet and sour wings at a Meatwave this past summer.
The last time I delved into sweet and sour was when developing a recipe for the sauce for Serious Eats back in 2012. I started with that base recipe here but made an adjustment of tossing in some red pepper flakes to add a touch of heat to contrast all the sweetness that comes from brown sugar, pineapple juice, and ketchup.
I used my standard wing method here, which began with a seasoning whose base requirements are merely salt and baking powder. For these wings, I added only white pepper into the mix for another layer of sharpness against the sugary sauce.
Once coated in the seasoning, I arranged the wings on a wire rack nestled in a sheet pan and I set the entire thing in the fridge overnight. This rest time air dries the skin with the wire rack ensuring maximum surface area exposure. When you start the cooking process with dried skin like this, the exterior begins to brown faster, leading to enhanced color and crisping. That, paired with the baking powder which gives the skin extra texture, is what creates extra-crispy grilled and baked wings that hold their own against fried ones.
Most of my wings recipes consist of a sauce, seasoning, and chicken and then I may garnish the final dish with something green to make it look nicer for photos. I thought for sweet and sour wings though, I could follow the blueprint provided by many restaurants and add some fruit into the mix, which led me to grill pineapple slices first.
Then some sweet bell peppers after that. Once both of those were done, I cut them into bite-sized pieces that would get mixed in with the wings and sauce prior to plating.
These wings grilled up on par with the majority of my experiences using this exact method. That meant that after about 45 minutes of roasting over indirect high heat, the skins were well browned and crackling crisp, exactly how I like them.
All that was left to do now was to the transfer the wings to a bowl, add in the pineapple, peppers, and sauce and then toss to combine.
While there was nostalgia in creating a dish so ingrained in me from childhood, it didn't exactly hit that way when eating. That was mainly due to the fact that wings are the not the same as the battered and fried pieces of boneless chicken that's more common, but also because this had more depth than what's standard from my experience. The essential sweet and sour components were present and upfront, but the sauce also had a more pronounced fruitiness and a little heat to make it more interesting. When paired with wings that had a bit of smoky flavor from the grill, these really took off for me. The pineapple and bell pepper may not have been the most practical idea since they required switching from hands to fork to eat them, but they too lifted the overall flavor profile of the dish. If all sweet and sour had these extra complexities, I may not have left it to wayside for so long, but I also may not have been as amenable to eating it as a small child, so I'll forever be grateful for the simplicity of this dish that served as a gateway for myself and so many others too.
