Thai-style Crispy Basil Wings
Back when I lived in the Ditmars area of Astoria, my wife and I had a bi-weekly laundry routine—get all the clothes in the wash and then go have a dinner comprised of two orders of crispy basil chicken at the now defunct Thai spot across the street called Thai Elephant. Until recently, that was the only place that I had been to that used the seasoning most commonly seen in dishes like pad krapow and pad kee mao, on fried chicken. However, a new-ish joint in my current locale of Durham called Thaiangle serves up crispy basil wings, and the first time that I ordered a plate of those, they brought back fond memories of what was once a staple of my diet. After having those wings, I also slapped myself for not thinking of them myself sooner and knew they would most definitely kick off my Wing Month in 2025.
I actually still make that crispy basil chicken dish home, in fact, I love that flavor combo so much that my herb garden is about one-third holy basil just so I can make many variations of the dish all summer long—pad krapow, pad kee mao, crispy basil chicken, and crispy basil pork belly are among my regulars. I've never seen holy basil for sale in a grocery store, which is why I grow a lot of it, but when the season is over, I switch over to using the easily purchasable Thai basil which has a bit of a more intense flavor, so I'll tend to use less of it. The flavor is also different, with holy basil having a more mellow touch with a slight peppery kick, while Thai basil has an upfront anise quality that definitely stands out more in the final dish.
There's so much flavor in the sauce that would later coat the grilled chicken that I only applied a seasoning of salt and baking powder to the wings before letting them rest on a wire rack set in the fridge overnight. The baking soda and air drying are the two important components to getting crispy and textured skin on grilled wings. After finishing the dish, I thought a little sugar on the wings in this step would have made them all the better, so I included that in the final recipe.
I make some form of this dish so often that it's become one that I no longer measure any ingredients for—I can just tell by look and taste if things are going in the right direction. So it felt weird developing an actually recipe where I was paying close attention to all the exact quantities that went into what I was making. That started with pounding a few garlic cloves and bird's eye chiles together to form a rough paste in a mortar and pestle. I was only making half a recipe here, so you'll have more than what you see in the photo if you're doing the full one. You can also adjust the spiciness to your liking in this step—this dish should have a good kick to it, so I put what I consider the minimum peppers in recipe, but you can certainly go up or down as you like. This garlic and pepper combo gets sautéed in a little oil until fragrant before adding in the liquids.
The sauce part of the equation here is a combo of Thai thin soy sauce, oyster sauce, Thai black soy sauce, fish sauce, sugar, and usually a little water. However, for this recipe I needed enough sauce to coat a large batch of wings, so I had to up the volume without throwing the flavor overboard. I tried simply swapping the water for chicken stock and increasing the amount considerably, and that ended up working perfectly with a good amount of sauce that tasted on point and had the right syrupy consistency after adding in a cornstarch slurry to thicken it up.
No matter what variation of this dish I'm making, there's always some veggie component, so I felt like that was needed here too. I opted for green and red bell peppers, which are two things I normally put into my crispy basil chicken and they also grill up really well. So once I had a fire going, the first thing I did was cook some slices of bell peppers over direct heat until they were charred and softened nicely. Once done, I cut them into thin strips while the wings cooked.
The wings were set over indirect heat, covered, and let to roast until they were well browned and crispy. This tends to clock in around 45 minutes pretty consistently for me, but my fire was bit hotter on this day and these were perfectly crunchy in a little under 40 minutes.
Once the wings were all done, they went into a large bowl and I added in the pepper strips, sauce, and a whole lot of holy basil. I feel like it always looks like more basil than you would think you need, but you really need a lot for the final dish to have that distinct basil tilt to it since the flavor of the sauce is quite heavy handed with so much savoriness, garlic, and heat.
Since this is one of my most beloved flavor combinations, there was little doubt these wings were going to be a winner in my wind. I imagine the same will be true for many Thai food lovers out there too, but if you haven't had this seasoning on crispy chicken yet, you're in for a big treat. The final wings actually had a bit more of an intense flavor since the sauce was so well adhered to the exterior of the chicken in good quantities. So that familiar savory and salty molasses flavor was well represented with a strong kick from the garlic and peppers too. There was enough sweetness to balance those strong flavors so they didn't taste overboard either, but the real thing to write home about was that crackling skin that provided a welcomed component that you don't get in pad krapow or pad kee mao. I wouldn't have thought that I needed even more variations of this dish in my life, but these wings made it clear that more is most definitely a good thing.
