- 12 minutes ago
Chef Sam Braverman of Brooklyn’s Lori Jayne shows how to make ultra-crispy buffalo wings using a dry brine, double-fry method, and a bold Buffalo 2.0 sauce with blue cheese built right in. It’s no wonder the people of Brooklyn can’t get enough of these wings.
Category
🛠️
LifestyleTranscript
00:00I'm Sam Braverman, chef-owner of Lori Jane. I'm going to show you how to make buffalo wings.
00:08They're going to be the best you've ever had.
00:12We're here at Danger Danger in Brooklyn, the home of Lori Jane.
00:16The sauce for our buffalo wings is a little unique to us. We call it Buffalo 2.0.
00:20It's taking all your favorite things that you might dip a buffalo wing in or add to it,
00:24and just putting it into the sauce.
00:26Buffalo wings shouldn't be super hard. It's really about setting yourself up for success.
00:31You just have to pay attention to a few details and just approach it with intentionality,
00:35and you will get a great final product.
00:42First step with buffalo wings is buying good chicken.
00:44You want to look for some smaller wings that have nice, tight skin and no strange discoloration.
00:52In the grocery store, ideally you should get some kind of air-chilled chicken wings.
00:56Best to get something with as little to no retained water as possible.
01:00That retained water is going to make it harder to get a crispy fry and get that good moisture we want.
01:04Chicken wings have three parts. The drum, the flat, the tip.
01:08We are going to break them down into three sections.
01:11I like to use this comically large cleaver.
01:13You want to find the joint, slice down evenly. That's your tip.
01:17Put him off to the side. Then take this guy, line him up, find that joint again, slice down one motion.
01:24There we go. We got a drum. There we go. We got a flat.
01:27Chicken wings are one of our most popular dishes at Lori Jane.
01:30We go through about a thousand or so chicken wings a week.
01:33You want to be sure to take the tips off and separate the pieces.
01:37The tip, in Western culture we don't eat this as much, but we do use it here to make stock.
01:42If you buy whole chicken wings for home, snip these off, put them in your freezer.
01:46Next time you want to make chicken super stock, use these.
01:49Real simple thing you can do that will make a difference in your wings is give them a little score.
01:53Just give them one nice slice across the top.
01:55When we do this, it's going to allow our dry brine to get in much faster and more consistently.
02:00And when we cook, then this skin is going to puff up and it's going to cause this lovely little separation here
02:05that you're looking for when you fry, where the outside will get crisp and the inside is going to essentially steam and stay moist.
02:11So we dry brine our wings. That's just adding a solution of salt and sugar.
02:15We're going to want to go to about a tablespoon or two for every pound.
02:19The dry brine, it's just enhancing that good moisture we already have.
02:22It's not adding more liquid to the chicken.
02:25Chicken powder is dehydrated pulverized chicken.
02:28So we season the chicken with chicken and then it tastes, get this, like chicken.
02:33One little trick you can do at home if you don't have a fryer is add a little bit of baking powder to your dry brine.
02:38And that's going to cause the skin to pull away, puff up, do that stuff we were talking about,
02:43where your wing is going to be nice and moist and juicy and the skin is going to be nice and crispy and crunchy.
02:48Our chicken has been thoroughly dry brined and cut.
02:50Letting them hang out in the fridge overnight will yield the best results.
02:53But if you only have 45 to 60 minutes, that's fine.
02:56You're going to get a delicious wing either way.
02:58And now we're ready for our first cook because we do have to cook them twice to make them really, really good.
03:02We're going to par cook these wings.
03:08Par cooking means cooking something up to or just shy of the finished temperature and then reserving it for time to serve.
03:15By gently cooking them the first time and then resting and chilling them down,
03:18it's going to allow us on our second fry to get a really dry, crispy skin out of them.
03:23That's going to then have the sauce adhere better.
03:25We also do this for practicality.
03:27By par cooking them off, I can fry and serve you buffalo wings within about five minutes,
03:32as opposed to 15-20 if we were going straight from raw.
03:35This is just over two pounds of chicken wings that have been dry brined.
03:38We've let them sit for just long enough and now we're going to par them off.
03:41We use a deep fryer here.
03:43When you're heating up your oil, for the first fry you want it to land somewhere between 300 and 325.
03:48We're at like 315 right now.
03:50So the oil has come up to temp.
03:52Pop it in our oil.
03:54We fry exclusively in beef tallow, which is rendered beef fat.
03:58It has a higher smoke point than most oils.
04:01We have been frying in canola oil forever,
04:03but we switched over to beef tallow because it tastes really, really good.
04:06If you don't have a deep fryer at home,
04:08then you're going to want to use a pot with a high enough edge
04:11that you can fill that less than halfway up with oil
04:13and not be worried about it splattering everywhere.
04:15I would strongly recommend doing the in and out at home.
04:18Shake them around, make sure they're not sticking.
04:22We'll tighten up the skin.
04:25When the wings come out after our par, they're going to have taken on some color,
04:29but not that full golden brown sheen that they'll get on the second fry.
04:32These guys should be coming out looking a little more pale.
04:35Just a little bit past this is where we're going to get to.
04:37But already you're starting to see from that paprika and the other seasonings,
04:42we're getting a little bit of red, a little bit of color in there,
04:45just enough to start darkening our chicken.
04:48If you're making chicken wings at home, you can do this step just in the oven.
04:51Bring your temperature down, something gentle like 275 or 300 in the oven,
04:55and you're going to let them rock out until they reach an internal temperature of 165.
04:59Another great tip for buffalo wings would be to temp your wings using a thermometer.
05:03We're going to go up on the bone. See there, we're still at 142.
05:06Need another two or three minutes.
05:09Right now in the fryer, all of the excess moisture is being forced to the surface,
05:14and that's beginning that steaming of the chicken inside.
05:17By not cooking at too high of a temp now, we're allowing it to gently come up to temperature,
05:22retain the moisture we want, expel any retained water,
05:25so that when we chill them down and do our second fry,
05:28we're just going to have all that good juiciness inside and none of the wibbliness
05:33that might come with an improperly prepared chicken wing.
05:37So these are ready to rock.
05:39We just temp them and they're all at 165.
05:42We want to drain off that excess oil and then lay them out onto a rack.
05:47They're not going to cook any further.
05:49This is that good, good skin in there.
05:51That's how you know you have a good quality chicken.
05:53These little darker bits, that's how we know that our seasoning penetrated.
05:57Next up, chilling them down.
05:59It's going to allow our skin to get crispier,
06:01and it's also going to make it so that when we're frying these off for the second time,
06:05they don't overcook because we're going from cold into hot.
06:08We're going to get crispy exterior, moist interior, good chicken wing.
06:16There's two ingredients in most buffalo sauces, butter and hot sauce.
06:20We're going to take our butter and we're going to brown it.
06:22By browning the butter, we're just going to unlock a bit of nuttiness and a more depth of flavor.
06:27This is one of the more integral elements of our buffalo sauce that I think makes it different from a lot of other ones.
06:31We're already getting that nice brown color and a nutty aroma.
06:36Browning the butter is just another way of layering flavors.
06:39Butter is its own thing.
06:40You brown it, you're adding another layer.
06:42You add the chicken powder, that's another layer.
06:44Chicken powder is a great tool in your arsenal to just make so many things taste better.
06:48We want like a heaping tablespoon of that chicken powder.
06:51We're just going to blend that through.
06:53The hot sauce, that's another layer.
06:55We use crystal hot sauce because it's the best hot sauce.
06:57Many hot sauces are just spice and vinegar.
07:00And while that is the composition of this sauce,
07:03it just has more of a depth of flavor than a Tabasco, a Franks.
07:07It's not one note.
07:08I would say it's like a one to four ratio about for hot sauce to butter.
07:12We want to mix it through very thoroughly.
07:14And you want to keep the heat on nice and low at this point.
07:18We're going fat into fat.
07:20As soon as they're at the same temperature,
07:22they're going to have an easier time combining.
07:24So this is our standard lovely buffalo sauce.
07:26But we're going to do a little more today.
07:28We're going to make buffalo 2.0.
07:30What that means is we're going to add blue cheese,
07:34grana padana cheese mixed up with our garlic.
07:37Grana padana is a hard cow's milk cheese,
07:40similar to a pecorino or a parm.
07:42We're going to add lemon juice in there.
07:44The blue cheese is nice and funky.
07:47The grana kind of grounds it and then the lemon picks it back up again
07:50and gives you that acid that goes along with the buffalo.
07:53So we take that, pour it in here,
07:55and you're going to get these lovely little chunks in here
07:58where some of the blue cheese is going to break into the sauce
08:02and give you this more nice creamy texture.
08:05But we're going to still keep some chunks
08:07that when you're biting into the wing,
08:09you get a lovely little hit of that.
08:11Everybody wants blue cheese dipping sauce.
08:13Why do that when you can have blue cheese buffalo sauce?
08:19Our wings are nice and chilled now.
08:21You're going to see that that skin has tightened up a little bit.
08:24Now we're ready for the final fry.
08:25Our oil has come back up to temp.
08:27We need to be at at least 350.
08:28And if you have a higher smoke point oil like tallow,
08:30you can go to 365 or 370.
08:32Let's get a nice blend of flats and drums.
08:35Drop them in.
08:36We're going to let these rock for at least that first two to three minutes.
08:40You can see already they're starting to take on more color.
08:45After this step and the final cooking is done,
08:48we're going to go right into our sauce.
08:50Because when they're hot and they still have the oil on them,
08:52it's the same thing as salting your food.
08:53That sauce is going to stick to it more.
08:55We have fat in the sauce that's going to bind with the fat on the oil.
08:58It's going to make happy, fatty, good time.
09:01So at this point, you see that the skin has pulled away a little bit.
09:06It's starting to crunch up, looking like a chicharron.
09:09This guy is ready.
09:15Make sure your sauce is nice and hot.
09:17You should see steam coming off it.
09:18We're going to take our hot, hot sauce.
09:20Take our wings, just a little shake.
09:22And then right in, okay?
09:24You're going to hear that nice sizzle.
09:26Toss, toss.
09:29You don't have to toss if you're at home.
09:31Take some tongs.
09:32That's what your final product should be looking like.
09:34Because we have the hot sauce going onto the hot wing
09:38and little fats and oils in both places,
09:40it's more conducive to sticking together and holding onto the wing.
09:43They have a lovely, even coating of the sauce throughout.
09:46We're just going to tear up a little bit of parsley.
09:48It's more for presentation and color.
09:50And we're going to take a little bit more of our two-point omis,
09:53blue cheese mixed up with our garlic, with our grana padana.
09:56And we're going to toss it through just to give it that nice final coating.
10:02A couple little extra chunks of blue in there.
10:05And that green, just to break up the deep, deep orange.
10:08So there you go.
10:09You should have nice little chunks of blue, a little bit of green, some lemon.
10:13We're ready to plate our wings at Lori Jane.
10:16That means a little paper boat.
10:18Build upwards if possible.
10:21Take our excess sauce.
10:24All over the top.
10:26Buffalo wings shouldn't be clean.
10:28It should be messy.
10:29It should be a whole experience.
10:31That's why we serve them with wet naps.
10:33These look so good because we've done all the work to have a great chicken wing.
10:37We followed all the steps.
10:39We got them nice and crispy.
10:40We can even feel the crisp through all the sauce.
10:43It really should smell amazing between the blue cheese, the grana, the garlic.
10:47These are just all the things you want to eat with a chicken wing.
10:53Mmm.
10:54Check it out.
10:55Steaming.
10:56Still moist on the inside.
10:58You'll notice we don't have carrot.
10:59We don't have celery.
11:00We don't have ranch.
11:01We don't need those things.
11:02If you ask for blue cheese, just look at the sauce, man.
11:05It's already in there.
11:06People are super passionate about buffalo wings and I get it.
11:10There's so much variation in what is really two elements, sauce and chicken.
11:14Talking about American comfort food?
11:16I don't think it gets much better than buffalo wings.
Comments