February 6, 2026 • 55 mins
Chicken wings, deep fried and coated in a sauce, are eaten by the billions in the U.S. during the weekend of NFL's Super Bowl. In this classic episode, guest Ramsey Yount joins Anney and Lauren to explore the dish’s history, plus the science of how to make wings extra delicious.
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Speaker 1 (00:08):
Hello, and welcome to Saber production of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie
Reese and I'm Laurn.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Vogel Bomb and today we have a classic episode for
you about chicken wings.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes, well, is there any particular reason this one was
on your mind? Lauren?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yes, this is our kind of paired episode with the
Ranch classic that we ran last week, because Ranch and
chicken wings are a thing that goes together. If you
don't hate Ranch or chicken wings. Yeah, I don't know
your life, but yeah, yeah, chicken wings are a ridiculously
popular food right around the Super Bowl, and that thing
(00:47):
is coming up as we record this episode. So yeah,
the episode originally came out in January of twenty nineteen.
What a time.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
What wow that they had a moment there.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, okay, you went back, you went back?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I did? I did.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
And you know, we have a lot of tent pole
events as we call them, going on right now, which
are just kind of holidays or.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, things that you can kind of rely on being there. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, And so we were coming up with our topic
ideas and you mentioned the Big Game as I call it,
and I completely I It's like I came out of
a trance and I was like, what day is it
that's coming up? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, Well, if you're really only in it for the food,
then it's kind of a state of mind rather than
a particular holiday.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
So stay in mind. I like that, And yes, I
have gotten my chicken wings.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
You have to cook.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I'm going to cook.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Ok, good, but I'm ready. That's good.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Apparently a lot of people in the country are ready.
According to the National Chicken Counts, Americans are going to
eat one point for eight billion chicken wings billion with
the B wow during the Super Bowl during during the
game this year, twenty twenty six. So, which is a
(02:20):
number that I totally understand. That's a number that I
have a solid comprehension of because I'm good at math.
Like most people. Most people can absolutely conceive of what
one point four eight billion chicken wings looks like.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, it's a lot, It's a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
This one features our amazing friend Ramsey Yunk, who is
now producing a podcast with Killer Mike. It's called Conversate
with Killer Mike and you can listen to it wherever
podcasts are found. Congratulations to him.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah. I'm not often on social media, but occasionally when
I get on there, I see pictures from what he's doing,
and I'm like, it's so cool. Yeah, live in the life,
my friend. I'm so happy for you. This is what
you want it.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Absolutely absolutely yeah. So so go check that out. But
I suppose, without further ado, we should let former Annie,
Lauren and Ramsey take it away.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm Annie Reese.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
And I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we're talking about chicken wings.
And we are joined by our compatriot Ramsey.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Hi, Ramsey, Hello, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
You're very thank you for being here.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, you've come up a couple of times on the show.
I think a lot of listeners will be familiar with
your name and you You and I. I even posted
on our Instagram account a while because I was trying
to figure out how many wings we ate at this
wing festival that we attended together, so people people might know.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Yeah, for the record, I think you actually ate more
than I did at that festival.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I'm very and yeah, and we did close it down though.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
We closed it down, and that those people from the
Atlanta Braves they were leaving and they had those hats
that you had to like win and you just went
up and said, Yo, give me a hat.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
We went home with a lot of braves hats and
some foam hands as well.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
I checked and I ate twenty eight wings. Twenty eight wings, Yes,
and I never found the ice cream. And like I
said in the post, that was the great tragedy of
the whole event.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
You there was ice cream at the Chicken Wing Festival.
Was it like blue cheese flavored? You know, I'll never know,
oh man, see.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Tragedy, tragedy. But yes, it is about time for the
big you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, we as we record this, it's coming up.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
The house stuff works game night. Actually, you know I'm
both joking, but that's also we are a big wing office.
Here are a lot of people really love their chicken wings.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Well Atlanta is a really big wing town.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yes, yeah, but we're gonna yeah, we're gonna talk about
that sure. And like I mentioned in our Ranch episode
with Ben Bowlin, we the first food stuff video we
did was on chicken wings and it was for this
big game that is of the football variety.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
We can say it, we can say the word super Bowl.
I know they knock on the door football jail.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Well, it's here in Atlanta. So they come out this year.
That's right, So they can come and find us if
they want.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Don't give them any ideas. I so, okay, So you
guys are pretty into chicken wings. I will say I
am into them now, but they're not my favorite food
by far, Like I would rather eat most other foods
before I would eat a chicken wing. And this stems
back to the seventh grade. Ooh, in science lab, I
(06:12):
had to dissect a chicken wing, and I was so
upset about it. Not because I was like, it was
just gross. It was just really gross and I didn't
like it, and I refused to eat chicken wings for
at least a decade afterwards. Wow had a lasting impact,
it really did. It was so squidgy. I seriously don't
like working with raw meat.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
That doesn't sound healthy as I mean, like a health
hazard as well if you're dissecting.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, I think it's less of a health hazard than
a frog.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I've never heard of anybody dissecting a chicken wing.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
It's it's apparently popular. When I was looking. When I
was googling various things for this at the chicken wing
dissection project came up in like a lot of my results.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
I did a frog and a cat and an al pellet.
That's the one that made me vomit.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
She did a baby pig. Oh really Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
I took a zoology class in high school and we
did pretty much everything, but with no chicken wings, jellyfish,
and a bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
If you're going to like jellyfish and baby pigs, you
don't really need the chicken wing like you're you're basically
a more advanced yeah. Ah god, just the nerves running.
Oh I'm not happy about it anyway.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
I can't wait till we talk about how delicious they are.
And I did want to include this quote at the top,
A blue collar dish for a blue collar town, and
we will talk about what town that is, even though
you probably most definitely know what is in a little bit,
let's build some suspense here. Yeah, and talking about suspense,
our question chicken wings. What are they?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Well, they're the wings of chickens.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
You had it here first, folks. No, when Americans say
chicken wing, we usually have a very specific dish in mind.
It's a wing with the bony tip removed and then
split at the elbow. Joint into a wingett or flat
the forewing, and a drummet or drum the upper wing.
The pieces are then deep fried and coated in some
kind of savory, sweet spicy sauce, the result being like
(08:12):
a handheld snack sized food, with an optimally crispy, crunchy
skin on the outside and tender, fatty meat on the inside.
They could be served as an appetizer, main dish, or
side with a usually a creamy dip blue cheese or ranch,
often with raw celery and carrot sticks alongside, And those
sauces that you can serve a chicken wing with are legion.
(08:36):
I think the most common are probably a buffalo being
butter and hot sauce hot sauce here meaning a thin
sauce made with vinegar and period hot peppers, and then
barbecue sauce lemon pepper and kariaki rubs can also be
applied instead of a sauce, like Jerk style for example.
And trends come and go right now, I think with
the rise of Korean cuisine in the United States, Korean
(08:59):
style barbecue sauces are just everything in quotation marks, Yet
no those are rising in popularity. I've seen those in
a lot of menus I have and this is related,
so go with me on this trip.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
I have a plethora of katies in my life. I
have a lot of friends named Katie and like not
only friends, but like best friends, okay, and all of
them don't like spicy food, oh like not even I
remember for one of them, we would go to Zaxby's
after school sometimes and my mom would she would we
would have to get wimpy sauce because my friend couldn't
(09:34):
have anything above wimpy. And every time I hang out
with their two katies in particular, I'm thinking of they're
the ones that want buffalo wings. But a lot of
restaurants in Atlanta have a very fun naming system. Yes,
and so it's buffalo wild, Buffalo wacky buffalo fun style,
(09:57):
Like there's no way of knowing is the spicy one.
There's no system like with Zaxby's I can tell. So
we usually like fail every time and I just end
up eating the chicken wings and we have to order
something else too. So I would love a like, you know,
(10:17):
dot like the chili peppers, chili peppers something, because I'm
just like shooting in the dark. Yeah, Miss it you
could ask the server. That would require speaking to some
actual telephone.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Oh man, all right, well I understand, thank you, and
I almost believe that you're not doing it on purpose
so that you can just eat a lot of chicken
wings by yourself. Thank you, Lauren. Well, regardless, recipes for
creating said wings differ. Some folks like a little bit
(10:52):
of breading flour or corn starch. You can bake them
or grillam instead of frying. My favorite wings are smoked
before being fried. The double fries considered scientifically superior by
some More on that later on. Uh, And lots of
restaurants do use pre processed wings like they've already been
seasoned and battered and par fried at a plant and
then a quick frozen and chipped out to restaurants that
(11:14):
just kind of refry them real quick. Nutrition wise, it's
fried chicken.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah. One of my favorite recipes that I make is
a healthy one, and I know it's three hundred calories
for ten wings.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
That's not bad.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
That's what I usually make for the Super Bowl is
as I said in the Ranch episode, I don't watch it,
but I make all the food associated with it and
have a great time.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yeah, Oh, I mean they're they're high in protein, Like
that's not gonna a little bit if that's not going
to kill you.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it varies wildly and widely.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Depending on and yet like the sauce can have a
lot of sugar in it. It's it, yeah, Milegit will
vary mm hm.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Typically what I'll do is I do like a dry
brine and let them sit for a day or so
and then put them in the oven at a high
heat and just cook them off that way and then
mix like a little sauce like buffalo sauce or depending
on taraiaki style. And I grew up in Southeast Asia,
so I have a lot of Asian influences in my
(12:20):
sauces and all that stuff that I like to use,
And so I'll do that a lot, or you know,
whatever I have in the kitchen that can whip up
pretty easily.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
You know, we didn't say why we asked you to
come on this episode.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
No, I'm still curious why.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Because you requested it over a year ago. We have
in our ideas sheet chicken wings, Ramsey, and you're just
you're a big connoisseur.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
So I do like the wing and you have had
my wings before at game night when I had people over.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
From work at my house.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Oh that's right.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
I don't think I had any of those wings because
when I came back from the kitchen they were gone.
It wasn't which is a good sign that something good
was resented.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yes, absolutely, yes, and I promise it wasn't just me.
So if we talk about some chicken wing numbers every year,
it seems we hear about an impending wing shortage around
the time of the Super Bowl. Apparently this is less
a shortage and more of a price increase due to
supply and demand. An estimated one point three billion wings
(13:27):
are consumed over a Super Bowl weekend in the United States, and.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
That number is growing year over year by like ten
to forty million wings. Yeah, and y'all that's just over
one weekend. One meat industry agency estimated that Americans eat
twenty eight billion wing segments like drums and flats every year.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
It's a lot of chickens.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yeah, yeah, Hooters, Hooters. I read that and then it
was like, wait a minute, no, this is in our notes.
Hooters sells thirty pounds a year. There was a chicken
wing heist. What in our home state of Georgia a
couple of years ago before the Super Bowl, and the
stolen goods were worth sixty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I love, I love a food heist.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Food heist. That needs to be a movie, Spielberg. If
you're listening, there you go. That's your next.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
One sponsored by Hooters.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Oh yeah, I mean it's already there.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Oh yeah. Chicken wings are a pretty frequent competitive eating food.
The current Wing Bowl record, which is a yearly competition
in Philly consisting of two rounds of fourteen minutes each,
is five hundred and one wings in those twenty eight minutes.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
That puts my twenty eight in perspective. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
This was accomplished in twenty eighteen by one Molly Julier Skyler.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
According to the Hamilton soundtrack, that would be Skyler because
that's how they spell the Skylar last name. The Skyler sisters.
It's a whole song.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I believe you entirely.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
There's a lot of belief coming your eye.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I like it. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Meanwhile, the Guinness World Record for largest chicken wing eating
competition overall is from twenty seventeen when Amazon Web services
included two hundred and fourteen participants not strictly related to eating.
The Guinness record for the most items taken out of
hot oil with bare hands in one minute went to
(15:33):
Contree Chun in twenty ten. They pulled twelve chicken wings.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Out of a fryar with their bare hands. Yeah, why
wouldn't you do that? I to get the record?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Clearly it was for an Italian game show. I'm not
sure other than that, like, psychologically, I can't answer that question.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
This story is getting more and more fun if we
look away from the wing and at the flavor of buffalo.
You can get buffalo flavored almost anything. Oh yeah, and
you can get every flavor of buffalo wing. It sounds
like it should be some kind of like physics property.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
But I mean, hot sauce is delicious, and butter is
also delicious when you combine them. A thing that I
have a really hard time not ordering when I see
it on a restaurant menu is buffalo grilled chicken sandwiches. Yeah,
if that's all on there, I'm basically guaranteed to order it.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
There was a good portion of my when I say
good portion, probably about like three to four years where
I would if I could get something buffalo styled.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah, I would totally do that.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
And this was when I became, I guess, more food conscious,
like where my food's coming from and where source and
all that. I was like, Hey, can I just get
that grilled but get buffalo.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Sauce tossed on it?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Like I was just like, you know, I kind of
healthy but not really.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
Yeah, I think it's spicy.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I think I told the story once on this show,
but in case I didn't. There's an establishment that's well
known in Atlantic called the Vortex, and it's a burger
place and I went on a first date there and
I've made made two major mistakes. One, I was wearing
a white shirt no matter what you get at the Vortex,
oh steak.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, for me wearing a white shirt in general, that's
not a part of my lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
And then the second mistake I made was did you
order the triple Bypass?
Speaker 2 (17:16):
No?
Speaker 3 (17:17):
It comes with a cigarette.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
I know I did not make that mistake. Making me
feel better about myself though, I ordered the buffalo sauce burger,
and I mean, within a second just dribbled down all
the white shirt.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
We never had a second date, but I don't think
that's why it might have played into it.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
I probably would have ordered the same thing.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Here's one speaking of ordering. Okay, do you guys have
an opinion about drums versus flats and which is better? Oh?
Speaker 1 (17:48):
I do, what's yours?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Because there's a debate about this.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yes, there is.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
I like drums.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
I do too, but I feel like most people like flats.
I like drums as well. Three man, that's crazy, producer Andrew. Yeah,
heck y'all, this is rare because most people prefer flats.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Both sides claim that their preferred wing piece has the
best ratio of skin to meat to fat sauce, and
that it is also easier to eat than the other type,
and that second one is subjective clearly, But like, for
the record, there is more meat on a drum and
more like skin fat sauce on a flat.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
So well, I like I like the drums mainly because
I feel like I don't have to work as much
as I do with the flats because of the parts
of the bones that are associated with that.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
Now, like the soushi would obviously be just eat boneless
chicken wings, which I actually like. The experience of eating
chicken wings, like it's like a it's like that finger
food that you can go to that you know what
you're going to get, like you have some sort of
beverage with you, and you got your sauce, and you
got your dipping sauce, and then you got your your
(19:04):
vegetables that go along with But so I like the experience.
But if I were to be able to order just drums,
I would definitely go that were.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Out because I think it's a little bit easier.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah, you're not really getting into the bone.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, you're not digging at it with your little paws
just as much as Yeah, I feel like a trash
panda whenever I eat wings in general, but more so.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Than I eat in general, I feel. But I will
say I have had wings that were like not at
a at a restaurant for you know, twenty wings for
ten bucks, but like from a well known farm in Georgia,
and they had a lot more meat on them. And
I enjoyed that experience a lot more, oh man, because
(19:45):
it was blessed Like I'm already at the bone right
barely biting anything off. It was like, this is a
lot of meat and also one of our coworkers, Paul,
he won't eat chicken wings because he doesn't like the
experience of like having to work a meat on the bone.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
I have a good friend Stephanie who has saying experienced.
She She's like, I will not eat it just shows
I want to touch that bone.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Oh yeah, oh no. I like feeling like a trash panda.
I'm a fan.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I actually got made fun of it in middle school
because my mom used to send fried chicken like a
one drumstick with me to school for lunch and I
would get all of the meatoff and people would look
at me as if I was some sort of monster.
I don't waste anything, okay, And sales of chicken wings
have been more than fair. They have gone upwards of
(20:31):
billions of dollars a year. In twenty thirteen, the number
of chicken wing franchises came out to over fifteen hundred,
and that number has grown by an annual eleven percent
over the past decade, and other franchises, just so you
can compare, the growth is around three percent. The same year,
the top thirteen wing franchises made four point one billion dollars,
(20:55):
and if you look specifically at Buffalo Wild Wings, which
I have never been to. They made one point three
billion dollars in twenty thirteen and their sales have gone
up by nine hundred thirty six percent over the last
ten years. In the US, wings are now the most
expensive part of the chicken, but for most of history
(21:16):
that has not been the case.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
It's apparently a really volatile market when when they're cheap,
restaurants offer such like lost leader deals on them that
it inflates demand and the cost balloons. Apparently, when McDonald's
rolled out one of their wing deals in twenty thirteen,
it disrupted the entire industry. It was chicken wing chaos.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Not chicken wing chaos.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Nonetheless, yeah, wings are a fairly inexpensive food, except when
they're not.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Of course.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Back in twenty fifteen, in honor of Super Bowl forty nine,
a Manhattan restaurant called Old Homestead Steakhouse served a dozen
wings for four nine hundred dollars, Oh dear, when each
order came with four flavors covered in fai gras or
smothered in cream infused with a Louis The eighth kangnac
(22:08):
or coated with caviar, the fourth flavor was cobe filet
mignon on the bone, marinated in sake that costs like
a thousand bucks a bottle.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Oh my goodness, this is a life we will never know.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Yeah, stunt for yourself.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
You're on the right, kitched myself to your shooting star.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
I mean, on a personal note, that does not sound
a good way to eat a chicken wing to me.
So it just sounds like over indulgence, Like what can
I dip this wing in to make it more expensive?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, at least those like powdered gold coated wings that
we talked about in our Edible Gold episode. At least
those like like it's not going to impact the flavor
too much and like you get a fun Instagram photo.
I don't know. These looked gross, Like they looked so
gross that I almost said to all of the people
sitting around me here in our office, like, oh, Scott,
(23:03):
check out this gross thing. But then they looked so
gross that I felt bad doing it.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
WHOA that's saying something that is.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, but chicken wings are one of those really interesting
foods that come from this kind of like lowbrow conception
that do get kind of celebrated in a highbrow cuisine.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yeah, and you you Ramsey sent along an essay that
you found and it came out pretty recently, didn't it.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
Yeah, it came out, came out this week. Actually, our
coworker Pam sent it over to me. She knew I
was coming on here because I was nervous about being
on the show, and.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
She's like, so starstruck I am.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
You know.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
She sent it over to me and I was taking
a look at it, and basically it was written by
Erica Hawkins for Munchies on Vice called Chicken Wings Are
My Culture. And it was really interesting because you know,
it's not really necessarily something I really ever thought about
too much, but it talks about how wing culture has
mixed in with like black stereotypes and all that, and
(24:05):
talks about a little bit about the low and high
end culture of wings, which I, you know, outside the
article have personal opinions because I feel that is definitely
wings are for the people, and you know, some restaurants
have definitely increased the value of the wing as high
ticket items or you can't go and spend you know,
five to ten bucks on a plate.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Of wings, you know, Yeah, now it's like twenty now,
it's twenty It's like.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Oh, here's three wings for fifteen dollars. I'm like, wow,
that's pretty expensive.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
But I digress.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
Anyway, In the articles, she definitely brought up like the
culture and the house associated with with black stereotypes and
it being like a cheap food source. And she quoted
Claire Schmidt, who's a professor at the University of Maryland
who does studies on race and folklore, and she said, like,
chickens were always been a part of Southern diets and
(24:57):
they had a particular utility with slaves, and they were
cheap food source, and they were easy to feed and
a good source of meat. And as it being a
food that you eat with your hands, it was also
therefore always considered dirty and table manners are a way
of kind of determining who is worthy of respect or not.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, we kind of talked a little bit about that
in our Fried Chicken episode.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, like the trajectory of chicken from being a food
considered not good enough for upper class people to eat
to this thing that like in a reverse way, like
held up as a champion of the people by these
very upper class humans.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Well, that's the thing in this article and I am
someone who is very out of the loop. I will
admit it of celebrity culture, but it came with examples
of I would say, celebrities who were generally out of touch,
or if not out of touch, then they just lived
to different lifestyle than most of us. Eating chicken wings
(26:03):
is a way to say like, hey, yeah, and it's
just an interesting phenomena.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Well, yeah, she definitely brought us.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
I think she said like celebrities are normalized by eating
chicken wings and stuff. And you know, you can take
that either way you want, whether it's you know, cultural
appropriation or what. But I mean it's you know, definitely
I'm out.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
I'm right there. I'm in the same loop as you.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
I was like, wow, I didn't know this was a thing,
especially when people are dipping them in gold and sprinkle
them in with twenty four k gold dust and then
eating them like it's you know whatever.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
You know, It's definitely definitely food for our thoughts.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Ooh, well, it is a trend that I would say
we're seeing in a lot of places. Is just this
going to a restaurant and ordering a burger that says
its government cheese on it, and yeah, that's eighteen dollars.
I think it's just happening in a lot of places,
but this is a particular. It seems to be very
(27:09):
popular right now chicken wings. And we even said at
that wing fest, what's happening to Yeah, Well, I mean
I'm all about experimentation and you know, trying new recipes.
You like you said, you grew up in Partspasia, so
you have experience with other types of chicken.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
My first membrance of chicken wings was so we spent
a year in Nigoya, Japan, and they have a style
there called tabasaki, and basically what that is it's a
dry brind with black pepper. Usually probably keep it in
(27:54):
there like in a When I say, Brian, basically you're
doing some sort of science with the chicken.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Like a salting to pull out some moisture from it.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
And I do a lot of my foods like that,
with like my turkeys. I think I told you I
dried Brian my turkey this year for Thanksgiving. And basically
what you do is you put a bunch of salt
on it, then you put whatever spices you want on it,
and then that those spices are then sucked into the
meat through I a saucemosis. Ye, And then how that
(28:24):
differs from just like a regular brine where you use liquids.
It basically the spices are stay stay inside the meat
instead of it going in and out of the meat
through a wet brine.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
I guess you could say, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
Anyway, Yeah, so this style is basically is black peppered
brind for a bit and then they fry it once
at a lower temperature, then they fry again at a
higher temperature, and then they put like a sweet and
spicy sauce on it. But that was my first experience
for chicken wings, which was.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
So delicious, really good.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
And it's such like I tried that recipe that I
pulled a lot of that information from was actually a
recipe I treated my folks once where I recreated that
whole wing setup. And it is a process just because
of how, oh yeah, how you have to if you
have to deep fry something twice, the temperature gauging and
(29:20):
all that type stuff, and especially when you're binding something,
you know, the but it was it was definitely a
treat for all of us to recreate.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
But science wise, that's how you're supposed to do it
from what I have read, and I'll get into that later,
but I did also want to point out that, yeah, yeah,
I mean, like America is far from the only place
that cooks and eats chicken wings. I ran across a
bunch of Southeast Asian style wing recipes that are deboned
wings stuffed with like basically the things that you would
put into dumplings or spring rolls, ground pork noodles, made
(29:51):
of being a rice, flour, chopped vegetable stuff like that,
and then deep fried. Obviously obviously.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Sounds delicious.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Frying is what brings us all together.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Really well, we had that terrible I guess it worked out, Okay,
it did.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
We only screamed a little bit.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
Oh yeah, did you guys try to break the world
record for pulling things on the.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Record for being the most afraid of frying chicken?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Yes? I think we want from when you guys started right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yeah, we made a video where we fried some chicken
and both of us were very apprehensive, and it showed.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
That was like right when I started working here, and
it was like one of the greatest days because you
guys brought in fried chicken and champagne.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Oh yeah, we did do that.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
I was like, whoa, Okay, this happens at work here.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Behind the scenes of that event. So our office manager
at the time, she still works here, but she is
now not office manager but Tamika. She sent out an
email saying, okay, people who made these videos, because we
had to make these eight videos for Amazon, we're gonna
show the video. Please request of food food item that
you would like for this series because we're gonna have like.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
A group like at lunch and viewing.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
And yeah, and I was out at a party so
a little tipsy, and I replied to the email joking,
and I said, obviously fried chicken and champagne, because that's
what our video was about.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Right, well, mostly about champagne and sparkling wine. But one
of our great interviewees said, you know, the best food
to eat with sparkling wine is fried chicken.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
So I send this email out at ten pm. It's
so good ten pm on like a Tuesday, and I
accidentally replied all and so serious, poted and said, sure thing,
I'll make sure that happens.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
I think I read that email was like I need
to be friends with that person.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Afterwards, a lot of people came up to me and were.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Like, hello, how long have you worked here?
Speaker 1 (31:55):
No, but it worked out. I'm glad that was an
early experience for you. All right, So all of this,
all of this intro aside. We do have a lot
of history to talk about with you.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
We do. But first we're going to take a quick
break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. All right, some history. So,
the deep fried chicken wing has been a staple of
Southern cuisine for a long time, and you can, yees
see our fried chicken episode for more about that. If
we look at the Buffalo chicken wing, or sort of
this sauce sports bar, big game trademark chicken wing, that
(32:44):
is a bit more of a recent food invention or innovation.
Of course, there are multiple versions of this story, huh.
But here's the one that you'll see the most, that
you probably have heard, at least in passing. One time
late night in nineteen sixty four, looking for something to
cook her son and his friends, the co owner of
(33:05):
the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, Teresa Bellissimo, got
the idea to cook some leftover chicken wings in sauce.
Sometimes depending on which version you're eating, it's hot sauce,
sometimes it's melted butter and cayenne, depending And surprise, they
loved them so much so that buffalo wings were featured
(33:27):
on the menu the very next day, and these wings
were served with the side of celery sticks and blue cheese,
and they were a best seller. For a little backstory,
the Anchor Bar was founded in nineteen thirty nine by
married couple Frank and Theresa Bellissimo, and there is a
riff on the origin story above. According to Frank, we
(33:48):
own an accidental delivery of chicken wings as opposed to
chicken necks for the invention of buffalo wings. The chicken
necks were used as a part of their spaghetti sauce recipe.
Frank tasked to with coming up with an appetizer featuring
chicken wings and presto buffalo wings. Dominic has a different take.
(34:08):
In his version, it was a late Friday night in
nineteen sixty four and at the time a lot of
Roman Catholics didn't eat meat apart from fish on Fridays,
so Dominic requested that his mom whip up something with
meat to hand out for free to the regulars who
had been spending a lot of money at midnight. Once
(34:28):
they could have meat, so she went for the cheapest
meat she had, chicken wings. Both stories claim that she
cut the wing in half, resulting in a drum, and
flat fried them Sand's breading and doused them in a
hot sauce of some type. Both claim they became popular
in the city in mere weeks and where they were
(34:49):
and are simply called wings. Our chicken wings and served
mild medium are hot, so they're not called Buffalo wings
in Buffalo, they're just wings, just wings. Modernly, the anchor
bar serves seventy pounds of chicken a month.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Yeah, and I.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Bet they don't order chicken necks anymore.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
I would bet not, but I kind of want to
go and investigate for myself.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
To spread the popularity of the dish and to sell
some hot sauce, the son of the owner, Dominic Bollismo,
and Dick Wagner, the person who sold hot sauce to
the anchor bar, went on the road and restaurants slowly
got on board. But there is another version of the story,
and it goes that John Young invented the buffalo wing
in the sixties. Young told a reporter that growing up
(35:40):
in an African American community, chicken wings was often in
the meal lineup. He incorporated that at his restaurant, John
Young's Wings and Things, and he added what he called
a mambo sauce to his wings. These wings were a
little bit different. They were breaded and fried and served whole,
as opposed to flats and drums. But I feel this
is another case that we see so often of a
(36:02):
lot of simultaneous things happening and then one person popularized them. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
but it was probably around a long time before, or
at least a decent time before.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Oh yeah, I think I this is like mildly on
the record, but I think that I saw reports of
at least chicken wings specifically being consumed separately from the
rest of the chicken, like five to seven thousand years ago.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Oh so that's a decent amount of.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Time, So I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Like like you said earlier, Lauren, they were certainly being
eaten in other countries at the same time, probably before this.
Yeah yeah, But anyway, these are the stories you'll probably see.
I've never heard of this place, but I guess it's
still around. Duff's Chicken Wing chain got started in nineteen
sixty nine.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
I think it's a Canadian thing, Oh is it?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
I think? Oh wow, did listeners from Canady let us know?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Did you just include the note because of Deff Spear
from the IA.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
I saw Duff Speer. Well, yeah, then that's one of
the things about the story is that beer was always associated.
I think when all their stories, like we were drinking
and we wanted this dish.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
And yeah, it continues.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
And as we talked about in our Ranch episode, the
capsaicin that makes hot peppers hot and stuff like Buffalo sauce. Yeah,
it's alcohol soluble. It's not water soluble, so you drink
a glass of water, it's not going to cool your
mouth down. But it is alcohol soluble. So you drink
some beer and it's gonna get it off your tongue.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Oh wow. No, no, yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
We'll get into that a tiny bit more later. But yeah, no,
no it. People got hipped to that when they were selling.
I'm just going to say that the City of Buffalo
declared July twenty ninth, nineteen seventy as Chicken Wing Day.
It gave credence to the anchor bar origin story. Some
(38:05):
say because during the seventies it would have been controversial
to give credit to a black man. Absolutely quote, where
is the success of mister Bellissimo's tasty experiment in nineteen
sixty four? Has grown to the point where thousands of
pounds of chicken wings are consumed by Buffalonians in restaurants
and taverns throughout our city each week. And uh, yeah, people,
(38:30):
if anyone is from Buffalo.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Oh, please write in and let us know what it's like. Yes,
please please.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yeah. In the meantime, we have more history for you.
But first one more quick break forward from our sponsor,
and we're back, Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. And
we're back with an aside about Hooters and Buffalo Wild Wings. Okay, okay,
(38:58):
So these places started opening in the in the eighties
and they gave chicken wings center stage on their menus.
I've never been dyed in these places, but I believe
that is a fact.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
How did you avoid it? Okay? Please keep going?
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
My first Atlanta wing experience was at A BW Three's
Buffalo Wild Wings.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
And it was not because it was not because of choice,
is because of my where I lived at the time.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Oh yeah yeah, and that.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
Was like the closest I was like driving around, I
was like, oh, I can go for some wings and
then loop and that was like my only I've done
it a couple more times, but it's it's kind of
like a bleak experience. It's oh yeah, yeah, there's they
black out all the windows. Well I think we're going
to talk about it like it's a sports bar. Oh
so they black out all the windows because of glare.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
They don't feel like.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
The so people can't see your shade.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Yeah, it's not like it's not like a Vegas thing.
It's like, let's just don't little forget about time and
then they'll eat about eat all the wings.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Okay, are you sure?
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (40:03):
My ex boyfriend we dated for three years, and you
know there are tears of restaurants. So you have a
favorite of like fast Feo, do you have a favorite?
So he loved Buffalo Wild Wings. It was one of
his favorite of that like Socific. I don't want to
throw him under the real chicken wing bus, but he
loved Buffalo Wild Wings. And perhaps that says something about
(40:25):
me that I never went.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
That does.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
I think I've got some things to think about later.
But okay, many think that the first televised mention of
Buffalo Wings happened in this decade too, on the Today Show.
Buffalo Wild Wings, by the way, was founded in nineteen
eighty two after a fellow who had spent some time
in Buffalo, New York, realized he couldn't find any good
(40:51):
Buffalo Wings in Ohio. I feel like I've read a
lot of stories of change that started that way. Oh yeah.
Nowadays they have sixteen sauce and stores all across the
United States and Canada, and you heard the numbers at
the top. They are doing just fine. Buffalo Wings hit
it big in the nineteen nineties when they made their
(41:13):
way onto the menu of some McDonald's. You might have
heard of that across the country as Mighty Wings.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
I do remember that ad campaign, do you. Oh, there's
so many McDonald's ad campaigns that are just right in
the back of my brain. That's terrible, very effective. Well
McDonald's bart though.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Following that example, KFC debuted hot Wings a year later,
and Domino's Pizza did the same in nineteen ninety four.
We told you we'd be bringing up that date again.
It's an unmovable date in the timeline of food. They
spent thirty two million dollars on that roll out, by
the way, what but I'd say it was successful. Another
(41:54):
thing that brought a lot of awareness to Buffalo wings
might have been definitely was the football team, the Buffalo Bills.
They were around during the early nineties. I guess they're
not around anymore. I again, I.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Don't want they're still round.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Jeezez No.
Speaker 4 (42:15):
I know very little about professional sports, but I know
that the Buffalo Bills are still around.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
I apologize Buffalo.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Bills, and it is not denying you.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
No, no, my bad unsubscribed. Congratulations for bringing a lot
of awareness to one of my favorite foods. I do
appreciate it. In two thousand and one, Buffalo kicked off
its inaugural National Buffalo Wing Festival. By twenty fifteen, it
was seeing seventy thousand attendees per year who were eating
twenty five tons of chicken wings.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Around two thousand and six, and innovation in meat plant
technology made wings cheaper and safer. Up until then, a
workers had been separating flats from drums by hand like
bandsaws or similar equipment, but then a segmentor was developed
to a to reduce dangerous labor and increase output.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
By the way, in nineteen ninety three, Philadelphia hosted the
inaugural wingble eating Contest, which we mentioned at the top.
Still going, McDonald's Mighty Wings appeared on menus again starting
in twenty thirteen. But this begs the question why are
chicken wings such a big football food other than obviously
they're delicious. The answer lies with timing. In the sixties
(43:33):
and seventies, Americans cooked and ate whole chickens, but boneless
chicken breasts became all the rage in the eighties, and
this meant that chicken wings became an inexpensive byproduct. Restaurants
realized they could offer these wings for cheap, but speculated
the spiciness would boost beer sales that it all comes
back they were correct. Simultaneously, more and more bars were
(43:57):
outfitting with satellite televisions, and these televisions were playing sports.
This was the birth of the sports bar, playing multiple
games across multiple TVs. In the United States, football that is,
American football was the favorite among sports fans to watch
in bars with friends. Chicken wings were a relatively cheap,
(44:17):
shareable protein that lent itself to such a gathering and
it went well with that oh so popular sports drink beer.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Let me say sports drink, I think like gatorade. I
guess beer is the second sports drink.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah, sure, thank you, thank you. I do have some
friends that there was a study that It's one of
those studies that I'm like, you just did this to
justify something to yourself. But there was a study that
came out a couple of years ago that said scientifically
it's good to drink beer before and after you work out.
And I was like, you just want to drink beer,
(44:52):
don't That's all it is.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
And now fastward.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Now you can get expensive chicken wings, nice restaurants.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
And Ramsey, you had a little bit of a note
that we said we'd come back to about Atlanta being
a wing town.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:11):
So Atlanta is known as the lemon pepper hub of
I guess the world possibly, if not the United States.
You got your Buffalo wings, but I al would say
that Alanta is definitely referred to as the lemon Pepper
And I think all the things goes to our hip
hop rap culture that we have here.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
As far as all the artists that kind of rap.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
About wings, where they get their wings and how they
like their wings and all that.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
In particular. You know, you got Cucci Maine.
Speaker 4 (45:40):
He has a lemon Nade song where he talks about
he likes his lemon pepper wings, and you got two chains.
He has a song called hot Wings that's actually recorded
at a American deli where he's rapping about eating chicken wings.
I mean, it's it's definitely part of our culture here
in Atlanta. And I've I don't think I ever had
lemon pepper wings until I came to Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Oh yeah, I don't think I had either.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:04):
So I mean I think we all of us here
have our favorite spots that get wings and stuff like that.
But like you know, there's still debate of where to
get the best wing in Atlanta, and you know, what
serves the best style and how you want to cook
it and how you want to eat it and all
that stuff.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
Yeah, it's funny. And the the article that you shared,
I unfortunately am not up to date with the show Atlanta,
but it was like a plot point in there.
Speaker 4 (46:29):
Oh yeah, it was totally a plot point. Like they
went to g R crickets. They went, they got lemon
pepper wet. Like you go into a story like hey,
how do you want like wings? Do you go lemon
pepper wet and like that's how you get your wings.
And we have a I wouldn't call it a epidemic.
We have a problem around Atlanta where if you look
(46:50):
on the street, if you get off the airport, you're
probably going to see a chicken.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Bone, chicken wing bones, chicken wing.
Speaker 4 (46:55):
Bone specifically from your time you get your bags too,
when you get in your car, you'll probably see a
chicken leg, chicken bone anywhere. Like, yeah, we had there's
an Instagram account called Wings of atl which I subscribe to,
and it's it's funny because like you will literally find
wings all over Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Yeah, once someone points it out to you. It's one
of those things like like that word you've never heard before,
but then you hear it once and suddenly it's everywhere.
Once you start noticing it, you're like, oh no, we
eat a lot of chicken wings, and we eat them
apparently on the go, and sometimes there's no trash cans
and so that's just I mean, the ire biodegradable It's true.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
I do. Probably I walk everywhere that I can, and
I anywhere I'm walking, I will see chicken wing bones.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
I love that about the hip hop culture celebrating chicken
wings because it is such like a food of the people,
and when you're talking about segments of your life that
are like to you just just part of you and
part of what it means to be you, and especially
something that is kind of bucking against these negative stereotypes
(47:59):
that have been put out about people who look like
you for so many years, it's really wonderful to have
people just go like, yeah, I like chicken wings, what
they're great.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
I also love the specific ordering of like.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Oh yeah, well, oh yeah, no, a lemon pepper rup
is totally different and I cannot necessarily approve of it.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
Lauren's message of the episode strong opinion, love it.
Speaker 4 (48:23):
Yeah, And for me personally, like I don't go if
I see wings on a menu. There's certain places I
will order them, and they arguably have some of the
best wings. But you know, you got your gr Crickets
and that it is definitely a staple here in Atlanta,
and you got your other restaurants, Like I mentioned American
deli and other places that. You know, it's just really
(48:45):
dependent on where you like to get your wings.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
You know.
Speaker 4 (48:49):
For me, there's a place I was like, oh, this
is great wings. I had never had smoked wings before.
Oh yeah, And like I remember, I could go there
and I could spend like seven bucks and I can
get six wings and they come to the side of fries.
Now you go that same spot and it's like twelve dollars,
fourteen dollars. I'm like, that's not that's you know, I'd
(49:11):
rather make wings myself, enjoy them, eat them the way
I like. You know, obviously I'm not smoking them, brinding
them and deep rind them twice and all the other
stuff all the time. But yeah, you know, it's it's
definitely wings for me have always been wing for the people,
you know, food for the people.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yeah. And I'm always kind of curious with like, well,
was it that we just weren't paying for something that
we should have been paying for? Like did you say
about the tomato, Like do we just have to pay more?
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Do we just have to get used to paying a
fair price for tomatoes?
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:41):
I mean, and that does work into especially when you're
talking about this number of chickens that we were like,
what was what was it? I forget the ridiculous number,
like over twenty billion chicken wings or chicken segment.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
Yeah per year.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
Yeah, you're you're getting into food production questions at that point,
and how to sustainably and morally raise that number of
animals and pay workers to do that thing and processing
not letting people get their hands cut off during processing,
all that kind of fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
Yay food. Yeah, I mean it's always good to ask
those questions or big proponents of that, And we're also
big proponents of some science.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
Yeah. All right, So my very favorite serious eats writer,
one J Kenji Lopez Alt, did some serious wing experimentation
and he arrived at a few methods for producing superior
chicken wings all right, where in superior, by the way,
is meant to mean super crispy on the outside, super
tender on the inside without using any kind of breading
(50:45):
or dredging, which he considers cheating.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Ah, I love it.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Yeah. So he found that to crisp a wing to
its full potential without drying out the meat, you want
to fry them twice, initially at a relatively low temperature
for a relatively long period of time, say like a
two hundred and fifty fahrenheit or it's about one hundred
and twenty celsius, for up to twenty minutes to cook
the meat and glatinize all this stretchy, stiff collagen in
(51:09):
the skin and the connective tissue. Then let him cool
down a little bit and briefly refry at a hotter
temperature around like four hundred fahrenheit or about two hundred celsius.
And this lets a few things happen. And I find
it so interesting that Ramsey, you were saying that special
recipe that you did that one time, is this is
like exactly how you did it. So first, the now
(51:29):
soft skin can expand more as escaping water vapor pushes
and bubbles it outward, so it stretches out thinner. A second,
the initial low temperature of the fry allows the wing
to retain a lot of internal moisture while driving out
some of the external moisture, meaning that the proteins in
the skin that brown up so beautifully can get right
(51:51):
to it quick. Frying means that your chicken won't soak
up grease and get soggy, so nice and crisp. He
also tested methods for oven baked wings that are just
as or almost as good as deep fried. The secret
there is getting rid of some of that external moisture
again by drying the wings in an open pan in
(52:11):
the fridge overnight, coated with some dry brine, basically some
baking powder and salt. And the salt we talked about earlier,
the baking powder. I didn't have time to like really
scientifically figure out what was going on here, but it
improves browning for a number of complex reasons, involving the alkalinity,
the Mallard reaction, peptide bonds in the proteins in the skin,
(52:34):
and carbon dioxide bubbles.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
It's a lot of cool science stuff.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
A lot of cool science. A little bit of baking
powder you don't want too much because then it tastes
like baking powder, which is metallic, and you don't really
want to eat very much of that. No not, I mean,
or maybe you do. I don't know your life.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
We don't, we don't. I'm gonna have to dry that
out because I my the healthy ones I mentioned earlier
that I make, I mean healthy.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
Healthier, healthier, share less oil that's healthier share.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
Yeah, I bake them. Yeah, I'll have to give this
a whirl because you know the game's coming.
Speaker 3 (53:11):
Oh it is a big game.
Speaker 1 (53:14):
Is that a movie? It better be a movie big game,
the Big Game, I think it is.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
There's the game completely different.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
I'm sure, and there's Big. There's Big that's also different.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
So combine the plots of those two movies and we
are ready to go.
Speaker 3 (53:33):
I don't want to see that movie.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
I know. Poor Tom Hanks, Michael.
Speaker 1 (53:36):
Douglas, Michael Douglas, I'm telling you Callas Hollywood remake. Well,
I think this about brings us to the end of
this episode. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4 (53:54):
Ramsey, thanks for having me, and feel free to bring
me in. Like I said earlier when I was asked
by didn't definitely didn't want to wing this.
Speaker 1 (54:02):
Oh he's very good with the puns, so Ramsey's he's
pretty sharp.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
Oh yeah, yeah, I would. I would say that that
between like the two of you and like maybe Jonathan
Strickland and probably Ben Bolan, like this office has some
really good pun game, and man, I don't want to
see that kind of competition though, Like that would be
it would get it would get ugly. Thunderdown, and that
(54:27):
brings us to the end of this classic episode. We
hope that you enjoyed listening to it for the first
time the second time, who knows how many times as
much as we did bringing it back.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
I know. Usually Ramsey and I do communicate over the
big game because he cooks. He's a good he cooks
very good wings. He's a great cook in general. Yeah,
he is. So I'm excited to see what he's he's
going to be up to. And as always, listeners, we
love hearing what food things you get up to, be
(54:59):
they all related or otherwise. Oh absolutely, yeah, yeah, yes,
and remember to go check out Conversate with Killer Mike
and get a look here. Oh, listen at what Ramsey
is up to these days. Yeah, and if you would
like to contact us, we would love to hear from you.
(55:19):
You can email us at Hello atsavorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (55:22):
We're also on social media. You can find us on
Instagram and blue Sky at savor pod, and we do
hope to hear from you. Savere is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
(55:43):
and we hope that lots of more good things are
coming your way.
Hello, and welcome to Saber production of iHeartRadio. I'm Annie
Reese and I'm Laurn.
Speaker 2 (00:12):
Vogel Bomb and today we have a classic episode for
you about chicken wings.
Speaker 1 (00:17):
Yes, well, is there any particular reason this one was
on your mind? Lauren?
Speaker 2 (00:22):
Yes, this is our kind of paired episode with the
Ranch classic that we ran last week, because Ranch and
chicken wings are a thing that goes together. If you
don't hate Ranch or chicken wings. Yeah, I don't know
your life, but yeah, yeah, chicken wings are a ridiculously
popular food right around the Super Bowl, and that thing
(00:47):
is coming up as we record this episode. So yeah,
the episode originally came out in January of twenty nineteen.
What a time.
Speaker 1 (00:57):
What wow that they had a moment there.
Speaker 2 (01:01):
Yeah, okay, you went back, you went back?
Speaker 1 (01:03):
I did? I did.
Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:05):
And you know, we have a lot of tent pole
events as we call them, going on right now, which
are just kind of holidays or.
Speaker 2 (01:12):
Yeah, things that you can kind of rely on being there. Yeah.
Speaker 1 (01:16):
Yeah, And so we were coming up with our topic
ideas and you mentioned the Big Game as I call it,
and I completely I It's like I came out of
a trance and I was like, what day is it
that's coming up? Yeah?
Speaker 2 (01:36):
Yeah, Well, if you're really only in it for the food,
then it's kind of a state of mind rather than
a particular holiday.
Speaker 1 (01:43):
So stay in mind. I like that, And yes, I
have gotten my chicken wings.
Speaker 2 (01:48):
You have to cook.
Speaker 1 (01:50):
I'm going to cook.
Speaker 2 (01:51):
Oh.
Speaker 1 (01:51):
Ok, good, but I'm ready. That's good.
Speaker 2 (01:54):
Apparently a lot of people in the country are ready.
According to the National Chicken Counts, Americans are going to
eat one point for eight billion chicken wings billion with
the B wow during the Super Bowl during during the
game this year, twenty twenty six. So, which is a
(02:20):
number that I totally understand. That's a number that I
have a solid comprehension of because I'm good at math.
Like most people. Most people can absolutely conceive of what
one point four eight billion chicken wings looks like.
Speaker 1 (02:35):
Yeah, it's a lot, It's a lot. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (02:42):
This one features our amazing friend Ramsey Yunk, who is
now producing a podcast with Killer Mike. It's called Conversate
with Killer Mike and you can listen to it wherever
podcasts are found. Congratulations to him.
Speaker 1 (02:59):
Yeah. I'm not often on social media, but occasionally when
I get on there, I see pictures from what he's doing,
and I'm like, it's so cool. Yeah, live in the life,
my friend. I'm so happy for you. This is what
you want it.
Speaker 2 (03:12):
Absolutely absolutely yeah. So so go check that out. But
I suppose, without further ado, we should let former Annie,
Lauren and Ramsey take it away.
Speaker 1 (03:35):
Hello, and welcome to Savor. I'm Annie Reese.
Speaker 2 (03:37):
And I'm Lauren Vogelbaum, and today we're talking about chicken wings.
And we are joined by our compatriot Ramsey.
Speaker 3 (03:44):
Hi, Ramsey, Hello, thank you for having me.
Speaker 2 (03:46):
You're very thank you for being here.
Speaker 1 (03:48):
Yeah, you've come up a couple of times on the show.
I think a lot of listeners will be familiar with
your name and you You and I. I even posted
on our Instagram account a while because I was trying
to figure out how many wings we ate at this
wing festival that we attended together, so people people might know.
Speaker 4 (04:07):
Yeah, for the record, I think you actually ate more
than I did at that festival.
Speaker 3 (04:14):
I'm very and yeah, and we did close it down though.
Speaker 1 (04:17):
We closed it down, and that those people from the
Atlanta Braves they were leaving and they had those hats
that you had to like win and you just went
up and said, Yo, give me a hat.
Speaker 3 (04:29):
We went home with a lot of braves hats and
some foam hands as well.
Speaker 1 (04:34):
I checked and I ate twenty eight wings. Twenty eight wings, Yes,
and I never found the ice cream. And like I
said in the post, that was the great tragedy of
the whole event.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
You there was ice cream at the Chicken Wing Festival.
Was it like blue cheese flavored? You know, I'll never know,
oh man, see.
Speaker 1 (04:53):
Tragedy, tragedy. But yes, it is about time for the
big you know what I'm talking about.
Speaker 2 (05:03):
Yeah, we as we record this, it's coming up.
Speaker 1 (05:07):
The house stuff works game night. Actually, you know I'm
both joking, but that's also we are a big wing office.
Here are a lot of people really love their chicken wings.
Speaker 2 (05:19):
Well Atlanta is a really big wing town.
Speaker 1 (05:21):
Yes, yeah, but we're gonna yeah, we're gonna talk about
that sure. And like I mentioned in our Ranch episode
with Ben Bowlin, we the first food stuff video we
did was on chicken wings and it was for this
big game that is of the football variety.
Speaker 2 (05:36):
We can say it, we can say the word super Bowl.
I know they knock on the door football jail.
Speaker 3 (05:43):
Well, it's here in Atlanta. So they come out this year.
That's right, So they can come and find us if
they want.
Speaker 2 (05:49):
Don't give them any ideas. I so, okay, So you
guys are pretty into chicken wings. I will say I
am into them now, but they're not my favorite food
by far, Like I would rather eat most other foods
before I would eat a chicken wing. And this stems
back to the seventh grade. Ooh, in science lab, I
(06:12):
had to dissect a chicken wing, and I was so
upset about it. Not because I was like, it was
just gross. It was just really gross and I didn't
like it, and I refused to eat chicken wings for
at least a decade afterwards. Wow had a lasting impact,
it really did. It was so squidgy. I seriously don't
like working with raw meat.
Speaker 4 (06:32):
That doesn't sound healthy as I mean, like a health
hazard as well if you're dissecting.
Speaker 2 (06:37):
Yeah, I think it's less of a health hazard than
a frog.
Speaker 3 (06:40):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (06:41):
I've never heard of anybody dissecting a chicken wing.
Speaker 2 (06:44):
It's it's apparently popular. When I was looking. When I
was googling various things for this at the chicken wing
dissection project came up in like a lot of my results.
Speaker 1 (06:53):
I did a frog and a cat and an al pellet.
That's the one that made me vomit.
Speaker 3 (06:57):
She did a baby pig. Oh really Yeah.
Speaker 4 (07:00):
I took a zoology class in high school and we
did pretty much everything, but with no chicken wings, jellyfish,
and a bunch of other stuff.
Speaker 2 (07:08):
If you're going to like jellyfish and baby pigs, you
don't really need the chicken wing like you're you're basically
a more advanced yeah. Ah god, just the nerves running.
Oh I'm not happy about it anyway.
Speaker 1 (07:18):
I can't wait till we talk about how delicious they are.
And I did want to include this quote at the top,
A blue collar dish for a blue collar town, and
we will talk about what town that is, even though
you probably most definitely know what is in a little bit,
let's build some suspense here. Yeah, and talking about suspense,
our question chicken wings. What are they?
Speaker 2 (07:45):
Well, they're the wings of chickens.
Speaker 1 (07:49):
There you go.
Speaker 2 (07:50):
You had it here first, folks. No, when Americans say
chicken wing, we usually have a very specific dish in mind.
It's a wing with the bony tip removed and then
split at the elbow. Joint into a wingett or flat
the forewing, and a drummet or drum the upper wing.
The pieces are then deep fried and coated in some
kind of savory, sweet spicy sauce, the result being like
(08:12):
a handheld snack sized food, with an optimally crispy, crunchy
skin on the outside and tender, fatty meat on the inside.
They could be served as an appetizer, main dish, or
side with a usually a creamy dip blue cheese or ranch,
often with raw celery and carrot sticks alongside, And those
sauces that you can serve a chicken wing with are legion.
(08:36):
I think the most common are probably a buffalo being
butter and hot sauce hot sauce here meaning a thin
sauce made with vinegar and period hot peppers, and then
barbecue sauce lemon pepper and kariaki rubs can also be
applied instead of a sauce, like Jerk style for example.
And trends come and go right now, I think with
the rise of Korean cuisine in the United States, Korean
(08:59):
style barbecue sauces are just everything in quotation marks, Yet
no those are rising in popularity. I've seen those in
a lot of menus I have and this is related,
so go with me on this trip.
Speaker 1 (09:12):
I have a plethora of katies in my life. I
have a lot of friends named Katie and like not
only friends, but like best friends, okay, and all of
them don't like spicy food, oh like not even I
remember for one of them, we would go to Zaxby's
after school sometimes and my mom would she would we
would have to get wimpy sauce because my friend couldn't
(09:34):
have anything above wimpy. And every time I hang out
with their two katies in particular, I'm thinking of they're
the ones that want buffalo wings. But a lot of
restaurants in Atlanta have a very fun naming system. Yes,
and so it's buffalo wild, Buffalo wacky buffalo fun style,
(09:57):
Like there's no way of knowing is the spicy one.
There's no system like with Zaxby's I can tell. So
we usually like fail every time and I just end
up eating the chicken wings and we have to order
something else too. So I would love a like, you know,
(10:17):
dot like the chili peppers, chili peppers something, because I'm
just like shooting in the dark. Yeah, Miss it you
could ask the server. That would require speaking to some
actual telephone.
Speaker 2 (10:30):
Oh man, all right, well I understand, thank you, and
I almost believe that you're not doing it on purpose
so that you can just eat a lot of chicken
wings by yourself. Thank you, Lauren. Well, regardless, recipes for
creating said wings differ. Some folks like a little bit
(10:52):
of breading flour or corn starch. You can bake them
or grillam instead of frying. My favorite wings are smoked
before being fried. The double fries considered scientifically superior by
some More on that later on. Uh, And lots of
restaurants do use pre processed wings like they've already been
seasoned and battered and par fried at a plant and
then a quick frozen and chipped out to restaurants that
(11:14):
just kind of refry them real quick. Nutrition wise, it's
fried chicken.
Speaker 1 (11:22):
Yeah. One of my favorite recipes that I make is
a healthy one, and I know it's three hundred calories
for ten wings.
Speaker 2 (11:34):
That's not bad.
Speaker 1 (11:35):
That's what I usually make for the Super Bowl is
as I said in the Ranch episode, I don't watch it,
but I make all the food associated with it and
have a great time.
Speaker 2 (11:44):
Yeah, Oh, I mean they're they're high in protein, Like
that's not gonna a little bit if that's not going
to kill you.
Speaker 1 (11:49):
Yeah, yeah, I mean it's it varies wildly and widely.
Speaker 2 (11:53):
Depending on and yet like the sauce can have a
lot of sugar in it. It's it, yeah, Milegit will
vary mm hm.
Speaker 4 (12:00):
Typically what I'll do is I do like a dry
brine and let them sit for a day or so
and then put them in the oven at a high
heat and just cook them off that way and then
mix like a little sauce like buffalo sauce or depending
on taraiaki style. And I grew up in Southeast Asia,
so I have a lot of Asian influences in my
(12:20):
sauces and all that stuff that I like to use,
And so I'll do that a lot, or you know,
whatever I have in the kitchen that can whip up
pretty easily.
Speaker 1 (12:27):
You know, we didn't say why we asked you to
come on this episode.
Speaker 3 (12:32):
No, I'm still curious why.
Speaker 1 (12:34):
Because you requested it over a year ago. We have
in our ideas sheet chicken wings, Ramsey, and you're just
you're a big connoisseur.
Speaker 4 (12:45):
So I do like the wing and you have had
my wings before at game night when I had people over.
Speaker 3 (12:51):
From work at my house.
Speaker 2 (12:52):
Oh that's right.
Speaker 4 (12:54):
I don't think I had any of those wings because
when I came back from the kitchen they were gone.
It wasn't which is a good sign that something good
was resented.
Speaker 1 (13:02):
Yes, absolutely, yes, and I promise it wasn't just me.
So if we talk about some chicken wing numbers every year,
it seems we hear about an impending wing shortage around
the time of the Super Bowl. Apparently this is less
a shortage and more of a price increase due to
supply and demand. An estimated one point three billion wings
(13:27):
are consumed over a Super Bowl weekend in the United States, and.
Speaker 2 (13:31):
That number is growing year over year by like ten
to forty million wings. Yeah, and y'all that's just over
one weekend. One meat industry agency estimated that Americans eat
twenty eight billion wing segments like drums and flats every year.
Speaker 3 (13:50):
It's a lot of chickens.
Speaker 1 (13:52):
Yeah, yeah, Hooters, Hooters. I read that and then it
was like, wait a minute, no, this is in our notes.
Hooters sells thirty pounds a year. There was a chicken
wing heist. What in our home state of Georgia a
couple of years ago before the Super Bowl, and the
stolen goods were worth sixty five thousand dollars.
Speaker 2 (14:16):
I love, I love a food heist.
Speaker 1 (14:18):
Food heist. That needs to be a movie, Spielberg. If
you're listening, there you go. That's your next.
Speaker 3 (14:24):
One sponsored by Hooters.
Speaker 1 (14:27):
Oh yeah, I mean it's already there.
Speaker 2 (14:29):
Oh yeah. Chicken wings are a pretty frequent competitive eating food.
The current Wing Bowl record, which is a yearly competition
in Philly consisting of two rounds of fourteen minutes each,
is five hundred and one wings in those twenty eight minutes.
Speaker 1 (14:45):
That puts my twenty eight in perspective. Yeah.
Speaker 2 (14:48):
This was accomplished in twenty eighteen by one Molly Julier Skyler.
Speaker 1 (14:55):
According to the Hamilton soundtrack, that would be Skyler because
that's how they spell the Skylar last name. The Skyler sisters.
It's a whole song.
Speaker 2 (15:03):
I believe you entirely.
Speaker 1 (15:05):
Thank you.
Speaker 2 (15:07):
There's a lot of belief coming your eye.
Speaker 1 (15:09):
I like it. I really appreciate it.
Speaker 2 (15:12):
Meanwhile, the Guinness World Record for largest chicken wing eating
competition overall is from twenty seventeen when Amazon Web services
included two hundred and fourteen participants not strictly related to eating.
The Guinness record for the most items taken out of
hot oil with bare hands in one minute went to
(15:33):
Contree Chun in twenty ten. They pulled twelve chicken wings.
Speaker 1 (15:37):
Out of a fryar with their bare hands. Yeah, why
wouldn't you do that? I to get the record?
Speaker 2 (15:43):
Clearly it was for an Italian game show. I'm not
sure other than that, like, psychologically, I can't answer that question.
Speaker 1 (15:50):
This story is getting more and more fun if we
look away from the wing and at the flavor of buffalo.
You can get buffalo flavored almost anything. Oh yeah, and
you can get every flavor of buffalo wing. It sounds
like it should be some kind of like physics property.
Speaker 2 (16:05):
But I mean, hot sauce is delicious, and butter is
also delicious when you combine them. A thing that I
have a really hard time not ordering when I see
it on a restaurant menu is buffalo grilled chicken sandwiches. Yeah,
if that's all on there, I'm basically guaranteed to order it.
Speaker 4 (16:20):
There was a good portion of my when I say
good portion, probably about like three to four years where
I would if I could get something buffalo styled.
Speaker 3 (16:27):
Yeah, I would totally do that.
Speaker 1 (16:29):
That's it.
Speaker 4 (16:29):
And this was when I became, I guess, more food conscious,
like where my food's coming from and where source and
all that. I was like, Hey, can I just get
that grilled but get buffalo.
Speaker 3 (16:38):
Sauce tossed on it?
Speaker 2 (16:39):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (16:40):
Like I was just like, you know, I kind of
healthy but not really.
Speaker 4 (16:44):
Yeah, I think it's spicy.
Speaker 1 (16:47):
I think I told the story once on this show,
but in case I didn't. There's an establishment that's well
known in Atlantic called the Vortex, and it's a burger
place and I went on a first date there and
I've made made two major mistakes. One, I was wearing
a white shirt no matter what you get at the Vortex,
oh steak.
Speaker 2 (17:07):
Yeah, for me wearing a white shirt in general, that's
not a part of my lifestyle.
Speaker 1 (17:12):
And then the second mistake I made was did you
order the triple Bypass?
Speaker 2 (17:16):
No?
Speaker 3 (17:17):
It comes with a cigarette.
Speaker 1 (17:18):
I know I did not make that mistake. Making me
feel better about myself though, I ordered the buffalo sauce burger,
and I mean, within a second just dribbled down all
the white shirt.
Speaker 2 (17:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (17:32):
We never had a second date, but I don't think
that's why it might have played into it.
Speaker 3 (17:37):
I probably would have ordered the same thing.
Speaker 2 (17:40):
Here's one speaking of ordering. Okay, do you guys have
an opinion about drums versus flats and which is better? Oh?
Speaker 1 (17:48):
I do, what's yours?
Speaker 2 (17:49):
Because there's a debate about this.
Speaker 1 (17:51):
Yes, there is.
Speaker 3 (17:52):
I like drums.
Speaker 2 (17:54):
I do too, but I feel like most people like flats.
I like drums as well. Three man, that's crazy, producer Andrew. Yeah,
heck y'all, this is rare because most people prefer flats.
Speaker 3 (18:06):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (18:07):
Both sides claim that their preferred wing piece has the
best ratio of skin to meat to fat sauce, and
that it is also easier to eat than the other type,
and that second one is subjective clearly, But like, for
the record, there is more meat on a drum and
more like skin fat sauce on a flat.
Speaker 4 (18:29):
So well, I like I like the drums mainly because
I feel like I don't have to work as much
as I do with the flats because of the parts
of the bones that are associated with that.
Speaker 3 (18:42):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (18:44):
Now, like the soushi would obviously be just eat boneless
chicken wings, which I actually like. The experience of eating
chicken wings, like it's like a it's like that finger
food that you can go to that you know what
you're going to get, like you have some sort of
beverage with you, and you got your sauce, and you
got your dipping sauce, and then you got your your
(19:04):
vegetables that go along with But so I like the experience.
But if I were to be able to order just drums,
I would definitely go that were.
Speaker 3 (19:11):
Out because I think it's a little bit easier.
Speaker 2 (19:14):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (19:14):
Yeah, you're not really getting into the bone.
Speaker 2 (19:16):
Yeah, you're not digging at it with your little paws
just as much as Yeah, I feel like a trash
panda whenever I eat wings in general, but more so.
Speaker 1 (19:24):
Than I eat in general, I feel. But I will
say I have had wings that were like not at
a at a restaurant for you know, twenty wings for
ten bucks, but like from a well known farm in Georgia,
and they had a lot more meat on them. And
I enjoyed that experience a lot more, oh man, because
(19:45):
it was blessed Like I'm already at the bone right
barely biting anything off. It was like, this is a
lot of meat and also one of our coworkers, Paul,
he won't eat chicken wings because he doesn't like the
experience of like having to work a meat on the bone.
Speaker 4 (20:00):
I have a good friend Stephanie who has saying experienced.
She She's like, I will not eat it just shows
I want to touch that bone.
Speaker 2 (20:06):
Oh yeah, oh no. I like feeling like a trash panda.
I'm a fan.
Speaker 1 (20:10):
I actually got made fun of it in middle school
because my mom used to send fried chicken like a
one drumstick with me to school for lunch and I
would get all of the meatoff and people would look
at me as if I was some sort of monster.
I don't waste anything, okay, And sales of chicken wings
have been more than fair. They have gone upwards of
(20:31):
billions of dollars a year. In twenty thirteen, the number
of chicken wing franchises came out to over fifteen hundred,
and that number has grown by an annual eleven percent
over the past decade, and other franchises, just so you
can compare, the growth is around three percent. The same year,
the top thirteen wing franchises made four point one billion dollars,
(20:55):
and if you look specifically at Buffalo Wild Wings, which
I have never been to. They made one point three
billion dollars in twenty thirteen and their sales have gone
up by nine hundred thirty six percent over the last
ten years. In the US, wings are now the most
expensive part of the chicken, but for most of history
(21:16):
that has not been the case.
Speaker 2 (21:18):
It's apparently a really volatile market when when they're cheap,
restaurants offer such like lost leader deals on them that
it inflates demand and the cost balloons. Apparently, when McDonald's
rolled out one of their wing deals in twenty thirteen,
it disrupted the entire industry. It was chicken wing chaos.
Speaker 1 (21:36):
Not chicken wing chaos.
Speaker 2 (21:40):
Nonetheless, yeah, wings are a fairly inexpensive food, except when
they're not.
Speaker 1 (21:46):
Of course.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
Back in twenty fifteen, in honor of Super Bowl forty nine,
a Manhattan restaurant called Old Homestead Steakhouse served a dozen
wings for four nine hundred dollars, Oh dear, when each
order came with four flavors covered in fai gras or
smothered in cream infused with a Louis The eighth kangnac
(22:08):
or coated with caviar, the fourth flavor was cobe filet
mignon on the bone, marinated in sake that costs like
a thousand bucks a bottle.
Speaker 1 (22:17):
Oh my goodness, this is a life we will never know.
Speaker 3 (22:21):
Yeah, stunt for yourself.
Speaker 1 (22:24):
You're on the right, kitched myself to your shooting star.
Speaker 4 (22:29):
I mean, on a personal note, that does not sound
a good way to eat a chicken wing to me.
So it just sounds like over indulgence, Like what can
I dip this wing in to make it more expensive?
Speaker 2 (22:41):
Yeah, at least those like powdered gold coated wings that
we talked about in our Edible Gold episode. At least
those like like it's not going to impact the flavor
too much and like you get a fun Instagram photo.
I don't know. These looked gross, Like they looked so
gross that I almost said to all of the people
sitting around me here in our office, like, oh, Scott,
(23:03):
check out this gross thing. But then they looked so
gross that I felt bad doing it.
Speaker 1 (23:07):
WHOA that's saying something that is.
Speaker 2 (23:10):
Yeah, but chicken wings are one of those really interesting
foods that come from this kind of like lowbrow conception
that do get kind of celebrated in a highbrow cuisine.
Speaker 1 (23:23):
Yeah, and you you Ramsey sent along an essay that
you found and it came out pretty recently, didn't it.
Speaker 4 (23:29):
Yeah, it came out, came out this week. Actually, our
coworker Pam sent it over to me. She knew I
was coming on here because I was nervous about being
on the show, and.
Speaker 1 (23:39):
She's like, so starstruck I am.
Speaker 3 (23:42):
You know.
Speaker 4 (23:43):
She sent it over to me and I was taking
a look at it, and basically it was written by
Erica Hawkins for Munchies on Vice called Chicken Wings Are
My Culture. And it was really interesting because you know,
it's not really necessarily something I really ever thought about
too much, but it talks about how wing culture has
mixed in with like black stereotypes and all that, and
(24:05):
talks about a little bit about the low and high
end culture of wings, which I, you know, outside the
article have personal opinions because I feel that is definitely
wings are for the people, and you know, some restaurants
have definitely increased the value of the wing as high
ticket items or you can't go and spend you know,
five to ten bucks on a plate.
Speaker 2 (24:26):
Of wings, you know, Yeah, now it's like twenty now,
it's twenty It's like.
Speaker 4 (24:30):
Oh, here's three wings for fifteen dollars. I'm like, wow,
that's pretty expensive.
Speaker 3 (24:34):
But I digress.
Speaker 4 (24:36):
Anyway, In the articles, she definitely brought up like the
culture and the house associated with with black stereotypes and
it being like a cheap food source. And she quoted
Claire Schmidt, who's a professor at the University of Maryland
who does studies on race and folklore, and she said, like,
chickens were always been a part of Southern diets and
(24:57):
they had a particular utility with slaves, and they were
cheap food source, and they were easy to feed and
a good source of meat. And as it being a
food that you eat with your hands, it was also
therefore always considered dirty and table manners are a way
of kind of determining who is worthy of respect or not.
Speaker 1 (25:17):
Yeah, we kind of talked a little bit about that
in our Fried Chicken episode.
Speaker 2 (25:24):
Yeah, like the trajectory of chicken from being a food
considered not good enough for upper class people to eat
to this thing that like in a reverse way, like
held up as a champion of the people by these
very upper class humans.
Speaker 1 (25:41):
Well, that's the thing in this article and I am
someone who is very out of the loop. I will
admit it of celebrity culture, but it came with examples
of I would say, celebrities who were generally out of touch,
or if not out of touch, then they just lived
to different lifestyle than most of us. Eating chicken wings
(26:03):
is a way to say like, hey, yeah, and it's
just an interesting phenomena.
Speaker 3 (26:16):
Well, yeah, she definitely brought us.
Speaker 4 (26:18):
I think she said like celebrities are normalized by eating
chicken wings and stuff. And you know, you can take
that either way you want, whether it's you know, cultural
appropriation or what. But I mean it's you know, definitely
I'm out.
Speaker 3 (26:31):
I'm right there. I'm in the same loop as you.
Speaker 4 (26:32):
I was like, wow, I didn't know this was a thing,
especially when people are dipping them in gold and sprinkle
them in with twenty four k gold dust and then
eating them like it's you know whatever.
Speaker 3 (26:44):
You know, It's definitely definitely food for our thoughts.
Speaker 1 (26:47):
Ooh, well, it is a trend that I would say
we're seeing in a lot of places. Is just this
going to a restaurant and ordering a burger that says
its government cheese on it, and yeah, that's eighteen dollars.
I think it's just happening in a lot of places,
but this is a particular. It seems to be very
(27:09):
popular right now chicken wings. And we even said at
that wing fest, what's happening to Yeah, Well, I mean
I'm all about experimentation and you know, trying new recipes.
You like you said, you grew up in Partspasia, so
you have experience with other types of chicken.
Speaker 3 (27:31):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (27:32):
My first membrance of chicken wings was so we spent
a year in Nigoya, Japan, and they have a style
there called tabasaki, and basically what that is it's a
dry brind with black pepper. Usually probably keep it in
(27:54):
there like in a When I say, Brian, basically you're
doing some sort of science with the chicken.
Speaker 2 (28:00):
Like a salting to pull out some moisture from it.
Speaker 3 (28:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (28:03):
And I do a lot of my foods like that,
with like my turkeys. I think I told you I
dried Brian my turkey this year for Thanksgiving. And basically
what you do is you put a bunch of salt
on it, then you put whatever spices you want on it,
and then that those spices are then sucked into the
meat through I a saucemosis. Ye, And then how that
(28:24):
differs from just like a regular brine where you use liquids.
It basically the spices are stay stay inside the meat
instead of it going in and out of the meat
through a wet brine.
Speaker 2 (28:34):
I guess you could say, yeah, definitely.
Speaker 4 (28:36):
Anyway, Yeah, so this style is basically is black peppered
brind for a bit and then they fry it once
at a lower temperature, then they fry again at a
higher temperature, and then they put like a sweet and
spicy sauce on it. But that was my first experience
for chicken wings, which was.
Speaker 1 (28:56):
So delicious, really good.
Speaker 4 (28:58):
And it's such like I tried that recipe that I
pulled a lot of that information from was actually a
recipe I treated my folks once where I recreated that
whole wing setup. And it is a process just because
of how, oh yeah, how you have to if you
have to deep fry something twice, the temperature gauging and
(29:20):
all that type stuff, and especially when you're binding something,
you know, the but it was it was definitely a
treat for all of us to recreate.
Speaker 2 (29:28):
But science wise, that's how you're supposed to do it
from what I have read, and I'll get into that later,
but I did also want to point out that, yeah, yeah,
I mean, like America is far from the only place
that cooks and eats chicken wings. I ran across a
bunch of Southeast Asian style wing recipes that are deboned
wings stuffed with like basically the things that you would
put into dumplings or spring rolls, ground pork noodles, made
(29:51):
of being a rice, flour, chopped vegetable stuff like that,
and then deep fried. Obviously obviously.
Speaker 1 (29:59):
Sounds delicious.
Speaker 2 (30:00):
Frying is what brings us all together.
Speaker 1 (30:01):
Really well, we had that terrible I guess it worked out, Okay,
it did.
Speaker 2 (30:06):
We only screamed a little bit.
Speaker 4 (30:08):
Oh yeah, did you guys try to break the world
record for pulling things on the.
Speaker 1 (30:14):
Record for being the most afraid of frying chicken?
Speaker 3 (30:17):
Yes? I think we want from when you guys started right, yeah, yeah.
Speaker 2 (30:21):
Yeah, we made a video where we fried some chicken
and both of us were very apprehensive, and it showed.
Speaker 4 (30:27):
That was like right when I started working here, and
it was like one of the greatest days because you
guys brought in fried chicken and champagne.
Speaker 1 (30:37):
Oh yeah, we did do that.
Speaker 3 (30:39):
I was like, whoa, Okay, this happens at work here.
Speaker 1 (30:41):
Behind the scenes of that event. So our office manager
at the time, she still works here, but she is
now not office manager but Tamika. She sent out an
email saying, okay, people who made these videos, because we
had to make these eight videos for Amazon, we're gonna
show the video. Please request of food food item that
you would like for this series because we're gonna have like.
Speaker 2 (31:05):
A group like at lunch and viewing.
Speaker 1 (31:06):
And yeah, and I was out at a party so
a little tipsy, and I replied to the email joking,
and I said, obviously fried chicken and champagne, because that's
what our video was about.
Speaker 2 (31:20):
Right, well, mostly about champagne and sparkling wine. But one
of our great interviewees said, you know, the best food
to eat with sparkling wine is fried chicken.
Speaker 1 (31:29):
So I send this email out at ten pm. It's
so good ten pm on like a Tuesday, and I
accidentally replied all and so serious, poted and said, sure thing,
I'll make sure that happens.
Speaker 3 (31:45):
I think I read that email was like I need
to be friends with that person.
Speaker 1 (31:48):
Afterwards, a lot of people came up to me and were.
Speaker 3 (31:50):
Like, hello, how long have you worked here?
Speaker 1 (31:55):
No, but it worked out. I'm glad that was an
early experience for you. All right, So all of this,
all of this intro aside. We do have a lot
of history to talk about with you.
Speaker 2 (32:08):
We do. But first we're going to take a quick
break for a word from our sponsor, and we're back.
Speaker 1 (32:21):
Thank you sponsor, Yes, thank you. All right, some history. So,
the deep fried chicken wing has been a staple of
Southern cuisine for a long time, and you can, yees
see our fried chicken episode for more about that. If
we look at the Buffalo chicken wing, or sort of
this sauce sports bar, big game trademark chicken wing, that
(32:44):
is a bit more of a recent food invention or innovation.
Of course, there are multiple versions of this story, huh.
But here's the one that you'll see the most, that
you probably have heard, at least in passing. One time
late night in nineteen sixty four, looking for something to
cook her son and his friends, the co owner of
(33:05):
the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York, Teresa Bellissimo, got
the idea to cook some leftover chicken wings in sauce.
Sometimes depending on which version you're eating, it's hot sauce,
sometimes it's melted butter and cayenne, depending And surprise, they
loved them so much so that buffalo wings were featured
(33:27):
on the menu the very next day, and these wings
were served with the side of celery sticks and blue cheese,
and they were a best seller. For a little backstory,
the Anchor Bar was founded in nineteen thirty nine by
married couple Frank and Theresa Bellissimo, and there is a
riff on the origin story above. According to Frank, we
(33:48):
own an accidental delivery of chicken wings as opposed to
chicken necks for the invention of buffalo wings. The chicken
necks were used as a part of their spaghetti sauce recipe.
Frank tasked to with coming up with an appetizer featuring
chicken wings and presto buffalo wings. Dominic has a different take.
(34:08):
In his version, it was a late Friday night in
nineteen sixty four and at the time a lot of
Roman Catholics didn't eat meat apart from fish on Fridays,
so Dominic requested that his mom whip up something with
meat to hand out for free to the regulars who
had been spending a lot of money at midnight. Once
(34:28):
they could have meat, so she went for the cheapest
meat she had, chicken wings. Both stories claim that she
cut the wing in half, resulting in a drum, and
flat fried them Sand's breading and doused them in a
hot sauce of some type. Both claim they became popular
in the city in mere weeks and where they were
(34:49):
and are simply called wings. Our chicken wings and served
mild medium are hot, so they're not called Buffalo wings
in Buffalo, they're just wings, just wings. Modernly, the anchor
bar serves seventy pounds of chicken a month.
Speaker 2 (35:05):
Wow.
Speaker 1 (35:06):
Yeah, and I.
Speaker 3 (35:07):
Bet they don't order chicken necks anymore.
Speaker 2 (35:10):
I don't.
Speaker 1 (35:10):
I would bet not, but I kind of want to
go and investigate for myself.
Speaker 2 (35:17):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (35:18):
To spread the popularity of the dish and to sell
some hot sauce, the son of the owner, Dominic Bollismo,
and Dick Wagner, the person who sold hot sauce to
the anchor bar, went on the road and restaurants slowly
got on board. But there is another version of the story,
and it goes that John Young invented the buffalo wing
in the sixties. Young told a reporter that growing up
(35:40):
in an African American community, chicken wings was often in
the meal lineup. He incorporated that at his restaurant, John
Young's Wings and Things, and he added what he called
a mambo sauce to his wings. These wings were a
little bit different. They were breaded and fried and served whole,
as opposed to flats and drums. But I feel this
is another case that we see so often of a
(36:02):
lot of simultaneous things happening and then one person popularized them. Yeah, yeah, yeah,
but it was probably around a long time before, or
at least a decent time before.
Speaker 2 (36:14):
Oh yeah, I think I this is like mildly on
the record, but I think that I saw reports of
at least chicken wings specifically being consumed separately from the
rest of the chicken, like five to seven thousand years ago.
Speaker 1 (36:30):
Oh so that's a decent amount of.
Speaker 2 (36:32):
Time, So I think, yeah, yeah, yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (36:34):
Like like you said earlier, Lauren, they were certainly being
eaten in other countries at the same time, probably before this.
Yeah yeah, But anyway, these are the stories you'll probably see.
I've never heard of this place, but I guess it's
still around. Duff's Chicken Wing chain got started in nineteen
sixty nine.
Speaker 2 (36:54):
I think it's a Canadian thing, Oh is it?
Speaker 1 (36:56):
I think? Oh wow, did listeners from Canady let us know?
Speaker 2 (37:00):
Did you just include the note because of Deff Spear
from the IA.
Speaker 4 (37:05):
I saw Duff Speer. Well, yeah, then that's one of
the things about the story is that beer was always associated.
I think when all their stories, like we were drinking
and we wanted this dish.
Speaker 1 (37:19):
And yeah, it continues.
Speaker 2 (37:22):
And as we talked about in our Ranch episode, the
capsaicin that makes hot peppers hot and stuff like Buffalo sauce. Yeah,
it's alcohol soluble. It's not water soluble, so you drink
a glass of water, it's not going to cool your
mouth down. But it is alcohol soluble. So you drink
some beer and it's gonna get it off your tongue.
Speaker 3 (37:41):
Oh wow. No, no, yeah, And.
Speaker 1 (37:43):
We'll get into that a tiny bit more later. But yeah, no,
no it. People got hipped to that when they were selling.
I'm just going to say that the City of Buffalo
declared July twenty ninth, nineteen seventy as Chicken Wing Day.
It gave credence to the anchor bar origin story. Some
(38:05):
say because during the seventies it would have been controversial
to give credit to a black man. Absolutely quote, where
is the success of mister Bellissimo's tasty experiment in nineteen
sixty four? Has grown to the point where thousands of
pounds of chicken wings are consumed by Buffalonians in restaurants
and taverns throughout our city each week. And uh, yeah, people,
(38:30):
if anyone is from Buffalo.
Speaker 2 (38:32):
Oh, please write in and let us know what it's like. Yes,
please please.
Speaker 1 (38:36):
Yeah. In the meantime, we have more history for you.
But first one more quick break forward from our sponsor,
and we're back, Thank you, sponsor, Yes, thank you. And
we're back with an aside about Hooters and Buffalo Wild Wings. Okay, okay,
(38:58):
So these places started opening in the in the eighties
and they gave chicken wings center stage on their menus.
I've never been dyed in these places, but I believe
that is a fact.
Speaker 2 (39:11):
How did you avoid it? Okay? Please keep going?
Speaker 1 (39:14):
Okay.
Speaker 4 (39:15):
My first Atlanta wing experience was at A BW Three's
Buffalo Wild Wings.
Speaker 1 (39:20):
Oh my goodness.
Speaker 4 (39:21):
And it was not because it was not because of choice,
is because of my where I lived at the time.
Speaker 2 (39:26):
Oh yeah yeah, and that.
Speaker 4 (39:28):
Was like the closest I was like driving around, I
was like, oh, I can go for some wings and
then loop and that was like my only I've done
it a couple more times, but it's it's kind of
like a bleak experience. It's oh yeah, yeah, there's they
black out all the windows. Well I think we're going
to talk about it like it's a sports bar. Oh
so they black out all the windows because of glare.
Speaker 3 (39:50):
They don't feel like.
Speaker 1 (39:51):
The so people can't see your shade.
Speaker 3 (39:53):
Yeah, it's not like it's not like a Vegas thing.
It's like, let's just don't little forget about time and
then they'll eat about eat all the wings.
Speaker 2 (40:00):
Okay, are you sure?
Speaker 3 (40:02):
Yeah?
Speaker 1 (40:03):
My ex boyfriend we dated for three years, and you
know there are tears of restaurants. So you have a
favorite of like fast Feo, do you have a favorite?
So he loved Buffalo Wild Wings. It was one of
his favorite of that like Socific. I don't want to
throw him under the real chicken wing bus, but he
loved Buffalo Wild Wings. And perhaps that says something about
(40:25):
me that I never went.
Speaker 2 (40:28):
That does.
Speaker 1 (40:29):
I think I've got some things to think about later.
But okay, many think that the first televised mention of
Buffalo Wings happened in this decade too, on the Today Show.
Buffalo Wild Wings, by the way, was founded in nineteen
eighty two after a fellow who had spent some time
in Buffalo, New York, realized he couldn't find any good
(40:51):
Buffalo Wings in Ohio. I feel like I've read a
lot of stories of change that started that way. Oh yeah.
Nowadays they have sixteen sauce and stores all across the
United States and Canada, and you heard the numbers at
the top. They are doing just fine. Buffalo Wings hit
it big in the nineteen nineties when they made their
(41:13):
way onto the menu of some McDonald's. You might have
heard of that across the country as Mighty Wings.
Speaker 2 (41:22):
I do remember that ad campaign, do you. Oh, there's
so many McDonald's ad campaigns that are just right in
the back of my brain. That's terrible, very effective. Well
McDonald's bart though.
Speaker 1 (41:33):
Following that example, KFC debuted hot Wings a year later,
and Domino's Pizza did the same in nineteen ninety four.
We told you we'd be bringing up that date again.
It's an unmovable date in the timeline of food. They
spent thirty two million dollars on that roll out, by
the way, what but I'd say it was successful. Another
(41:54):
thing that brought a lot of awareness to Buffalo wings
might have been definitely was the football team, the Buffalo Bills.
They were around during the early nineties. I guess they're
not around anymore. I again, I.
Speaker 3 (42:09):
Don't want they're still round.
Speaker 1 (42:12):
Jeezez No.
Speaker 4 (42:15):
I know very little about professional sports, but I know
that the Buffalo Bills are still around.
Speaker 1 (42:22):
I apologize Buffalo.
Speaker 2 (42:23):
Bills, and it is not denying you.
Speaker 1 (42:27):
No, no, my bad unsubscribed. Congratulations for bringing a lot
of awareness to one of my favorite foods. I do
appreciate it. In two thousand and one, Buffalo kicked off
its inaugural National Buffalo Wing Festival. By twenty fifteen, it
was seeing seventy thousand attendees per year who were eating
twenty five tons of chicken wings.
Speaker 2 (42:50):
Around two thousand and six, and innovation in meat plant
technology made wings cheaper and safer. Up until then, a
workers had been separating flats from drums by hand like
bandsaws or similar equipment, but then a segmentor was developed
to a to reduce dangerous labor and increase output.
Speaker 1 (43:09):
By the way, in nineteen ninety three, Philadelphia hosted the
inaugural wingble eating Contest, which we mentioned at the top.
Still going, McDonald's Mighty Wings appeared on menus again starting
in twenty thirteen. But this begs the question why are
chicken wings such a big football food other than obviously
they're delicious. The answer lies with timing. In the sixties
(43:33):
and seventies, Americans cooked and ate whole chickens, but boneless
chicken breasts became all the rage in the eighties, and
this meant that chicken wings became an inexpensive byproduct. Restaurants
realized they could offer these wings for cheap, but speculated
the spiciness would boost beer sales that it all comes
back they were correct. Simultaneously, more and more bars were
(43:57):
outfitting with satellite televisions, and these televisions were playing sports.
This was the birth of the sports bar, playing multiple
games across multiple TVs. In the United States, football that is,
American football was the favorite among sports fans to watch
in bars with friends. Chicken wings were a relatively cheap,
(44:17):
shareable protein that lent itself to such a gathering and
it went well with that oh so popular sports drink beer.
Speaker 2 (44:26):
Let me say sports drink, I think like gatorade. I
guess beer is the second sports drink.
Speaker 1 (44:32):
Yeah, sure, thank you, thank you. I do have some
friends that there was a study that It's one of
those studies that I'm like, you just did this to
justify something to yourself. But there was a study that
came out a couple of years ago that said scientifically
it's good to drink beer before and after you work out.
And I was like, you just want to drink beer,
(44:52):
don't That's all it is.
Speaker 2 (44:55):
And now fastward.
Speaker 1 (44:57):
Now you can get expensive chicken wings, nice restaurants.
Speaker 2 (45:02):
Yeah.
Speaker 3 (45:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 2 (45:04):
And Ramsey, you had a little bit of a note
that we said we'd come back to about Atlanta being
a wing town.
Speaker 3 (45:11):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (45:11):
So Atlanta is known as the lemon pepper hub of
I guess the world possibly, if not the United States.
You got your Buffalo wings, but I al would say
that Alanta is definitely referred to as the lemon Pepper
And I think all the things goes to our hip
hop rap culture that we have here.
Speaker 3 (45:31):
As far as all the artists that kind of rap.
Speaker 4 (45:33):
About wings, where they get their wings and how they
like their wings and all that.
Speaker 3 (45:38):
In particular. You know, you got Cucci Maine.
Speaker 4 (45:40):
He has a lemon Nade song where he talks about
he likes his lemon pepper wings, and you got two chains.
He has a song called hot Wings that's actually recorded
at a American deli where he's rapping about eating chicken wings.
I mean, it's it's definitely part of our culture here
in Atlanta. And I've I don't think I ever had
lemon pepper wings until I came to Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (46:02):
Oh yeah, I don't think I had either.
Speaker 3 (46:03):
Yeah.
Speaker 4 (46:04):
So I mean I think we all of us here
have our favorite spots that get wings and stuff like that.
But like you know, there's still debate of where to
get the best wing in Atlanta, and you know, what
serves the best style and how you want to cook
it and how you want to eat it and all
that stuff.
Speaker 1 (46:19):
Yeah, it's funny. And the the article that you shared,
I unfortunately am not up to date with the show Atlanta,
but it was like a plot point in there.
Speaker 4 (46:29):
Oh yeah, it was totally a plot point. Like they
went to g R crickets. They went, they got lemon
pepper wet. Like you go into a story like hey,
how do you want like wings? Do you go lemon
pepper wet and like that's how you get your wings.
And we have a I wouldn't call it a epidemic.
We have a problem around Atlanta where if you look
(46:50):
on the street, if you get off the airport, you're
probably going to see a chicken.
Speaker 2 (46:53):
Bone, chicken wing bones, chicken wing.
Speaker 4 (46:55):
Bone specifically from your time you get your bags too,
when you get in your car, you'll probably see a
chicken leg, chicken bone anywhere. Like, yeah, we had there's
an Instagram account called Wings of atl which I subscribe to,
and it's it's funny because like you will literally find
wings all over Atlanta.
Speaker 2 (47:14):
Yeah, once someone points it out to you. It's one
of those things like like that word you've never heard before,
but then you hear it once and suddenly it's everywhere.
Once you start noticing it, you're like, oh no, we
eat a lot of chicken wings, and we eat them
apparently on the go, and sometimes there's no trash cans
and so that's just I mean, the ire biodegradable It's true.
Speaker 1 (47:31):
I do. Probably I walk everywhere that I can, and
I anywhere I'm walking, I will see chicken wing bones.
Speaker 2 (47:39):
I love that about the hip hop culture celebrating chicken
wings because it is such like a food of the people,
and when you're talking about segments of your life that
are like to you just just part of you and
part of what it means to be you, and especially
something that is kind of bucking against these negative stereotypes
(47:59):
that have been put out about people who look like
you for so many years, it's really wonderful to have
people just go like, yeah, I like chicken wings, what
they're great.
Speaker 3 (48:07):
Yeah.
Speaker 1 (48:08):
I also love the specific ordering of like.
Speaker 2 (48:10):
Oh yeah, well, oh yeah, no, a lemon pepper rup
is totally different and I cannot necessarily approve of it.
Speaker 1 (48:18):
Lauren's message of the episode strong opinion, love it.
Speaker 4 (48:23):
Yeah, And for me personally, like I don't go if
I see wings on a menu. There's certain places I
will order them, and they arguably have some of the
best wings. But you know, you got your gr Crickets
and that it is definitely a staple here in Atlanta,
and you got your other restaurants, Like I mentioned American
deli and other places that. You know, it's just really
(48:45):
dependent on where you like to get your wings.
Speaker 3 (48:49):
You know.
Speaker 4 (48:49):
For me, there's a place I was like, oh, this
is great wings. I had never had smoked wings before.
Oh yeah, And like I remember, I could go there
and I could spend like seven bucks and I can
get six wings and they come to the side of fries.
Now you go that same spot and it's like twelve dollars,
fourteen dollars. I'm like, that's not that's you know, I'd
(49:11):
rather make wings myself, enjoy them, eat them the way
I like. You know, obviously I'm not smoking them, brinding
them and deep rind them twice and all the other
stuff all the time. But yeah, you know, it's it's
definitely wings for me have always been wing for the people,
you know, food for the people.
Speaker 1 (49:26):
Yeah. And I'm always kind of curious with like, well,
was it that we just weren't paying for something that
we should have been paying for? Like did you say
about the tomato, Like do we just have to pay more?
Speaker 2 (49:37):
Do we just have to get used to paying a
fair price for tomatoes?
Speaker 1 (49:40):
Yeah?
Speaker 2 (49:41):
I mean, and that does work into especially when you're
talking about this number of chickens that we were like,
what was what was it? I forget the ridiculous number,
like over twenty billion chicken wings or chicken segment.
Speaker 1 (49:55):
Yeah per year.
Speaker 2 (49:56):
Yeah, you're you're getting into food production questions at that point,
and how to sustainably and morally raise that number of
animals and pay workers to do that thing and processing
not letting people get their hands cut off during processing,
all that kind of fun stuff.
Speaker 1 (50:15):
Yay food. Yeah, I mean it's always good to ask
those questions or big proponents of that, And we're also
big proponents of some science.
Speaker 2 (50:24):
Yeah. All right, So my very favorite serious eats writer,
one J Kenji Lopez Alt, did some serious wing experimentation
and he arrived at a few methods for producing superior
chicken wings all right, where in superior, by the way,
is meant to mean super crispy on the outside, super
tender on the inside without using any kind of breading
(50:45):
or dredging, which he considers cheating.
Speaker 1 (50:47):
Ah, I love it.
Speaker 2 (50:48):
Yeah. So he found that to crisp a wing to
its full potential without drying out the meat, you want
to fry them twice, initially at a relatively low temperature
for a relatively long period of time, say like a
two hundred and fifty fahrenheit or it's about one hundred
and twenty celsius, for up to twenty minutes to cook
the meat and glatinize all this stretchy, stiff collagen in
(51:09):
the skin and the connective tissue. Then let him cool
down a little bit and briefly refry at a hotter
temperature around like four hundred fahrenheit or about two hundred celsius.
And this lets a few things happen. And I find
it so interesting that Ramsey, you were saying that special
recipe that you did that one time, is this is
like exactly how you did it. So first, the now
(51:29):
soft skin can expand more as escaping water vapor pushes
and bubbles it outward, so it stretches out thinner. A second,
the initial low temperature of the fry allows the wing
to retain a lot of internal moisture while driving out
some of the external moisture, meaning that the proteins in
the skin that brown up so beautifully can get right
(51:51):
to it quick. Frying means that your chicken won't soak
up grease and get soggy, so nice and crisp. He
also tested methods for oven baked wings that are just
as or almost as good as deep fried. The secret
there is getting rid of some of that external moisture
again by drying the wings in an open pan in
(52:11):
the fridge overnight, coated with some dry brine, basically some
baking powder and salt. And the salt we talked about earlier,
the baking powder. I didn't have time to like really
scientifically figure out what was going on here, but it
improves browning for a number of complex reasons, involving the alkalinity,
the Mallard reaction, peptide bonds in the proteins in the skin,
(52:34):
and carbon dioxide bubbles.
Speaker 1 (52:36):
It's a lot of cool science stuff.
Speaker 2 (52:38):
A lot of cool science. A little bit of baking
powder you don't want too much because then it tastes
like baking powder, which is metallic, and you don't really
want to eat very much of that. No not, I mean,
or maybe you do. I don't know your life.
Speaker 1 (52:52):
We don't, we don't. I'm gonna have to dry that
out because I my the healthy ones I mentioned earlier
that I make, I mean healthy.
Speaker 2 (53:01):
Healthier, healthier, share less oil that's healthier share.
Speaker 1 (53:04):
Yeah, I bake them. Yeah, I'll have to give this
a whirl because you know the game's coming.
Speaker 3 (53:11):
Oh it is a big game.
Speaker 1 (53:14):
Is that a movie? It better be a movie big game,
the Big Game, I think it is.
Speaker 3 (53:20):
There's the game completely different.
Speaker 2 (53:23):
I'm sure, and there's Big. There's Big that's also different.
Speaker 1 (53:26):
So combine the plots of those two movies and we
are ready to go.
Speaker 3 (53:33):
I don't want to see that movie.
Speaker 2 (53:34):
I know. Poor Tom Hanks, Michael.
Speaker 1 (53:36):
Douglas, Michael Douglas, I'm telling you Callas Hollywood remake. Well,
I think this about brings us to the end of
this episode. Thank you so much for joining us.
Speaker 4 (53:54):
Ramsey, thanks for having me, and feel free to bring
me in. Like I said earlier when I was asked
by didn't definitely didn't want to wing this.
Speaker 1 (54:02):
Oh he's very good with the puns, so Ramsey's he's
pretty sharp.
Speaker 2 (54:06):
Oh yeah, yeah, I would. I would say that that
between like the two of you and like maybe Jonathan
Strickland and probably Ben Bolan, like this office has some
really good pun game, and man, I don't want to
see that kind of competition though, Like that would be
it would get it would get ugly. Thunderdown, and that
(54:27):
brings us to the end of this classic episode. We
hope that you enjoyed listening to it for the first
time the second time, who knows how many times as
much as we did bringing it back.
Speaker 1 (54:38):
I know. Usually Ramsey and I do communicate over the
big game because he cooks. He's a good he cooks
very good wings. He's a great cook in general. Yeah,
he is. So I'm excited to see what he's he's
going to be up to. And as always, listeners, we
love hearing what food things you get up to, be
(54:59):
they all related or otherwise. Oh absolutely, yeah, yeah, yes,
and remember to go check out Conversate with Killer Mike
and get a look here. Oh, listen at what Ramsey
is up to these days. Yeah, and if you would
like to contact us, we would love to hear from you.
(55:19):
You can email us at Hello atsavorpod dot com.
Speaker 2 (55:22):
We're also on social media. You can find us on
Instagram and blue Sky at savor pod, and we do
hope to hear from you. Savere is a production of iHeartRadio.
For more podcasts from my Heart Radio, you can visit
the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to
your favorite shows. Thanks as always to our super producers
Dylan Fagan and Andrew Howard. Thanks to you for listening,
(55:43):
and we hope that lots of more good things are
coming your way.
Savor News
Hosts And Creators
Anney Reese
Lauren Vogelbaum
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