Fried chicken wings! A modern dai pai dong mainstay, this is one of those dishes with not much of a clear ‘standard’ per se, so we wanted to teach you two versions.
0:00 – Where does Cantonese Fried Chicken Wings come from?
2:30 – Lum Choon style Fried Wings
5:22 – A note on “crispy”
6:14 – Fermented Bean Curd Fried Wings
8:00 – You can also steam Furu wings!
LUM CHOON STYLE
For this wing, potato starch is preferred but tapioca starch will also work. Corn starch can substitute but will have a slightly different effect.
* Full chicken wings, 6 (or, twelve flats and/or drumettes)
* For the brine:
Salt, 10g or ~2 tsp
Sugar, 15g or ~1 tbsp
Chicken bouillon powder (鸡粉), 5g or ~1 tsp
MSG (味精), 1g or ~1/4 tsp
White pepper (白胡椒粉), 2g or ~1 tsp
Soy sauce (生抽), 20g or ~4 tsp
Liaojiu a.k.a. Shaoxing wine (料酒/绍酒), 20g or ~4 tsp
Fish sauce (鱼露), 20g or ~4 tsp
Water, enough to submerge, ~2 cups
* To coat:
Marinade from above, ~2 tbsp
Potato starch (土豆淀粉), enough to coat, ~1.25 cups
Additional potato starch right before frying, ~2-3 tbsp
Mix the chicken wings with all the ingredients from the brine. Soak in the fridge for at least 90 minutes, and up to overnight.
Next day, drain the wings but reserve the marinade. Add the drained wings to a large basin or stock pot together with two tablespoons of the marinade. Mix. Add a bit of potato starch to make a sort of ‘brine slurry’ that can roughly coat the wings, then add enough starch so that everything’s visibly ‘dry’ when you toss it (will need a rather hefty quantity of starch). Toss well to coat, then set aside.
Get a wok of oil up to 160C. Right before adding in the wings, add 2-3 more tablespoons starch and toss again. Knock off any loose starch, then add in the wings.
Fry at 140C for eight minutes.
FURU FRIED WINGS
With these wings, feel free to use cornstarch if that’s what you have on hand.
* Flats and/or drumettes, 10 total (or, five full wings)
* For the marinade:
Furu, fermented beancurd (腐乳), 1 piece
Mijiu rice wine (米酒) -or- Sake -or- Shaoxing wine, 1 tbsp
Soy sauce (生抽), 1 tbsp
Sugar, 1 tsp
Salt, ½ tsp
White pepper powder (白胡椒粉), ½ tsp
* To coat:
Egg, one small (or half a medium or large)
Potato starch (土豆淀粉) -or- cornstarch, enough to coat, ~1.5 cups
Additional potato starch right before frying, ~2-3 tbsp
Mix the chicken wings with the ingredients for the marinade. Marinate for at least three hours, and up to 48.
Dump the wings together with the marinade in a large basin or stock pot. Crack in an egg, then add the starch in the same manner as above (thin slurry, then enough to dry everything out).
Get a wok of oil up to 160C. Add in the 2-3 tablespoons of extra starch before frying, and toss to coat again. Knock off any excess starch before dumping in. Fry for 7 minutes at 145-150C. Remove.
Optionally fry the wings again right before serving to further crisp things up. 185C, 30 seconds.
______
And check out our Patreon if you’d like to support the project!
http://www.patreon.com/ChineseCookingDemystified
Outro Music: คิดถึงคุณจัง by ธานินทร์ อินทรเทพ
Found via My Analog Journal (great channel): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GHaL5H-VYRg
Hey guys, a few notes:
1. So looking at the footage side by side – my wing vs Lum Choon’s – I think I might have been a little guilty of otherthinking things. In some of my earlier tests, I simply tossed the brined wings with a bunch of potato starch and deep fried them without thinking too much on the issue. Steph said that those batches were very close to Lum Choon’s, but somehow in my mind’s eye I remembered something a bit crispier. The ‘make a slurry, then coat’ move gets things a little crispier (as it does with the furu wings), but I think I might’ve overdone it in the video. Apologies. Our version was still quite tasty, but if for some reason you’re an (ex or current) Shunde-ite and also familiar with Lum Choon… maybe forgo that ‘slurry’ bit when coating to arrive at something closer to theirs.
2. Note that an overnight brine makes the wings very tender, moreso than Lum Choon’s. My best guess is that they start thawing the frozen wings in the morning, mix the brine in directly with the thawed wings (thus the reddish hue) in the late afternoon, coat in batches, then fry to order.
3. For those China based, this is the information for Lum Choon: “凛全大排档” (地址：安源路北区桂畔文化广场西侧约90米) https://m.dianping.com/shopshare/iTpFgy6Vqep46A1u Order the fried chicken wings, a pork meatball congee (their’s is very good), and a seasonal stir fried vegetable. Across the street there is a convenience store that sells 玉冰烧, a rice wine local to the Sze Yup region that’s probably the best mijiu there is (fermented with pork fat!)
4. Although I guess, China’s started issuing tourist visas again, so if you’re thinking about going definitely add Shunde to your list. Fantastic little food town, very walkable/bikeable. Avoid going around Chinese national holiday as the town gets pretty mobbed with domestic tourists.
5. Re the wings, feel free to ‘mix and match’ the different styles. Like if you want brined wings with the crunchier, egg based coating? Go for it.
6. Cornstarch can be subbed in directly for potato starch in the second version with the fermented tofu. For the Lum Choon style wings, I do feel that potato starch ‘clumps’ in a more pleasing way, but cornstarch would work in a pinch.
7. Apologies for the slightly weird ‘person-focused’ thumbnail, I know it’s not really our style. Unsauced fried chicken can be a tough dish to photograph.
That’s all I can think of for now. Might edit a few more in a bit 🙂
hmm something like har cheong gai chicken wings…????
This probably isn’t traditional but are there any dry spices or dipping sauces that you would recommend to pair these bad boys with?
I remember as a kid in NYC there was a street cart that used to do fried chicken wings in chinatown and they sort of looked like this.
Reminds me of the Fried Chicken our local Chinese-Filipino fast food Chowking serve here in the Philippines.
If Jollibee's Chickenjoy is our western style king of fast food chicken, Chowking's Chinese style Fried Chicken is the Chinese emperor equivalent. Hahaha
But the light crispy whole chicken from Max's and Classic Savory are bangers too.
When you inviting me over?
I only keep the red Wangzhihe (紅腐乳) in the house – would that be okay for use in these wings? I would also like to see you make the steamed version as I just cannot picture how that would look or taste. I like wings and want to make both versions of these, I normally don't have potato starch so I will need to look around for that…
Almost dislocated the joints of the wing tips so they wont be standing poky
Would red fermented bean curd work for that second recipe?
Delicious. And easy. But missing the Chef John ‘fork don’t lie’ test ????…
I've always wondered, why do you measure oil temperature with an IR thermometer when an instant-read thermal probe is much more accurate and not prone to material changes in emissivity?
I mean, these both sound and look delicious, but how can you take that steamed chicken wing recipe and just toss it in at the end? That sounds amazing
Oh wow, finally I can attempt to recreate the chicken wings my favourite local Chinese takeaway used to make. The second recipe you showed us seems to be a dead wringer for the ones they used to make, the only difference was that they added a bit of madras curry powder (of all things) to the dredge and it made them so irresistible. At $2 NZ a pop they were so affordable I would have to satisfy my craving for them while waiting for my standard takeaway to be prepared. Thanks guys for the recipe! Much love from NZ!
I had and fried chicken and rice for lunch and then this came up.
Im Cantones in America. American aka black froed chicken don't match Asian fired chicken.
Your dog is clearly excited lmao perfect thumbnail
I love this channel. My husband grew up in between the HK new territories and the south of the US. Nothing comes closer to communicating canto food culture to the anglosphere than these videos.
the cute doggo in the video ❤❤❤
That dog is so stinking cute!
Has to be the cutest thumbnail on the channel
We needed this. The world needed this.
The first kind of method 'Su' is probably similar to the Taiwanese style of fried chicken that I order from a place near me.
It's super juicy and melt in the mouth, with a light crispy coating that to me has a slight sweetness to it. It is now my Go-to place when I fancy fried chicken.
I don't get how people can like a super duper batter fried chicken and like it's 20% batter and whatnot because I get it adds crunch and flavor but the thin crispy one is so much better all in all. You can still add more flavor if that's the issue but you could also just double fry for an extra crunch/crisp. But yeah thin and crispy for the win.
very good. Tks
su=flaky, cui=crunchy