The Best Super Bowl Dish- Crispy Chicken Wings Sous Vide

Who’s going to win the Super Bowl? Well I personally have no clue, but one thing is for certain: there will be wings. But how exactly did the Buffalo chicken wing become a football staple? Well jump in the time machine kids and lets shuffle off to Buffalo!

It’s a good story; Frank and Teressa Bellissimo were closing up the Anchor Bar in Buffalo NY one evening in 1964. Dominic, the couple's son came in with a few friends and was in dire need of sustenance. As all good mothers do Teressa rose to the challenge, frying up some chicken wings she was saving for sauce and tossing them with her finest margarine and hot sauce. She served these with some of their blue cheese dressing and celery sticks, that legend has it was taken from a leftover antipasto platter and viola - a classic was born.

The popularity of wings spread across the country in the mid-1980s but I know what your thinking, what's the link to football? Well as luck would have it the buffalo chicken wing got a lot of coverage when the Buffalo Bills played in the Super Bowl 4 years in a row from 1990-1993, the connection was born.

These wings I’m offering you today aren’t in the buffalo style as they have a hot sauce spiked crust but trust me when I say, that's some good eating!

Ingredients:

• 4 1/4 cups water

• 1.75 ounces kosher salt, fine grind

• 1/4 cup hot pepper sauce, Frank's red hot or similar

• 1/4 cup blackstrap molasses or similar

• 5 pounds chicken wings

• 1/4 cup Wondra flour

• 1/4 cup rice flour

• For frying vegetable oil

• 1 whole lime juice

Directions:

1. In a large bowl add the salt, hot sauce and molasses, mix thoroughly until the salt, hot sauce and molasses are dissolved.

Using a bowl that will comfortably fit in a VacMaster chamber machine (with the marinade function*) submerge the wings in the brine using half or quarter batches. Set the marinade function to number nine and vacuum. When finished perform procedure again with remaining wings and remaining brine.

2. Preheat the SV1 sous vide machine to 62°C/144°F 

Drain the wings from the marinade and using appropriately sized VacMaster bag(s) vacuum pack the wings and carefully place in the SV1 immersion circulator for a minimum of 2 and up to 4 hours.

3. Remove the wings from the bags being careful to reserve the cooking liquid.

4. In a medium-size bowl add the Wondra and rice flours and slowly whisk in the reserved cooking liquid until a thin pancake like batter is achieved

5. Season the batter with the lime juice and more hot sauce salt and pepper if needed

6. Following the manufacturer’s directions set up a deep fryer (or alternativelyusing a Dutch oven) with the vegetable oil to 375°F

7. Working in batches drop the wings into the batter and coat thoroughly. Shake off any excess batter and drop the chicken into the hot oil and cook for 3-5 minutes or until nicely browned.

8. Remove wings to a cooling rack set over paper towels to catch any draining oil, serve immediately. 

* If you do not have a vacuum sealer machine with the marinate function, you can marinate in the bag with any chamber unit, we recommend running it for two cycles. Then refrigerate for 60-90 min.