How To Get Frustrated In Four Easy Steps

I have to interrupt the saga of the watch.

Ever watch those cooking shows on television?  Ever think ... WOW ... that looks delicious and SO easy to make?  I do it all the time.  I take notes, I look up the recipe on the internet and two days later I usually decide to scrap the whole idea.

That's what I SHOULD have done yesterday, but with nothing else planned, I figured what the heck ... lets give it a shot!!

CHICKEN WINGS .... easy peasy!!  Just follow Alton Brown's directions and you will have the best little chicken wings you've ever eaten WITHOUT frying.

When in New York with Barbara and Tom Westerfield ... yup I drove the beast all the way to New York ... we stopped in at the original buffalo wing restaurant, the place where they were invented.  Mom deep fried some for her son and his friends.  They became the rage and it's no wonder.  I think I ate about 38 of them and they were fabulous!

Step One:
Let's recreate them with Alton's recipe.  First off, cut off the tip, squeeze the wing together and cut the two pieces apart at the knuckle, or whatever it is chicken's have.  I was so proud I didn't cut myself, mostly because I used my big kitchen scissors instead.

Step Two:
Steam them for 15 minutes, the remnants of which are shown here.  All seemed to be going well, even if the kitchen was starting to heat up from the biggest burner on the stove.  I turned on the vent fan which is attached to the overhead microwave.  It sounded like a jet engine.

Step Three:

Lay them on a rack, dry with paper towels and place them in the fridge for an hour to cool.  Have you ever tried drying greasy sticky chicken wings with paper towels?  I spent twenty minutes scraping the lint and paper off of them.  Into the fridge they went to dry out, according to Alton.

Step Four:

Time for the oven.  Heat it up to 425 degrees and bake for 15 minutes.  Once beautifully brown, turn them over and do it again.  Well first off, in 15 minutes they looked exactly the same as they did when I took them out of the fridge.

Hmmmm maybe the oven wasn't quite hot enough.  I ramped up the heat to 475.  Unfortunately, the oven vents through the stove into the kitchen.  Boy did it get hot quickly.  I turned the vent on high. It sounded like a jet engine on steroids!!

I didn't hear the timer go off due to the jet engine, but another two minutes didn't matter.  They STILL were not brown and crispy.  About then, I was ready to throw the whole thing in the trash.

I cranked the oven up to 500 degrees, now sweating profusely.  It's 105 in my kitchen and I'm getting pretty frustrated!  I turned the air conditioning down to 75 degrees in the hopes of mitigating some of the heat.  Another fifteen minutes went by rather slowly.

AHA!!!  Finally a slight tinge of brown.  Good enough ... I turned them over and went for another 15 minutes as I slugged down a bottle of ice water.  Twenty minutes later I couldn't figure out what that beeping was as I perched in front of my table fan.  Oh wait ... it's the volcano spewing out lava in my kitchen ... least that's what it felt like.

FINALLY ..... TOTAL FRUSTRATED, very hot and cranky .... I pulled them out of the magma hot oven, which of course increased the temperature in my kitchen by another ten degrees.  That was it for me ... these were as done as they were going to get.

I have to say they tasted pretty good, even if I did have to cook them for over an hour, with the whole process taking more than three hours.  I could have deep fried them in 20 minutes.  Thank you Alton, but no thank you.  Just say NO to oven fried chicken wings.  Go with the REAL deep fried kind.

I took a few over to the Chance residence and told them I hoped they enjoyed these tasty morsels, because they would never again see them if I had to be the cook.  Next time I'll just drive to the wing store and BUY some!!  At least my house will be cooler.  It's 8:00 at night and the AC unit has finally shut off.

By the way, I left out the buffalo sauce.  Do you know how to make it?  Melt half a cup of butter and stir in half a bottle of tobacco sauce.  I'll pass.  The whole idea was to lessen the fat content in the first place.  I'm deleting that television channel from my selection list.