Wings

From chickens.

The breasts, thighs, legs, livers, gizzards, hearts went elsewhere. By the thousands millions.

On an industrial scale we decapitated these chickens, plucked their feathers, cut out their guts, chopped off their feet, rinsed with salt, chopped to pieces and packaged variously. Shipped throughout the country from various spots. Imagine a 4 Lb chicken except this one is all wings.

Huge freezer bins loaded with bags of 4 Lb of chicken wings all across America, and under various brands, sometimes together. It's obscene. And when you buy one or two or ten of these bags then you are part of it. Come on. You're American! Come claim your 4 Lb bag of chicken wings.

Dipping in water results in crispier crust than dipping in milk or in egg mixture.

As with French fries, frying the chicken wings twice results in longer lasting much crispier crust than single frying.

I did not do any of that. These were taken from the bag and fried.

They're horrible.

I fried six but ate only three and I hated them.

Tell the cook he's fired.

     "Okay. Hang on ... 'You're fired!'"

These must be thawed and coated with flour and provided a good crusty coat and then tossed in melted butter and Frank's hot sauce.

Except I'm using Los Calientes.

This was the best thing about the wings, along with their plumpness. It is not hot. In the YouTube video show Hot Ones this Los Calientes is rated hotter than Frank's, hotter than Sriracha, hotter than Tabasco, hotter than Ancho & Morita and Louisiana hot sauce, hotter than Small Axe Peppers, Guajillo & Red Jalapeno, and hotter than Classic Hot Sauce. It is rated hotter than many other types of chile sauces revolving in and out of the lineup for Hot Ones' 11 seasons on YouTube. 

I thought those sauces were hot. 

This sauce is not hot. It is infuriatingly mild. 

Yet this sauce is more in the middle of all of the HotOnes' chile sauce lineups.

So that forces me to reevaluate all those other sauces rated milder than this. I thought they were hot. They are simply not hot. Frank's which ranks near to Los Calientes is not hot. It's vinegary, a flavor I object to in sauces, and that overwhelms its heat sensation. Yet I heard its vinegary-ness lauded on television, "Oh, and it has that nice vinegary taste." 

Ugh.

Los Calientes has a delightful flavor but it is not hot so does not deserve to be rated middle of the pack.

And its delightfulness instructs us that we can make any sauce that we like. We can make it have any predominant flavor with any support flavors and to any degree of heat. 

Okay, fine.

I want mine to be predominantly pineapple flavor with supportive flavors of ginger and garlic and with floral heat of habanero peppers but only mildly, more floral than heat, but strong heat that lags and then comes up from behind and affects the whole throat, nose and mouth with the pineapple still predominant. 

These wings were horrible but the next wings with bread coating and with this sauce will be a lot better.  The wings are fine. My method here is horrible.

Last summer two friends came over here to help move two large aquariums. Actually, they moved the aquariums, and their stands, and I watched. While here, they made a pizza. In making the pizza they ravaged my refrigerator. In ravaging my refrigerator they noticed how stuffed full it is. That became their joke. Now the joke lives beyond that day. Months later they brought it up again as a joke. They were putting me on the spot. That indicated to me that they intend to haze me about this. Should I die, and should one of them eulogize me then I can expect now that after I'm dead they will bring this up in their speech to the church. 

Yeah, I learned to be a good catch. (Wait for it ... ) Because when I open the door to the freezer something comes flying out. *pretend baseball catcher.*

I cannot let them know that I am bothered by their weird teasing.

Besides, their own refrigerator is weird.

It makes ice cubes in the freezer door and they taste like shit and they keep 50 brands of salad dressing in the refrigerator door.

Dudes, you gotta dump the ice regularly and have it make fresh ice because ice picks up random odor molecules. Your ice is making my Cuba Libre taste like a f'k'n sewer. And everyone knows how to make salad dressing. The bottles lined up in the door look like my parent's refrigerator. Although delicious on salads and with many other applications, the cluster of bottles says,

"I don't know nuth'n 'bout making no salad dressings." 

It's cute.

It's so trusting. It's like a little puppy dog who just trusts. You allow corporations to take the chore of making salad dressings so completely that they separate you from knowing how it is done. It's all one big mystery how they get all that variety in flavors and textures. While they load them with additional chemicals to do specific marketing things, necessary for fulfilling their side of their bargain. Their dressings have to do more than your homemade dressings must do. Your sauce does not have to stay on a shelf for months, does not have to travel, does not have to be handled by several various independent people, does not have to keep in jar indefinitely after opened for repeat uses.

Your dressing: you make it, you eat it, boom, you're done.