Sticky Gochujang Chicken Wings
For The Little Empress’ birthday, I bought a bunch of chicken wings from Costco. We didn’t have as many guests as I had originally anticipated so we ended up buying more chicken wings than we had originally anticipated needing. No biggie since the Foster Farms chicken wings were oh-so-conveniently packaged in 1 lb increments. Not exactly great for the environment but damned handy, I’d say!
It has been a clean-out-the-fridge kind of week so when I saw the last two pounds of chicken wings, I knew that the time had come to eat them. I happen to love chicken but I seem to be the only one in my house that does. Chicken wings in particular aren’t a favorite of The Hubs unless, of course, they’re crunchily deep fried and slathered in hot sauce. *sigh* What to do, what to do. I found a few recipes for baked chicken wings on All Recipes, the most appealing of which were wings coated in a sweet, sticky sauce. Mmm. I love sticky sauce wings and figured that this would be a great way to use them.
After scanning the recipes — and what little was available in my pantry and fridge — I decided I had enough of an understanding of the basic marinade to make something up on the fly. One thing I wanted to do was to use up some gochujang I had picked up. Gochujang is a fermented Korean red pepper paste which has a tiny bit of a kick but is more like an umami bomb than anything else. It has a great savory taste that is awesome with meats. I also had some mystery Korean “cooking syrup” that I picked up on a whim at the Asian grocery store on a recent trip. I had assumed it was some type of malt or millet syrup. When I opened the bottle and began to pour it out, it was quite thin, much thinner than pancake syrup. Subsequent googling has revealed that it is probably cane syrup.
Sticky Gochujang Wings
The end result was something truly remarkable. The gochujang gave it a tiny bit of heat but was more savory than anything else. The honey and cane syrup boiled down to sticky goodness. This was really good stuff! It would have gone well with some pickled veggies but instead I had roasted veggies on hand (eggplant, zucchini and onions) so that’s what I ate it with. You could eat it as a main course with rice or as an appetizer.
Sticky Gochujang Chicken Wings
Makes about 20 chicken wings/drumettes
Marinade
- 1/2 c. soy sauce
- 1/4 c. honey
- 1/4 c. Korean cooking syrup
- 1/4 c. gochujang
Chicken
- 2lbs chicken wings, separated into drumettes and wings, tips removed
Mix together the marinade ingredients until well incorporated. (The honey and gochujang are both pretty sticky so you may want to use a fork or whisk to ensure that it dissolves well into the liquid.) Pour over chicken. Let marinate at least an hour, preferably overnight.
Preheat oven to 375F. Prepare a baking dish by spraying with non-stick cooking spray for ease of clean up. (When I say sticky, I mean it!!) Remove wings from the marinade and drain well, reserving marinade. Place wings in the baking dish in a single layer and bake at 375F for 40 minutes.
Meanwhile, place the reserved marinade in a small saucepan over high heat. Bring to a boil and then lower to a simmer until reduced by a third. (It will still be fairly thin.) Set aside but keep warm.
After 40 minutes, remove wings from oven. Dip each wing into the boiled sauce, returning to the baking dish. Bake for another 10 minutes — the sauce will reduce further and get sticky.
For VERY sticky wings, remove baking pan again from the oven. Turn on the broiler to 550F. Brush each wing with a generous amount of the boiled marinade. Return to the oven and broil until a deep mahogany color with some nice, crispy bits.
Serve warm.
Fair Style Sausage Rolls
I love historical Fairs. Come summer time, Renaissance Pleasure Faire calls to me with its knights in shining armor, jousting, crazy hats and what not. In the winter time, San Francisco’s Dickens Christmas Fair beckons with its Victorian England streets, filled with Dickens characters and holiday merriment.
But more than all this, I love the food! British food is often times snubbed for being plain and flavorless which I simply don’t think is the case. Ren Faire’s medieval setting tempts the palate with its no utensils eating with things like thick cut bread, cheese and sausage (yum) and gigantic turkey legs. Dickens Fair often has wonderful selections of meat pies, pasties, afternoon tea and other delights.
One of my favorites served at both events is the humble sausage roll. As I know it, the sausage roll is simply a bit of sausage meat, rolled in flaky pastry. I prefer mine plain however there’s almost always a huge jug of either brown sauce or ketchup just waiting to accompany it.
Sadly, sausage rolls aren’t popular in the US as they are in the UK or Australia where they are corner store staples. Fair season is usually limited to late summer/winter here which means that a sausage roll craving can go unfulfilled for quite awhile during the year. And with admission usually more than $20/per adult and food prices also being expensive, it’s a bit impractical to go to a Fair just to eat. (And that doesn’t include gas, travel time and parking!)
In order to fulfill a particularly bad craving for sausage rolls in the springtime, I set out to recreate the rolls on my own. Working off the assumption that sausage rolls are nothing more than an over glorified pigs in a blanket, I found myself with a tube of ready made cresent roll dough and a pack of pre-cooked British style bangers. (Excuse me while my inner 12 year old giggles stupidly. Hehehe. BANGERS.)
The resulting rolls were tasty but still not quite what I remembered. The buttery cresent rolls were yummy and the bangers had the exact flavor of the meat in the Fair rolls. However the sausage to pastry ratio was simply too much for me and the rolls weren’t flaky. Still, they satisfied the craving and I filed away my love of sausage rolls for another time.
A few days ago, I found myself poking through AllRecipes.com and the featured recipe of the day was for someone’s British-style sausage rolls. The recipe called for premade, uncooked sage sausage wrapped in puff pastry. I realized that was where I had gone wrong with the previous attempt. It should have been puff pastry! Duh. Needless to say, on my next shopping trip, I set out to buy the ingredients to attempt the sausage roll, again. This time I’m happy to report that I’ve made terrific success and I’m happy to pass the knowledge along to others.
Fair Style Sausage Rolls
Makes 8
- 1 box of pre-made puff pastry
- 1 pack of pre-cooked British-style sausage (Bangers)
- 1 egg, beaten
Preheat your oven to 400F
Cut your sausages in half lengthwise and remove the casing. Thaw your puff pastry as recommended on the box. When thawed, unfold and wrap each sausage half in pastry, pinching the edges to seal.
Line a baking sheet with parchment and then place pastry wrapped sausage onto the parchment. Brush the tops of the wrapped sausage with egg wash and bake for 20 minutes until golden brown. Cool for a few minutes before enjoying. These can be served warm or at room temperature.
To reheat refrigerated cooked sausage rolls: Bake at 300F for 20 minutes.
The rolls at Fair tend to cost somewhere in the neighborhood of $3 ~ $5 each. This recipe will make 8 at approximately $1.30 each. Not bad, eh?
For reference sake, I used Pepperidge Farm puff pastry and Saags British Bangers. Saags are pre-cooked and come four to a pack. British style bangers aren’t easy to find where I live so I’m pretty much SOL if I wanted to find raw sausages.
The Pepperidge Farm package came with 2 sheets of puff pastry and I was able to wrap four halves in each sheet but I had to get pretty creative when it came to wrapping the sausages. Pepperidge Farm puff pastry comes folded into thirds and the folds remain visible even when unfolded. There was lots of pinching and sealing to be had come the last sausage in each sheet as well as supplement patches of pastry, trimmed from the other sausages. In the end, I couldn’t tell what got patched where and honestly, didn’t care. After all, these are meant to taste good and not win any aesthetic awards.
This recipe is pretty flexible and can be used with other pre-cooked sausages. I haven’t tried it with uncooked sausage myself though I’m sure it can be done. I just like the pre-cooked sausages because it prevents the grease from getting into the pastry. 
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