Last week, I offered to make food for a party that my friend was hosting at his place. It sounded pretty easy at the time, but on the night staring at the bad of nearly four kilos of chicken wings I had started to regret putting myself into it already. I'm really grateful to a friend who did most of the prepwork and frying - which meant the only thing actually I did was make the batter, the sauce and tossed the chicken pieces with the sauce so they were evenly covered. Still, it took over two hours to fry up everything - being overcautious on the doneness of the meat.
After getting home, I wondered how I could speed up the process of cooking. I'd heard of some shortcuts that some shops would use - precooking or par-frying- and decided to give it a go myself. I'd decided on preboiling - since it seemed better than double frying chicken. Mum suggested adding ginger to the cooking liquid to help deodorise it, so I did. I made a batch, and after allowing them to dry, I put half in the fridge to try frying the next day.
It turned out pretty decent, barring the first couple of pieces I let mum fry. She was convinced you had to wait until it stopped making popping noises like you do with fresh chicken, but since it'd already already been cooked boiling all it did was dry the meat out... I found frying it at a higher temp and only long enough for it to turn slightly golden was the best way to fry it. They taste rather plain without any dressing, but I'd made sauce to toss it in so it turned out alright.
I still feel like there's an element missing from the sauce - maybe I should include the rice wine vinegar (found it too overpowering on my first attempt and just abandoned it on later sauces). I'll try experimenting with the ratio of scallions, garlic and ginger; might try adding some other herbs in there too to see how it affects the taste. But overall, it's pretty finger-licking tasty so I'm pretty happy about it.
I just hope I don't get addicted to deep frying things...
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