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Why do all these Buffalo wing places stink now?

post #1 of 3
7/7/11 at 8:14pm
Thread Starter 

20 years ago, I had a few places I could go and get wings just like I make at home i.e. fresh chicken, peanut oil and Red Hot with butter or margarine. 

 

I've noticed this very irritating trend among "wing" places in the last 15 years.  By that I mean places that only serve take-out wings.  They all seem to par-fry or steam their wings, refrigerate, and then finish in the fryer when ordered.  Hence you end up with a dry hunk with black bones and an off taste.  Some of them seem to think cornstarch helps cover this up.  

 

So what is the point of buying fresh chicken if you're just gonna ruin it?  Why not buy frozen?  It seems illogical.  Or is that so they can say on their menus that their chicken is delivered fresh daily?

 

 

 

 

 

 

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post #2 of 3
7/7/11 at 10:05pm

It's a matter of speed and production capacity. You either need a faster cooking wing, or a lot of fryer capacity.

 

Same deal, but worse with fried chicken.

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post #3 of 3
7/7/11 at 10:35pm

A lot of it has to do with oil. Frying oil 10-20 gallons at a time can be expensive. Using fresh, uncooked wings will create grease which burns in the oil and reduced the service life of the oil.  When you're a place that serves more wings than anything, it becomes a very attractive idea to use precooked wings. Pre-cooking wings does not speed the process.  Once fully refrigerated, it takes at least as long to go from ~40 to 160 as before.  Cooked meat can take longer to heat completely than raw meat. This is particularly true with stewed meat where the connective tissues have had time to fully break down into gelatin. Your meat is now full of a substance that is solid at room temperature, and has a higher specific heat than meat.

 

All of the corporate restaurants i've worked for were using soybean oil.  God even though the stuff has an amazingly high smoke point, the stuff smells awful!  I've been around the stuff long enough to identify it as the frying liquid when eating food at certain restaurant, as well as some brands of potato chips.  I guess the point im making is, the wings are definitely dry because of the pre-cooking. The off flavor comes from the oil. Usually low quality, or overused.


Edited by pcieluck - 7/7/11 at 10:45pm
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