Simmered chicken wings and daikon大根手羽煮物

We like chicken wings. Short of grilling them over hot charcoal Yakitori style, our most common way of cooking wings is to coat them with a flour and curry powder mixture and bake them at a  high temperature (450F in convection mode). They come out almost as if they had been deep fried. I bought the wings last weekend and placed them in a Ziploc bag with sake. I did not have a chance to cook them during the week so I wasn’t sure they would still be good when I turned my attention to them the next weekend. Because they were soaked in sake, they survived. Instead of our usual way of cooking them, I decided to make something different and came up with this dish, especially since I had some good daikon which also needed some attention. This is a rather common method of cooking and the "collagen" from the wings makes the simmered dish very unctuous. The daikon absorbed all the goodness of the wings.



Ingredients:
Chicken wings,  6, drummets and wings separated (wing tips removed and discarded or use it to make broth) (#1)
Daikon, Skin peeled and cut into 1 inch thick (#1).

I first added vegetable oil (2 tbs) in a frying pan, browned the chicken wings (turning once few minutes each). Once the wings were browned, I moved the wings to make room for the daikon and browned it next (few minutes for each sides until the edges browned). I added some chicken broth (my usual Swanson) to just cover the wings and daikon (about 300ml, #2).



I put on the lid and simmered it for 30 minutes. I then added soy sauce (2tbs), mirin (1tbs) and sake (1tbs) and sugar (2 tsp) and put the lid back on and simmered for another 30 minutes (#3). I then removed the lid and turned up the flame and let it reduce by half shaking occasionally (10-15 minutes). I tasted it and added a bit more soy sauce. I served one wing and drumett and two wedges of daikon  as a drinking snack (#4).

My wife asked if we needed a fork and knife. I said "chopsticks would do. The meat will just come off the bone like butter." I was right. The daikon is very soft and absorbed all the flavor and was easy to cut with chopsticks. Removing the bones from the wings was equally as easy with chopsticks (need moderate - not "jedai"-chopstick skills). My wife was impressed with this dish. We quickly switched to sake.

P.S After refrigerating, I removed all congealed fat from the surface. The broth was totally congealed because of the collagen from the wings. It heats up well by microwaving.