Air Fried Chicken Wings エアーフライ手羽

This is another air frier episode. When we recently made the “teba gyoza 手羽餃子” variation with leftovers from the meatloaf my wife made, the skin browned unevenly. We wanted to try it again to see if we could make the browning of the skin on the wings more even. The package of chicken wings we got was labeled “cut pieces” and “contained both flats and drumettes”. We wrongly assumed the “flats” and “drumettes” were connected with only the wing tips cut off. But it turned out the flat and drumette pieces were cut apart. This makes stuffing the chicken wings unfeasible. In order to stuff the drumettes, it is necessary for the flats and drumettes to be connected because if they are cut apart both ends of the drumette are open and the stuffing will come out.  So, I just made unstuffed air fried chicken wings. I suppose I could have just air fried them but I decided to marinate them in a mixture of mayonnaise, ponzu shoyu and yuzu kosho which, somehow, came to my mind. I’ve used this combination, before as a dressing for “renkon” lotus root salad but this time, I used the concoction as a marinade. The marinade made the chicken meat very moist and tender. The surface layer of mayonnaise made the skin brown as if the wings were fried in oil (picture #1). The yuzu kosho added a slight spiciness and citrus flavor. As you can see both sections browned evenly. So we declare this an unqualified success, both because it browned evenly and tasted great!

Ingredients:

Chicken drumetts and flats (in our package, 4 each were included)

3 tbs mayonnaise

1 tbs ponzu soy sauce

1/2 tsp or more yuzu kosho

Directions:

In a Ziploc bag, add the chicken wings and the marinade ingredients. Massage well so that the marinade is well mixed and chicken parts are well coated. Remove the air as much as possible and close the bag. Let it marinade a few hours in the refrigerator.

I arranged the wings in the roasting pan that had a metal grate. I made sure the chicken parts were well spaced (picture #2). I air fried them at 450 F for 15 minutes. I then turned them over and cooked for another 5 minutes.

This was a great finger food. They went fast. We started with 2 pieces each but ended up eating everything.