This article originally appeared on MUNCHIES in February 2016.With Valentine's Day soon upon us, we asked ourselves: How can we show our loved ones how much we care without resorting to palm oil-riddled cheapo chocolate and a limp bunch of roses?The answer: chicken wings. Not only are they the world's greatest food to eat in between yelling at a sports bar television, they also wordlessly communicate the depth of our feelings about our significant (and even not-so-significant) others. In other words, wings say it all.
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With that in mind, we spoke to some of the world's greatest experts on chicken wings about how and why you should eat them, and why they are one of the greatest inventions on Earth. Are you a Frank's-RedHot-and-butter kind of person? Should you brine the wings, boil them before frying, or just roast them all? And what's up with crudités—are celery and carrots just an excuse to wipe your greasy, hot sauce-lubed fingers onto something? We asked, and the experts answered. Herewith, the MUNCHIES Guide to Chicken Wings.Our expert panel: Michael Briones, chef-owner of Suzume in Brooklyn Gregg Brickman, corporate executive chef of Hooters Mark Dempsey, vice president of Anchor Bar, home of the original Buffalo wing
On Cooking Wings:
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"We're also testing smoked wings. We marinating them for 12 hours, [followed by] a 30-minute smoke process. We cool them and then reheat them up for service in the oven, so these ones never go inside a fryer at all. They're actually really good. They're super-crispy, and [they're] about half the calories of the fried ones."Mark Dempsey: "The original wing, when we invented it back in 1964, was deep-fried. And we continue to deep-fry our wings to this day, the exact same way. We fry 'em up the same way: about 15 to 18 minutes in a 375-degree [Fahrenheit] fryer to get 'em nice and crispy. Crispy is the key, right?"Boiling tends to rubberize the skin and the entire chicken meat, so you want to stay away from boiling. Another popular way to cook wings, although we don't cook our wings this way, is to barbecue them. Barbecuing cuts down on the fat. It doesn't have as much flavor, but it does cut down on the fat. It's nice when you slap some barbecue sauce on there, get the caramelization going with the sugars in the barbecue sauce on the skin. It makes for a pretty tasty wing, but we still love frying them."
On Wing Sauce:
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Mark Dempsey: "Our original sauce was hot sauce and melted butter. The melted butter could kind of control the amount of heat that was there. But we've perfected our sauce over the years, adding garlic and vinegar, salt and pepper, and some different seasonings. But the true Buffalo wing is a hot wing. The spice level is your own—we make about ten different types of Anchor Bar chicken wing sauce.We've got Hot, Mild, Extra Mild, Medium—and the Medium is kind of the original sauce. That's the heat level that was served back in 1964. The Medium will give you a nice, solid Buffalo flavor—some heat to it, but not too much. It just has an awesome flavor to it."
Blue Cheese vs. Ranch:
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