Ever found yourself with a mixer full of cheesecake batter—but no springform pan to bake it in? Bought all the ingredients to make your mom's brisket—but every dish you have is too small? Welcome to Everything You Need, where the goal is to prevent these problems from ever occurring again. Here's the third installment in a three-part series of how to prepare for Super Bowl cooking, eating, and celebrating.
There are so many reasons chicken wings are the perfect Super Bowl food. Their small size, which makes them so easy to mindlessly eat while your eyes are on the TV. Their spiciness, a flavor that lends itself well to cold and dreary February weather. And, of course, their addictive deliciousness, which makes chicken wings a guaranteed crowd-pleaser.
This year, instead of turning your kitchen into a messy deep-frying zone, keep it easy by making a big batch of crispy five-spice baked wings and serving them with chile mayonnaise (or tossing them in Buffalo sauce or a sweet ginger-soy glaze). Below is everything you need to make the wings and sauces.
Chicken Wings
First things first: you'll need to buy five pounds of chicken to yield about 60 wings, a sizable amount for a standard Super Bowl party. (You should aim to make about 5-6 wings per person.) The tips of the wings should be removed, and the flats and drumettes separated.
BUY IT: Chicken Wings Uncooked Value Pack, $2.49 per pound at Peapod by Stop & Shop
Wire Racks
Wire racks are key to making sure the wings come out golden brown and crispy. Make you sure have at least two racks—you'll need to spread the wings out in a single layer with a bit of space between them to make sure they don't steam.
BUY IT: Kitchenatics Professional Grade Stainless Steel Cooling and Roasting Wire Rack, $19 on Amazon
Baking Sheets
And of course you'll need baking sheets to hold the wire racks. (No one wants chicken juices dripping onto the bottom of their oven.) Two to three half-sheet pans should be enough—the Nordic Ware ones fit the above wire racks.
BUY IT: Nordic Ware Natural Aluminum Commercial Baker's Half Sheet, $9.97 on Amazon
Vegetable Oil
You may not be frying your wings, but you'll need a few tablespoons of vegetable oil to get the chicken golden-brown and crispy.
BUY IT: Wesson Vegetable Oil, $3.79 on Amazon Fresh
Frank's Hot Sauce
The Buffalo sauce for this recipe calls for unsalted butter, cayenne pepper, ground black pepper, kosher salt, and most importantly, hot sauce. You can choose any hot pepper sauce, but we like Frank's.
BUY IT: Frank's RedHot Original Cayenne Pepper Sauce, $7.89 for three 5-ounce bottles on Amazon
Honey
If you're making some of wings with the recipe's optional sweet ginger-soy glaze, you'll also need garlic cloves, raw ginger, honey, and soy sauce (more on that below). Honey is what makes or breaks the glaze, so don't settle on those plastic bears. A citrusy blend like orange blossom will bring out the flavors of the chicken and mix well with the soy sauce.
BUY IT: Sandt's Unfiltered Raw Orange Blossom Honey, $21 for two pounds on Amazon
Soy Sauce
We're not against supermarket brand soy sauce, but once Epi's food director Rhoda Boone turned us on to Kishibori Shoyu, an artisan soy sauce brewed with roasted wheat and imported from Japan's Shodoshima Island, we haven't looked back. Use it to glaze the wings and your guests just might take one bite and forget about the game. (Well, maybe.)
BUY IT: Kishibori Shoyu Premium Imported Soy, 12.2 fl oz, $22.95 on Amazon
