Chicky Wings and Oven Tries, I Mean, Fries

Tonight I am making wings and potato and sweet potato fries. Except that, the grocery store was out of wings, so it's drumsticks, and we couldn't find sweet potatoes, so it's white sweet potatoes... I think. At least, I cut it open, and it was the same color as regular potatoes. In addition, I have never successfully made my own french fries, so tonight is yet another “recipe”, and yet another try. As I am writing, things are currently in the oven on like 20,000 baking sheets. Okay, 3, but we only have 3 baking sheets in the whole house, plus a pizza thingy, so it's basically 20,000. And I didn't really follow the recipe I looked up because as I have previously stated in my blog posts, I prefer to wing it so that if it comes out awesome, I can claim it as my own. Bam.

How I Tried:

Chicky Ingredients:

-drumsticks (it never occurred to me that chicken legs would only be half covered on skin. Lol biology.

-creole seasoning (I tried to make this from my own cupboard last week but since I was missing half of the ingredients, it was basically the same 'recipe' that I use to spice everything, so this time I just spent $5 at the grocery store [I HATE DOING THAT.] on a jar of creol seasoning.)

-4 tbsp. Vinegar

Separate:

-vinegar ¼ C

-baking soda ¼ C

-water1 ½ C

Directions ( I even timed it out for you so just follow the steps):

Recipes I Loosely Followed: vinegar wings and french fries 

Step 1. Find yourself an AWESOME cooking buddy in a sweet Halloween costume. This is mine:

Step 2. Mix together ¼ C vinegar, ¼ C baking soda, and 1 ½ C water in a bowl. Soak sponge in solution and clean bottom of oven from apple pie spillage from the other night.

Step 3. Pre-heat oven to 425.

Step 4. “Toss” drumsticks with creole seasoning, aka line them up on a cutting board or put them in a bowl and sprinkle seasoning on, as much as you think you can handle. I don't think that mine are going to be spicy enough for me, I can already feel it in my heart. I wonder if I can just sprinkle chili powder over them when they are done cooking. I'll figure something out.

Step 5. set drumsticks on cookie cooling rack, and place it over tin foil (avoid cleaning up), on a cookie sheet. Bake for 50 minutes. Set timer for 20 minutes.

Step 6. Take the next 20 minutes to slice potato/sweet potato as thin as you can. You will know they are thin enough when you start cursing at your wrist. And the knife. And the potatoes. And the cutting board.

Step 7. Toss in oil. Now, I mixed in salt and pepper before I laid the potato slices out on the foil over cookie sheet, but as SOON as I stuck my hands back in the bowl to toss them more, I could feel the exfoliation. And nobody needs that. So after that, I sprinkled s&p over fries once they were laid out on the sheet. Once the timer went off I threw (yes mom, THREWW!!!) the sheets of fries in the oven and set another timer for 30 minutes.

Step 8. Mix 4 tbsp vinegar with some salt (sea salt if you want to be fancy, Pink Himalayan rock salt if you are one of those people obsessed with Trader Joe's) and sprinkle it on the wings. Don't be afraid!!! You really have to saturate them to even start to get the flavor through, especially if you used seasoning as strong as creole. I don't want to assume that that's what you actually used as I'm not one to follow recipes much, obvi.

Reflections After the Point of No Return:

I'm thinking that it would have maybe been wise to cover the chickens in oil to make them crispy. Oh well, we'll see.

Fries Came Out: FAIL-A-SAURUS. How big of a fail were they you ask? Well, let me just show you.

“Silly Charlotte,” you say, “that looks great!” Wait for it....

Fail (n): Burnt on one side and not even crispy yet on the other side.

Final Fry analysis: It is easiest to simply settle for mashed potatoes (I use the word settle loosely as mashed potatoes are my favorite food), or buy frozen fries and settle for their awkward post-frozen taste. I didn't follow the recipe 100%...I cut the potatoes much thinner than ½ an inch because I thought that would help make them crispy. Turns out, I'm too good at guessing this kind of stuff.

(Fries on the left are traditional taters, on the right is white sweet potato, which besides the burnt part, was actually pretty tasty, and I only eat sweet potatoes for David and his family. This is all I got out of two whole potatoes. They took up two full cookie sheets to bake on. Say it with me now, FAIL!)

Chicken Came Out: OMG I didn't totally screw it upppp!!!!!! Angels are ascending from heaven upon my chicky drumsticks AS WE SPEAK!

Holy crap, it's even crispy without the oil!! I. AM. A. PAULA. DEAN. ROCKSTAR. (This isn't her recipe, I just like her a lot...and butter.) And it tastes PERFECT! (It is spicy enough, definitely.) This SO made up for the fail fries.

So the moral of the story here is to never try to make french fries unless you have a deep frier. Just go to mc donalds or In-n-Out (if you should be so lucky) and pick some up before dinner and put them on a tray in the oven so people think you made them. The other moral of the story is that I can do no wrong with chicken (and I would expect that to be true for most fake chefs like myself.) So carry on my sassy cookers!

See you next time.

CharChar