Serrano Brined Naturally Caramelized No Sauce Bacon Basted Cherry Wood Smoked Wings!!
Yep.. the title is a mouthful... but so are these wings!!!
For me nothing beats the taste of having a slight caramelization sweetness of bite through skin, combined with spicy hot goodness infused from a Serrano pepper brine, with the soft tones of cherry wood smoke! :thumb: Sauce? Who needs a sauce when the wings are super moist, zappy with flavor, beautiful to look at and have been passively basted the whole time from bacon wrapped ABT's above!
First we start with the Serrano pepper brine. If you look close you can see the sliced serranos and seeds floating in the brine. The brine carries the flavors of spicy serrano and my spiced flavor profile deep into the meat. Making the chicken moist with chin dribbling juice, which also bring about that wonderful eye appealing tight smoked skin.
Next.. Set the Weber up for an indirect cook. Take the wings out of the brine, pat dry, then lay them on the grate.
What are those foil wrapped bricks doing there? That is an essential part of this wing process as you will see below!
As you will see in this photo, on goes a second grate with a good amount of ABT's placed directly above the chicken.
Then put cherry wood chips on the coals, and set the timer for 15 minutes. After 15, come back and throw more cherry wood chips on the coals. During the cook, the kettle is close to 400 degrees. As the ABT's cook, the bacon fat drips onto wings below, basting them in another level of flavor of beautiful bacony goodness!
The combination of the indirect high heat, the brine plumped wings, and the bacon fat dripping onto the wings helps to get the chicken skin very crispy. In about 40 minutes, you open the Weber and are greeted with this beautiful site. A top layer of cherry smoked ABT's, and you can see the wings below.
Remove the ABT's and the top grate. Now you are greeted by these glistening smoked beauties.
Look close you can still see some of the bacon drops on the skin that are in the process of being absorbed. Bonus bombs of flavor!
Wait though.. we are not done yet! Now take those wings and move them over the coals directly, bone side down for a couple of minutes.
Right as they begin to char, flip them over.. still on direct heat. Loooooking Gooooood!
They should look something like this now. As tempting as it may be to grab one at this point..
you still have to wait just a a little more as the top side renders the skin to a nice thin crisp.
NOW you can gently gather them up and take em off the heat, lightly cover with foil, and let rest 10 minutes. The skin is very delicate at this point, and rendered to an extremely thin layer. The smell should be intoxicating. Between the serrano brine, high heat cook, the cherry wood smoke, the bacon basting, and the direct finish you will have some of the best looking and tasting wings around! Your first bite will introduce your taste buds to "Wing Nirvana!" Have some napkins ready, as they will be juuuuuuiiiiiiiiicccccccccy!
Sauce?? As I said up top... we don't need no stinking sauce! :thumb:
Thanks for reading! Hope you enjoyed looking! :bow:
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EDIT:
Almost forgot!
In addition you have the ABT's to eat too!!!