HK-Style Honey Chicken Wings

Name: HK-Style Honey Chicken Wings
Prep time: 120 min
Cook time: 20 min
Ingredients: 12 Chicken Wings; 3 tsp Light Soy Sauce; 2 tsp Cornstarch/Potato Starch; 2 tsp Sugar; 1 Tbsp Oyster Sauce; 2 tsp Shaoxing Wine; 3 cloves Minced Garlic; 2 tbsp Honey

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HK people sure love their chicken wings. I actually think Chicken is the most popular source of protein here in Hong Kong. There goes a saying, “There are many ways a Cantonese can make chicken”. Be it fried, poached, steamed, skinned, and stuffed, we do it all. However, when you have so many chicken recipes, some inevitably have to be removed from the restaurant menu, and this is one of those recipes. This HK-Style Honey Chicken Wing recipe is a household recipe of chicken wings that is hard to find outside of family tables, but it is very delicious and easy to make. You can make this recipe in either a pan or an oven.

This recipe utilizes the basic marination of meats in Cantonese, which involves three things:

Light Soy Sauce
Cornstarch/Potato Starch
Sugar

These 3 ingredients makes the base of almost all the marinades here, just like salt, pepper, and garlic powder in Western cooking. From here, we can start to build flavour. My go-tos are ShaoXing Wine, Oyster Sauce, and Garlic. But you can use whatever you like; in fact, it is common practice to add herbs such as Thyme and Rosemary after the base marinade, so you really can experiment and see what works for you.

Hong Kong People and Their Obsession with Freshness

Hong Kong People and the Cantonese People in general are very obsessed with freshness. Therefore, we try to cook with the freshest ingredients we have (Hence the wet market 5 minutes away from my house, wet markets are very common and usually have live fish and chicken for sale). However, most people can’t splurge on fresh chicken every day, those are expensive! So, there are a couple of ways we try to make the ingredients taste cleaner (i.e. without the weird fridge taste).

What are the ways to make food taste better?

You might have heard something called blanching, which is the act of heating meat in cold water to bring out the impurities present in the bones and meat. The scum that comes out carries out the off flavours that are present in the animal itself, and the taste from the fridge too.

However, when we want to cook something, and we want it to brown, blanching becomes less feasible as it makes the meat wet and hard to work with. This is where we flash fry with oil. The oil also helps release the bad taste from the meat and develops flavour. This is the same process as searing meat before stewing, but quicker and with more oil.

Today, we will not be using either of them. But instead, we will rely on the power of osmosis to draw out the bad flavours from meat. What this basically means is to soak the meat in salted water to draw out the blood and impurities from the meat. When you do this, you will find the water turns into a pale red colour. This is the residual blood and haemoglobin that is present in the bones and tissues, and removing them can make the meat have a cleaner taste, especially when you use frozen meat. After that, we can pat the meat dry and start marinating and cooking.

Tips and Tricks

Because the soy sauce and sugar contain sugar and proteins that caramelise very quickly, I would suggest cooking this on a low to medium heat to prevent it from burning.
The HK way of telling if Chicken wings are cooked is to poke them with chopsticks; if the juices run clear, the chicken is ready.
You can make this recipe with Chicken Thighs and Drumlets, as they need a longer cooking time, which is required to carmelize the sugars and develop flavour

How to make HK-Style Honey Chicken Wings

First, soak your chicken wings in lightly salted water for 15 minutes. If your wings are frozen, you can defrost them at the same time.

Pat dry your chicken wings, marinate with soy sauce, cornstarch, sugar, oyster sauce, minced garlic, and Shaoxing wine. Massage the marinade into the chicken; the cornstarch will thicken the marinade and help it stick and absorb.

Pour in some oil to seal in the flavours when the marinade is absorbed into the meat. Marinate for 2 hours of overnight.

Preheat a frying pan or an oven to 180°C (350°F).

If using a frying pan

Add the chicken wings skin side down and sear on a low to medium heat until beautifully golden brown. Keep flipping continuously, as this marinade is very easy to burn.

Check for doneness with a chopstick, the chicken is cooked when the juices run clear.

Add 2 tablespoons of honey and quickly toss to coat the wings.

If using an oven

Cook the chicken wings in the oven for 15 to 20 minutes, brush the honey on the chicken wings and cook for another 5 minutes or until beautifully golden and caramelised.

Plate the chicken wings, pour over any residual juices and serve. Enjoy!

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