Sriracha Honey Chicken Wings - Baked, Spicy and Hot

Step-by-step recipe

1. To make chicken wings with sriracha and honey, you can bake or fry them in any way available to you. At home the most convenient method is baking in the oven. Buy a pack of chicken wings for baking – these usually come without the thin wing tip. All the dry spices needed for marinating the chicken and making the sauce are easy to find. Buy natural honey, runny or crystallised – it makes no difference. Sriracha sauce is sold in supermarkets in small bottles; pour out as much as you need. The rest keeps in the fridge for a long time.
   
2. The first and important step is dry-marinating the chicken wings in spices. Wash the wings and remove everything you don't need: feathers, visible lumps of fat and the thin wing tip, if there is one. Pat the meat dry with paper towels. It is also worth cutting each wing into two pieces – they will be easier to cook and to eat. Put the wings into a deep bowl and add the spices. For 1 kg of wings we use 1 tbsp of sweet smoked paprika, 1 tsp each of hot pepper flakes, dried granulated garlic and fine salt, and 0.5 tsp of ground black pepper. Sprinkle the chicken wings with the spices and mix very thoroughly so that the spices are evenly distributed. Cover the bowl with cling film and put it in the fridge for at least 1-2 hours, or better still for longer.
   
3. Preheat the oven to 180 °C and let it heat up well. For baking wings I try to use a fairly large ceramic or glass dish, because a metal one overcooks the bottom of the food more, and it is harder to clean afterwards. Take the bowl of wings out of the fridge, add 1 tbsp of vegetable oil and mix everything. Arrange the wing pieces in the baking dish in a single layer. Put the dish in the oven.
   
4. Under these conditions we usually bake chicken wings for 45 mins to 1 hour, stirring them with a spatula from time to time – exactly the way you stir potatoes while frying them. It is important that the wings cook through and turn nicely golden brown. It may even be worth overbaking them slightly to dry them out a little. But make sure they don't start to burn. For a crispier crust, the oven temperature is often raised to 250 °C at the final stage of baking, for just 5-10 mins.
   
5. While the chicken wings are baking, make the sriracha honey sauce – it is not difficult. Take a small saucepan with a handle. Pour in 50-70 ml of ready-made sriracha sauce, 2 tbsp of honey, 2 tbsp of light soy sauce and 1 tbsp of rice vinegar (it can be replaced with lemon juice). Peel 1-2 cloves of garlic and chop them finely with a knife. Add the garlic to the sauce and salt it just a little – only a little, since soy sauce is quite salty. For full immersion in the flavour, you can also finely chop a fresh chili pod – why not. Bring the sauce to a boil and simmer over low heat for 2 mins. Drop 2 tbsp of real butter into the hot sauce and whisk the sauce with a fork. After that it will thicken slightly.
   
6. Take the baked wings out of the oven and set the dish on a cutting board – it is very hot. Using a silicone brush, generously coat the chicken wings with the sriracha honey sauce, turn them over and coat the other side. Serve the remaining sauce in a separate sauce boat alongside the wings. There is no need to put them back in the oven – just brush them with the sauce, that is enough.
   
7. Put a portion of chicken wings in the Thai sweet and hot sauce on a plate and set the sauce boat with the rest of the sauce next to it. Add some fresh herbs and serve while the wings are hot. Dip the wings in the sauce and eat. If you decide to deep-fry the wings instead of baking them, it is worth placing them for a while on a plate lined with a paper towel to get rid of the excess fat. Grilled wings have a special smoky flavour – I recommend them.
   
8. Although it is believed that dishes like this can be kept in the fridge for several days and reheated, to my mind it is better to make them fresh. The sauce, though, can be made in advance and then warmed up.