Southern Style Chicken Wings Stove-top Deep Fried

I love chicken wings. And I am especially fond of southern style breaded or battered wings. The pleasing crunchiness of the wings seals it for me.

While I have made wings at home, I have always done so either in the oven or using the tasty technique of preparing them in both a slow cooker and the oven that I have blogged about before.

Today I am going to take a look at making deep fired southern wings and doing it on the stove top, so no deep fryer is required! I am also going to share a trick in preparing them I picked up along the way.

To make these you need wings that have been split, so either buy them already split (far easier) or do it yourself (slightly less expensive). I did multiple batches but I will give measurements for doing a single batch of around 10-15 wings, so adjust accordingly as you go and based on the number of wings you are doing.

Nicely coated with batter

For the batter you will need the following ingredients:

1 1/2 cups self-raising cake and pastry flour (Brodie makes one, but any brand works of course)
1 tablespoon cayenne powder
1 tablespoon salt (or to taste)
2 teaspoons dry mustard powder (such as those made by Keen's or Coleman's)
1 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
1 teaspoon garlic powder

While traditionally many recipes call for using standard flour, I found that the trick of using self-raising flour made the batter perfect both in its texture and golden appearance.

Combine all of these ingredients thoroughly in a large mixing bowl.

Pour a cup of milk into a separate bowl.

Take each wing, dip in and coat fully with the milk and then dredge in the batter mixture until coated on all sides, gently tapping off any excess.

Deep frying stove top style!

Meanwhile pour around two inches of vegetable oil (it has to be vegetable oil) into a large and deep saucepan. Set the burner to around the 7 mark and heat the oil until it has reached a frying temperature (this is around 350-370 degrees if you have the right kind of thermometer or visually when it begins to bubble slightly).

If you have a deep fryer you can, of course, use it, but this part of this post is aimed at those who do not or who want to keep it in the cupboard.

When the oil is good and hot add the wings one at a time slowly both to prevent any painful splashing and to prevent the oil from cooling too much as you add them.

Add until there are enough that the saucepan is full but don't overfill. You don't want the wings clumped together or touching too much or the batter won't cook properly.

Cook the wings for 8-10 minutes turning them in the oil a couple of times during the frying.

They should at this point come out a lovely golden brown with a full batter coating.

Let sit a couple moments on a platter covered with some paper towel (to absorb any excess oil) and season with some more salt and pepper if desired.

Serve with your favorite wing or BBQ sauce of choice. I mixed some Buffalo style wing sauce with some habanero hot sauce as a fiery suicide style dipping sauce but you can use whatever you want of course from plum, to honey-garlic, to Frank's, etc.

If you want to do a wing night platter serve with some carrot and celery slices, your dipping sauces and some blue cheese dressing on the side as well.

Goes perfect with ice cold beer and good company. Enjoy!

See also: Slow Cooker Chicken Wings

See also: Going for Toronto's best chicken wings with Irish Socialist leader Joe Higgins