The best way to braai chicken wings

Reprinted with permission of Pan Macmillan and Jan Braai – Fireworks.

Chicken wings are a great starter. A chicken wing has a lot of skin and you want that skin to be evenly crisp without getting burnt. The bigger the surface area of skin that you expose to the coals, the easier to achieve this goal.

Regarding the sauce, chicken wings taste best in a sweet and sticky sauce – the problem is that marinating them in a sweet and sticky sauce is unfortunately contradictory to getting the skin crisp. If you marinate the wings in a thick sauce you will have difficulty braaing the skin crisp and if you do manage, the sugar in the marinade will blacken before you manage to crisp the skin. So the trick is to not marinate them before you’ve braaied them crisp.

This is how you do it:
What you need
1 kg–1.5 kg chicken wings (12–18
chicken wings)
½ cup honey or golden syrup
½ cup tomato sauce
1 tot apple juice
½ tot soy sauce
½ tot paprika

What to do
Make the sweet and sticky sauce: Mix all the ingredients (apart from the chicken) together in a bowl.

Prepare the wings: If you have time and want to make the effort, skewer them; if you are lazy, just take hold of each wing at both ends and pull them open a bit.
Braai the wings for 20 minutes over medium-to-hot coals until they become crisp and are almost ready.

Don’t marinate them first, just braai them.
Remove the wings from the fire, put them in a bowl and pour the sauce over them.

Toss the wings around with a spoon or braai tongs, making sure all of them are coated with sauce.

Then it’s back to the braai for another 5 minutes until the sauce is glazed and you get a nice sizzle going on the wings.

Remove from the braai and serve.

And . . .
This meal also lends itself to a bit of extra bite so if you’d like to, add a few chopped chillies or about half a tot of chilli powder when making the sauce.
Buffalo chicken wings are made by deep-frying chicken wings in oil, a meal infinitely inferior to the feast you will prepare with this recipe.
If you don’t like a sweet and sticky sauce, use peri-peri sauce or teriyaki sauce.