Sticky vietnamese fish sauce chicken wings (baked) recipe
A healthy version of the famous Pok Pok wings, this spicy, sticky Vietnamese fish sauce chicken wings (CÁNH GÀ CHIÊN NƯỚC MẮM) has big punchy flavors. Unlike the original recipe, it is baked but still super tangy and delicious!
Servings: 10 people
Equipment
- baking tray
Ingredients
- 3.3- 4.4 lb chicken wings (1.5-2 kg)
- For the vietnamese marinade
- ½ Cup fish sauce
- ½ Cup light soya sauce
- ½ Cup Sugar ideally palm sugar, if not white or light brown works too
- 2 thumbs ginger peeled and minced
- 7 cloves garlic peeled and minced
- 2 citrus fruits, juice and zest preferably lime or, if not, lemon or rice vinegar
- 1 tablespoon sambal chilli if out, use sriracha or chilli padi, deseeded and finely sliced- quantity depends on your heat tolerance- i used 6!
- coriander or spring onions to garnish
Instructions
- Mix all the marinade ingredients together and pour over the chicken. If you're organised enough to marinade beforehand, place chicken and marinade in a ziplock bag (and refrigerate!) as it makes it easier for the sauce to coat the chicken evenly (as compared to using a bowl or container). Marinating in advance always helps the flavour to permeate the meat better, but the sauce is boldly flavoured enough that mixing everything just before baking works too, in a pinch.Note: don't marinade for more than 5 hours or the chicken will be salty!
- 15 minutes before baking, take the chicken wings out of the fridge, give them a toss and place them on a baking tray left on the counter as you wait for your oven to preheat (bringing the meat to room temperature helps the meat cook more evenly) Make sure the chicken wings aren't too close together.
- Once the oven reaches temperature, pop the tray in. I bake my wings at 400F/ 200C for 30 minutes. To check if the wings are done, the juices should run clear and the cooked chicken wing should be at a temperature of 165F/ 74C at the thickest part.Hard working folks can use the marinate to baste the wings a few times while baking. (Basting helps build up the flavour as well as prevents the wings from drying out.) In my kitchen, I think of baking as a hands off process (ie time for me to netflix and chill :P) so I prefer to boil the marinade down to a sticky glaze which I brush over the chicken wings when they come out of the oven. (Remember that the raw chicken has been sitting in the marinade so the marinade needs to be properly cooked to kill all that bacteria!)
- Garnish with fresh herbs: ideally, coriander; if not spring onions)
Notes
These asian fish sauce wings can also be fried- you will need some kind of starch for the better to get the crisp skin (e.g. corn starch, potato starch, tapioca flour, or a mix of the 3)