Today's Case

Connecticut Chinese Chicken Wings Subject: Old style Chinese chicken wings From: Kelly Date: 3/16/2023, 1:18 PM To: Phaedrus On 3/16/2023 11:56 AM, Kelly wrote: Hi Phaedrus, I just saw your post on this from Brett(5-18-2020). I could have written that request he made word for word. I’ve been trying to find these chicken wings since the restaurant Hong Kong closed. I went to most of the restaurants he mentioned, though the Hu Ke Lau was a branch located in Rocky Hill, CT not the original chicopee one. If it helps at all, the location/address for Hong Kong Restaurant is below. They closed and a storage place moved in. To my knowledge the second Hong Kong that is still open wasn’t related to the first. Sweet lord I wish you could have found that recipe. Thanks for your efforts. Kelly Hello Kelly, Your email prompted me to do another search today, but I still had no success. I don't see much of any way to find this without a unique name for wings cooked this way (even a Chinese name might help.) or a unique list of ingredients used to make them. Sorry. Phaed Subject: Old style Chinese chicken wings From: Kelly Date: 3/16/2023, 2:28 PM To: Phaedrus Thanks for the reply Phaed, my brother and I have gone over this for literally decades. Forgive the extremely long email but if this helps at all, i’ll be thorough.  The only ingredients I know for sure are soy sauce and msg. Hong Kong never did anything without msg. And I suspect with high certainty that sesame oil was an important ingredient, whether in the marinade or somehow in the cooking. My searches based on how they looked all come up with “soy sauce chicken wings” recipes, which look right but seem a little too sticky. Brett was right, they were only very slightly sticky to the touch. There was also a now closed restaurant called Kowloon’s in Southington, CT. that had Hong Kong menus in their restaurant (and similar wings) so the owner must have been related or who knows what. That made me look up Kowloon's and I came up with the following recipe which is pretty close to where I landed with my own efforts: Kowloon's Chinese Chicken Wings In my own experiments, i tried 1 cup of soy, 1 cup water, quarter cup sesame oil and tsp of msg. Its close but not quite there, also close to the Kowloon recipe above (they dont use sesame oil). Problem is when you deep fry it, it wants to burn quickly from the sugars and soy, so the results were off. My air fried versions were closer. That said I’ve read in my own searching that gin was a secret to old school Chinese chicken wings, not sure if it’s true, but it’s an avenue I havent gone hard down. The other major problem is time. Nobody cooks like they used to back when we got these. It would have been a heavy oil, maybe peanut they were fried in, that was also used for everything else they fried which would have added more flavor, plus msg and wherever else to the taste, simply from the dirty delicious oil. You cant replicate that. Maybe Brett had some luck with the politician or old owner of Hu Ke Lau. How wonderful that would be. From pics of Hu Ke Laus (MA location) pupu platter, you can see the wings under their beef teriyaki sticks and the wings looked spot on. Thanks again for looking, Kelly Hi Kelly, It's been almost three years since I had any correspondence with Brett, so I just sent him an email asking if he had any success in finding the recipe. Maybe I'll hear back from him. Phaed On Mar 16, 2023, at 5:36 PM, Phaedrus wrote: Brett, Did you ever have any success finding this recipe? Were you able to contact William Tong? I've had another request for this recipe, so if you were able to get it, please send it to me. Phaed Subject: New England Old School Cantonese chicken wings From: Brett Date: 3/16/2023, 7:55 PM To: Phaedrus I reached out to Tong. His spokesperson responded with this: >>>Yes! It’s not an exact science. Sorry for the delay. See the rough guidelines below: >>>In a big bowl throw in: dark soy sauce, sesame oil, garlic, salt and pepper, white wine and mix. NO MEASUREMENTS eyeball it! Throw in your chicken and best if grilled but great baked too! Honestly,  I don’t think this is correct. There were never any scorch marks that would indicate carmelization you would see if grilling or baking. __ Brett ----------------------------------------------------------- Thanks Phaed! I disagree with Brett slightly, baking wouldn't get you scorch marks and my own efforts showed air frying got me closer than actual frying. But, I still agree they were fried. Mostly likely double fried like a lot of Chinese restaurants do to get them done quickly and crispy. Chinese Restaurant Fried Chicken Wings What they sent is in line with my own attempts, so I think that’s pretty correct, only add in the MSG and some dirty cooking oil. Also, I hadn’t used dark soy before either, only a half soy/water mix because it would soak overnight. What they sent would be a much faster marinade, which makes sense if you have a quick turnover time. I’ll give this a shot and let you know. Again, many thanks! Kelly