Crispy Sichuan Pepper Chicken Wings Recipe
by Nicola Lando
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40 minutes prep time
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5 minutes cook time
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Easy
Potato flour is the quick and easy path to 'crisp' in Japanese cooking. Whether deep frying crispy tofu to make Japanese agedashi tofu (delicious) or coat chicken wings, I always rely on on a quick and simple coating of potato flour. There's no need to mix a batter, and the potato flour coating puffs up beautifully and stays crisp for a long time.
These wings are marinated in a mixture of sake, mirin, ginger and garlic before cooking. Then they are tossed in a potato flour mixed with Sichuan pepper for a hint of spice, before deep frying.
A Thermapen thermometer is one of the best tools for making wings (and pretty much any other cooking task). Getting the frying temperature spot on will ensure the wings cook through whilst keeping a perfect golden colour and crispy crust. And secondly, by checking the temperature of the cooked wings, you'll be 100% confident that every piece of chicken is perfectly cooked.
The wings Serves: 2
- 6 large chicken wings, cut into 12 pieces (wing tips removed) (around 700g in total)
- Marinade
- 15g ginger
- 15g garlic
- 1tsp salt
- 1 tsp sugar
- 1 tsp mirin
- 2 tsp sake
- 2 tsp sesame oil
To fry
- 75g potato flour
- 1-2 tbsp Sichuan peppercorns
- 1 litre vegetable oil
Equipment
- Cooking thermometer (we love Thermapen)
Method
- Mix together the marinade ingredients and toss with the wings. Leave to marinate for 30 minutes (or even a few hours)
- Roughly grind the Sichuan peppercorns and toss together with potato flour in a large bowl. Add the wings and use your hands to coat well.
- Heat the oil to 160 C. Gently lower in the wings. You may need to fry them in two batches depending on the size of your pan. Fry for 5 minutes or until golden brown and the temperature at the centres of the wings read at least 80C. Using a slotted spoon, lift out onto paper towels to drain and cool for a few minutes. Serve.
About the author
Nicola Lando is the co-founder and CEO of Sous Chef, where she has spent more than a decade sourcing, tasting and selecting specialist ingredients, cookware and tableware from producers around the world.
She trained at Leiths and later completed a stage at a Michelin-starred London restaurant, experiences that helped shape Sous Chef’s original mission: to give home cooks access to the same exceptional ingredients used by professional chefs.
Today, Nicola leads much of Sous Chef’s product sourcing and ingredient selection, working directly with producers and travelling internationally to food fairs, farms, mills and manufacturers. She tastes thousands of products each year and has built deep expertise across storecupboard ingredients, olive oil, condiments, spices, preserved foods and specialist cooking ingredients.
She holds an olive oil sommelier certification from ESAO in Spain, Imperial Executive Education’s Certificate in Nutrition for Health: Evidence-Based Tools and Strategies certificate; as well as studying Food Safety and Control at University of Greenwich.
Nicola also writes recipes and ingredient guides for Sous Chef, combining practical cooking experience with first-hand knowledge from producers, suppliers and specialist food makers. Her work focuses on helping cooks understand how to choose better ingredients, use them well, and get more flavour from their cooking.
