Recipe | Chicken Wings with Lee Kum Kee Chili Garlic Sauce

Like what I said last time, I am hoping to cook as much recipes printed on the Lee Kum Kee booklet given to us at the Cooking with the Masters event. I already posted one, and I was hoping to cook the Pork Binagoongan this week, but I wasn't able to buy the Lee Kum Kee Fine Shrimp Paste, so I decided to cook a different dish instead.

This recipe is created by Chef Ernest Reynoso-Gala, son of another culinary icon Sylvia Reynoso-Gala. This recipe, aside from being printed as part of the collection of Lee Kum Kee dishes created by celebrity chefs for the 123rd anniversary of Lee Kum Kee, was also featured in the October 2011 issue of Appetite Magazine.


Chicken Wings with Lee Kum Kee Chili Garlic Sauce
{Serves 5 - 6}
[Printable Version]

Ingredients:

• 1 kilo chicken wings, each cut into two
  
• 1/3 cup cooking oil
  
• 1 tablespoon Lee Kum Kee chili garlic sauce
  
• 1 tablespoon ginger, finely chopped
  
• 1/2 cup spring onions, chopped
  
• 2 tablespoons Lee Kum Kee oyster sauce
  
• 1 tablespoon Lee Kum Kee premium soy sauce
  
• 1 tablespoon sugar
  
• 2 cups water
  
• For thickening: 2 tablespoons tapioca starch, mixed with 1/4 cup water and 1 teaspoon Lee Kum Kee sesame oil
  
• For garnish: Romaine lettuce leaves

How to Cook:

• Heat oil in a wok.
  
• Add wings, cover and cook for 3 minutes per side.
  
• Remove cover and push wings to side of wok.
  
• Add chili garlic sauce, ginger, and spring onions. Stir awhile.
  
• Add oyster sauce, soy sauce, sugar, and water. Mix well.
  
• Let boil, then cover and simmer for 25 - 30 minutes. Thicken with starch mixture.
  
• Pour on lettuce lined platter and serve.

Obviously, I wasn't able to plate this one well because there were no lettuce available at the nearby market. Anyway, the recipe calls for 1/2 cup chopped spring onions, but I only used about 1/4 cup, some I set aside for garnish. The recipe also calls for 2 cups of water, but I only used 1 cup, because my chicken was only about 3/4 kilo (just 4 wing pieces, one wing for each of us here in the family). Cooking the chicken, I didn't really brown it well, I just fried it until the skin was firm enough to handle the 25 minutes cooking time. I added the thickening sauce at the last 5 minutes of cooking.

I found this dish lip-smacking good. While it is not as crunchy as the normal buffalo wings we know, the sauce was really something that made the dish wonderful. Personally, I loved this more compared to the Crispy Chicken with Hoisin Peanut Sauce, but both my siblings loved the other one compared to this. Oh well, to each his own, I guess, but I am sure I will cook this again some other time.