Secrets for the BEST Chicken Wings | Meat America - St. Louis

And he was trying to call a barbecue. The birds aren't real. You don't have, like, beef fingers. We're here to meet Chef Mike Johnson, who you might recognize from the hit shows Beef Bobby Flay or Barbecue Pitmasters. He'll show us how to make smoked chicken wings and his award-winning Smashburger. Now, it's time to turn up the heat and cook some meat here at Sugarfire Smokehouse. All right, Mike, what's up, man? What are we cooking today? I thought we'd do some chicken wings. No boneless wings, because that's weird. Those really aren't wings. No, I know, they're just breasts. It's like chicken fingers. They don't even have fingers. You don't have, like, beef fingers. And what do you start with? What I like to do is I do a classic brine. And I just think that helps it retain moisture and flavor and stuff, especially when you're doing a smoking process. One gallon of water, one cup of brown sugar, and one cup of salt. Simple. I mean, I guess if you want to get excited, you can put in curry or who knows what, a barbecue rub. I don't know. People are always trying to add their own special thing to it. Anything to turn up the taste. So how many pounds of wings will this brine work with? 10 pounds, maybe, I think. Does that sound right? It sounds like a- I'm not good at math. OK, we're going to mix this up, bring it to a boil, and then we're going to cool it off, and then we're going to go in with the wings. I like to get the whole wing. And that has the drummy, the flat, and then the tip. The tip, to me, is gross. It's got weird stuff on it. And there's almost no meat on there. When I cut it off here, I use it for stock. We'll save them and freeze them. And we get a bunch, we'll make stock. And you just really just find that joint. And it doesn't even take a sharp knife. So I would pull that off, put it on the side. A lot of chicken wings don't even come with it. So these ones did. And then you're really just coming in here and finding this joint. You can cook them whole. You see how easy that went through there? That went through so easy, man. Like butter, because you've got to find this cartilage here. I always even say for the beginner, you can do this, too. You can hold this chicken thing, if you're not convinced where the cartilage is, and you just pop that. OK, you just pop it. So now I can see where the middle is. Like, that's going to cut. There's nothing in there right now. Great tip. So if you cut that right through there. But that's how that works. You just pull that apart, and then you can just slice right through. And people either love the drummies or they love the flats. I love both. Yeah, there's a big argument out there about drummies versus flats. I say, I don't care which part it is, as long as it gets in my belly. Yeah, and I have another requirement, too. I always order my wings well done, because I like them really crispy. If I'm in a restaurant, I order them well done, sauce on the side. Because after you toss them, they start, it starts, oh, dude, I'm fat. So I love chicken. Obviously, I love chicken wings. And I like to keep them separate even. Even when I'm brining them, a lot of times you just have a little more meat on the drummies. They might take a little longer to smoke. You generally recommend cutting them up prior to smoking. Yeah, I just like to do it myself. Some people like them smoked whole. Some people do. Mike, dude, you made that look so easy, so professional. That looks like something I would get at, well, a restaurant. Buffalo Wild Wings. Sugar fire smokehouse, right? Yeah, that's right, yeah, yeah. Now that these are cut up, what's next? We're just going to take them and just throw them in this cooled off brine. You don't want it to be hot, because we're not going to try to boil this. And that's it. Now we're just going to let them hang. And how long do they sit in the brine for? I'm going to go two hours. Two hours. And that's not a salty brine. That's just a really basic brine. If it's, you know, you accidentally get salty, less time. Because it'll cure them, because these aren't big pieces. And so the brine is meant to not only help the chicken retain moisture as it cooks, but I think it also helps promote a crispier skin. Is that true? Yeah, yeah, yeah, it does, for sure. OK, I'm going to pull them out, dry them off a little bit. And like I said, I'm going to keep them separate, or try to. You know, occasionally we'll get a couple of ones that go AWOL. Sure, and why do you dry them off? The rub's going to stick to it a little better. We're not braising them, we're smoking them. We've done a couple of chicken wing experiments on our channel. And one of those was, like, air drying them overnight in the fridge or in the refrigerator, patting them dry. And the amount of impact that they have is really helpful towards the crispiness of that chicken skin. Yeah, and I like my skin as crispy as possible. That whole thing with barbecue chicken, you know, we're in a competition that's got to be bite through. To me, as a chef, that's weird, because as a chef, you want crispy skin, as crispy as possible. I got these. They're kind of, you know, pat them down a little bit. I get to travel a lot for barbecue, and I spend a lot of time in Australia. And the one thing I brought back from Australia is chicken salt, and it sounds crazy. That's wild, man. It's basically like a super umami, chicken-flavored garlic salt. But everyone in Australia puts this on their French fries. Like, they don't even have a French fry going out without chicken salt on there. I think this is probably the only place that you can get in the United States. If you Google chicken salt, nothing comes up. This just makes it even more chickeny flavor than it already has in it. You want to try a little bit in your? Yeah. It tastes kind of like a Romany seasoning. Yeah, not too overpowering. Yeah. Getting a little bit more pepper in there. Yeah, I got some good pepper, garlic. I think there's some celery in there. And so, look, if someone doesn't have this at home, what do you recommend as an alternative? Barbecue rub. I just do barbecue rub. You know, you can get a sweeter rub, too. I like a sweeter rub on chicken wings because I like to go less sweet on pork butts and briskets or whatever that take a long time so it doesn't get burnt. But when you're smoking something like a chicken wing that doesn't take all day, I like to do a sweet, you know, something that has sugar in it. I'm just going to kind of keep them so they're not touching each other. You know, sometimes we're cooking like 1,000 wings that are kind of on top of each other, but we've got plenty of space in here. So, what's the mindset behind creating some space in between the wings? Just so I can get smoke on every piece. You know, I don't want them touching because I want them to be crispy all the way around. And so, while you're doing this, let me ask you, what temperature are you running this pit at right here? Usually, for the wings, I pick them up a little bit to about 275. And people always ask how long does it go for, and I mean, usually like an hour and a half or so, maybe. Really? That's it? Yeah, two hours. It just depends. And with this convection on these, I always feel like it runs hotter than it says. You know, these have a lot of fat in them. So, the opportunity to dry these, I mean, you really, for the most part, unless you really overdo them, you're really not going to dry them out. Yeah, if you walk away and then go to the store and forget about them, maybe, but they can probably go anywhere from an hour and a half to maybe three and a half hours. Okay. Probably still going to be good, you know? What kind of wood are you using to empower this? We use cherry and hickory. Mixture of cherry and hickory. Is that about a 50-50 for someone who's trying to do this? Yeah, 50-50. I mean, that's just how we do it here. Everything gets half and half. Half and half. Yeah. All right, let's close these up. Come on back when they're done. Cool. So, like, I joke a lot in my videos, during long cooks, my favorite thing to do is search for conspiracy theories online. Do you believe them or? Yeah, I mean, you do know birds aren't real. You know, this whole COVID thing is they, the pigeons were out of batteries. No way. So the government had to keep people inside. I don't believe them. I like learning about them and laughing about them. The birds aren't real. I have a weird thing I do on the internet. All right. I don't think I should talk about it, though. Look at that chicken. It's beautiful. Wait. All right, let's check it out. Right on time. Look at that. Smoky. Ooh, they're hot. I didn't know they were going to be hot. These look absolutely beautiful. Love the color. Do these come out of the smoker with crispy skin, or how do we get? They're medium crispy. Now, if you want to keep smoking them, you can, and eventually they're going to get crispy skin. But I like to stop them here. They're cooked all the way through. They're really, if you can feel them, they're so, you can just see they're juicy and super tender. Oh, yeah, so soft. Now I like to flash fry them. So we're going to cool them off, and then we're going to flash fry them for about a minute in a deep fryer, about 325 degrees, and then they're going to be super crispy. After that's done, you're going to show us how to make a great tasting burger. I mean, SugarFire has won multiple awards for best burger in St. Louis. We used to win all the time when we first opened. We won best burger in St. Louis so many times in all the, you know, St. Louis Magazine, Post-Dispatch, which is great because there's great hamburgers in St. Louis, that we opened a burger restaurant called the High Point Drive-In, and now High Point Drive-In wins the award every year. You got to start with the top quality ingredients. People hear hamburger, and it's just like, it's not just like 80-20 meat. There's a whole science behind it and a lot of thought that goes into it. What I'm going for is a crispy smash burger because that's what I like. I mean, some people like a thicker burger. I like the smash burger. I love In-N-Out, Whataburger. What I do is we have these big, expensive stainless steel flat tops that get like 900 degrees and they keep the heat because we're cooking like hundreds of burgers. You usually get a nice metal pan, and I'll get it as hot as I can, and I'll start it out like this, just kind of getting it flat, and I'm kind of pressing that down. Here's the secret. You just don't play with it. Dad's always trying to come in here and just leave it alone. Really, the only cooking we're going to do in this thing is pressing it down on all sides. Honestly, I'm going to cook this on this one side about 75%, and as soon as I flip it, I'm going to get the cheese on it and then just kind of let it coast, and you can see it's sweating. So when you see that up top, that's when you know it's about 75%? No, no, it's not 75% yet. I can see it getting cooked up the side. See, it's getting a little browner up the side. I'm just going to keep, I'm still going. I'm not even looking at that bottom because I know it's getting crispy and delicious. The bun, to me, is just as important as the meat. Okay. Okay, because a lot of times people order these fancy buns. You don't want a fancy bun. If you want to be a pro, you order a Martin's potato roll. You have to toast it. It has to be a butter-toasted bun. Number one, you're adding flavor. Number two, you're adding texture, crunch. But also, you're protecting that bun from getting soggy when the grease, which I love from the burger, is like, you know, is pouring off. We're getting pretty close here, and I don't want this thing to be super well done. So this thing is still going to be kind of like medium, but it's cooked so hot, it's still going to have all that moisture in there. You can see there's not a lot of moisture in the pan. There's really just a little bit of fat. I pull it off the flame when I flip it because I'm not trying to catch the house on fire. You know? Now, at this point, now I'm going cheese. You got the crust there. Now, two pieces of American. If you go more than two pieces, you're overcompensating. If I get a big, thick burger with like Swiss and mushrooms and stuff like that, a smash burger, American cheese. Now, what is it about American cheese that just makes it, I got to admit, like the perfect cheese for burgers? Because it's American. We're real Americans eating American cheese and guns and whatever stuff we like to do. Beers. Football, beer, chicks. Another trick, too, if you think you're getting overcooked here, which we're not, and you want to melt your cheese quicker, you just take a little tablespoon of water and pour it in there, and that steam hits that and melts the cheese. You don't even have to, you have to top it with a lid or? No, not really. It's so hot in there. So hot. I'm a firm believer in all the stuff goes on top because there's certain people out there that want to put lettuce on the bottom. I don't like that. I think that the hot burger's coming down and making it soggy on the lettuce. So I like my vegetables crispy on top. The only thing I would ever consider putting underneath here is the onion because that'll soften it up. I hate raw onions. So I don't, I'm going to put it on this burger because you look like you're an onion guy. I'll go with onion. I hate onions. I'm not going to hold it against you. Shredded iceberg is the only way to go for me. Tomato, one slice. Never more than one slice. Couple pieces of onion. And I always go three pickles. I like to get the pureness of the burger. Ketchup, mustard's good. Mayonnaise is good. All three is good. But that, to me, is a beautiful smash burger. All right, homie. We're done. You only made one burger and I'm not sharing. So I bite into this. You're going to go ahead and make a wing sauce. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Talk us through that. I have a favorite wing sauce. And Zach, Pitmaster Zach actually started this. It's half buffalo sauce and half barbecue sauce. And he was trying to call it barf-a-cue. That's no bueno, man. I thought maybe barf-a-cue sounded more interesting. Barf-a-cue, yeah. Barf-a-cue. What do you like, barf-a-cue or barf-a-cue? I'll go with barf-a-cue. You don't like the barf sauce? And like I said, we did our wings. Crispy, well done on the side. And then before we start, I need to talk about something very important, near and dear to my heart. It's about chicken wing eating etiquette. Because I had some wings with my dad a couple weeks ago. You don't eat a wing and then put the bone back on top of the rest of the chicken wing. No, dude, you can't do that. Who does that? That's a foul, dude. It's a criminal offense. It's not a foul. You wouldn't do that. No, I'm not going to do that at all. Mike, I got to tell you, man, I'm biting into this burger and it tastes absolutely fantastic. Nice, look at that. I mean, look, it's not totally done. You still get a little bit of color in there. The American cheese, always a great choice. And the potato bun, you're able to kind of compress that, which is helpful, especially when you're adding a lot of toppings. I always go for the drummy first. I don't know why. Man, you're getting that nice crisp from the chicken wing. Smoke, crunch, moistness. Look at that. Look how moist that is in there. What I'm getting from the sauce is that sweet, combined with that smoky flavor. Where all the sauce, I think, is ending up all over me. But this is a really great meal, man. And, you know, I don't want to leave here today without asking you a little bit about your history. I know that you've been on some pretty impressive programs that we were talking about before, including Beat Bobby Flay, Barbecue Pitmasters, and I think you were also featured in season six of To Catch a Predator, right? No, that was season four, Cops. Season four, okay, Cops. I had it wrong, man. But I was also on that big time Meet America podcast that everyone's still talking about with the Oscars and Emmys and all that. Yeah, it's going to go big time, man. Yeah, yeah, oh yeah, yeah. When you're on those shows, it goes a lot faster than you think it would. I mean, you got like 10 minutes to come up with a dish for like four judges. There's people around screaming, you're sweating, there's lights everywhere. Fortunately, the two times I won on there, the guys I was going against didn't handle the pressure. And I don't think what I made was that much better than theirs. It's just, I just know that I got to have my stuff together in a timely fashion. They were both late coming in, looking sloppy. Yeah, dude. I've seen those. You look like you're pretty cool and calm under pressure. I mean, you look totally relaxed. I'm so drunk, I can't even film now. I'm just kidding, I would never do that. I've done a lot of these shows, so I'm like, I have a whole list in my head that I'm studying for a week beforehand. If it's pasta, I'm going to do this. If it's fruit, I'm going to do this. And for times, like, you know, one thing's 15 minutes, one thing's a half hour. I think you have to be mentally prepared before you go in as to what you're going to do. Yeah, so you have a little bit of a strategy of what complements what, which I think is really incredible, man. And speaking of incredible, I just can't talk enough about these wings and that crisp that's coming through with that sauce on there. I love chicken wings. I had chicken wings yesterday. I want to say it's been a pleasure having you on the show today. Thank you. I'd shake your hand, but I think I'm going to need a bath towel after this. We're both saucy. Yeah. But thanks for having us on the show today. Look, the next time you're in St. Louis, you've got to stop by Sugarfire Smokehouse and check out these wings, burger, brisket, burnt ends, and a whole host of really incredible chef-driven sides. Thank you. We're in Colorado, Illinois, Iowa, Dallas. We got one coming in Jacksonville, Florida. This is American meat. This is meat America. It's global, you know, or continental. It's nationwide. It's nationwide, baby. It's nationwide, but I know what you're thinking. You're thinking ahead. It's going to be global. Sugarfire Beijing is coming in 2022, maybe? Maybe sooner. All right. Well, we'll be looking forward to it. Thanks so much for your time, brother. Thanks, man. Appreciate it. I don't know about you guys, but I had a great time hanging with Chef Mike. Not only is he extremely fun, but he's a very talented chef. Hey, where should we go next? Let me know in the comments below. And while you're there, you guys know the drill. Go ahead and hit that big thumbs up, like button, or even better, subscribe to our channel so you'll never miss an adventure as we travel the country to meat America.