"Maggi" is The Secret to These Viral Wings!

Sawasdee ka, welcome to Hot Thai Kitchen. So today's recipe is inspired by a dish that is a viral sensation in Thailand. I mean, I have seen it all over the internet. Even my mom sent me a video of it as a recipe suggestion. So I had to give it a try, and my God, it did not disappoint. So originally, it was strips of pork jowl that was fried and then tossed in this salty, sweet, sticky sauce. And once it became viral, people started trying it with various other cuts of meat. And the one that caught my attention the most was chicken wings. So I gave it a try, and my God, just look at it. You know it's gonna taste good just by looking at it. The wings are super juicy, and the sauce is the perfect balance of sweet, salty, and umami. And as you see, it is a really easy recipe for such a big flavor payoff. Now, what's even better is these were air fried. Yes, it is my first air fryer recipe. And it's the sauce here that's the magic. So if you wanna change the wings to anything else, even fried tofu, you will still have a great dish. Let's get started by prepping our wings. I've got some wings here, which I'm going to marinate with our hero ingredient, Maggi seasoning. More on this in a bit. And I've also got some fish sauce. Give everything a good toss and take your time here, about a minute or so. Toss until there isn't a ton of liquid pooling at the bottom of the dish. This way, we can be sure that the sauce has distributed evenly and not just sitting at the bottom. Once that's happened, let the wings sit for at least 20 minutes or even overnight if you wanna prep ahead. While the wings are marinating, let's talk about Maggi, which means I gotta talk about the origin story of this recipe. So this recipe was actually created by Maggi, the company, as a way to promote their product. And boy, did that campaign work well because the recipe went completely viral in Thailand. By the way, this video is not sponsored. And if you're unfamiliar with Maggi, this is a soy-based seasoning, similar to soy sauce that originated in Switzerland, but it has been spread around the world. So if you use Maggi in your country, I would love to hear from you. Now, in Thailand, Maggi is popular, but more as a table-side condiment. So we drizzle it on fried eggs, on congee, and things like that. But few people use it as an ingredient for cooking. So Maggi came out with this recipe as a way to encourage people to see Maggi as an ingredient that you can use in your everyday cooking. Now, because I'm not affiliated with Maggi in any way, I can tell you that if you don't have it and you don't wanna buy it, you can use something else. If you have Golden Mountain seasoning sauce, maybe from one of my other recipes, you can use this. It actually tastes quite similar to Maggi, and you can substitute it one-to-one. If you don't have either of these, use any good old soy sauce that you've got in your kitchen. It doesn't taste as similar to Maggi as Golden Mountain, but it's close enough and it will still work. One last thing I'll note is that my recipe differs from the original Maggi recipe in a few ways. The original has very few ingredients because they want it to be very simple for people to follow. And of course, they only call for Maggi-branded product. My recipe has a few more ingredients because I wanted a dish with a more complex flavor, which I prefer. But in the written recipe, I will note the changes that I made so that if you wanted to try the simpler original one, you can. All right, let's cook the wings. Once the wings are marinated, I'm going to sift some all-purpose flour over them. And this is why I've got them in a flat white dish so the flour can cover them easily. Once I've sifted about half of the flour, I'm going to give everything a quick toss and then sift in the remaining flour and give it another quick toss. We're looking for a light, tacky flour coating here, which will help the sauce adhere to the wings much better than if we're air fried naked. And now they are ready to fry. I'm going to air fry the wings, but you can deep fry them, of course. You want to first brush or spray the rack with oil and then place the wings thick skin side up. Make sure the wings are not touching each other too much, so I'm going to need to do mine in two batches. Then I'm going to brush the top of the wings lightly with oil and then air fry them at 400 degrees Fahrenheit for 10 to 12 minutes, depending on the size. While the wings are cooking, let's make the sauce. I'm going to pound the garlic, white peppercorns, and some chopped cilantro stems into a fine paste in a mortar and pestle or use whatever tools you have to get them as fine as possible. What I'm making here is a classic herb paste in Thai cuisine called Sam Klo, which means three friends, which is basically the Thai mirepoix. Then I'm going to mix up our liquid seasonings. I've got some Maggi again, some oyster sauce, and some water. Give it a stir to loosen the oyster sauce so it'll pour out easily. You also want to chop up some palm sugar and have it ready to go. And that's all our sauce ingredients. All right, so once all of your sauce ingredients are prepped, your first batch of wings are probably close to being done. So what I would suggest is don't start cooking the sauce. Wait until the wings are out first so the thing isn't beeping in the middle of you cooking your sauce and now you're panicking and so on and so forth. So I always cook the sauce after the second batch goes in. You have plenty of time or if the idea of multi-tasking stresses you out, you can always just make the sauce while the wings were marinating and the sauce will be fine just sitting there for like a couple hours. Okay, the wings are ready. Let's see it. Wow! Oh my god! Look at this. So beautiful. And by the way, if you get here and the kids are screaming in hunger and you're just out of energy, you can just eat the wings like this. They will taste great anyway. But if you push through a little further, they will be even better. All right, I'm going to put in my second batch and then we'll put it all together. All right, for the sauce, you want to cook it in a wok or something where you can easily toss the wings. I'm going to add a little bit of oil and our three friends and saute that on medium heat for just a few minutes until you start seeing it turn golden around the edges. Don't let this brown or it'll be bitter. And we can stop the browning by adding our liquid sauce mixture and then the palm sugar, which is going to create that sweet stickiness for our wings. I'm going to let the sauce boil for about a minute until the sugar is completely dissolved and the sauce has reduced slightly. And then you can just turn it off and leave it in here while we wait for the wings to finish. This right here is the magic. I want to take a quick break and tell you that my new book is now out and I will put the link to order in the description below. So this is the updated 10th anniversary edition of my first book, Hot Thai Kitchen. This is much more than a book of recipes. It will lay the foundation for a deeper understanding of Thai cuisine. So if you want to become more proficient, if you want to become more confident, if you want to cook Thai food regularly with ease, this is the book you want. The first part breaks down Thai curries, soups, salads, and stir fries into easy-to-understand building blocks. It demystifies Thai ingredients and covers the cultural context of Thai cuisine so you will have a holistic understanding of the food you're cooking. As for the recipes, you find both popular classics and little-known dishes. And in the 10th anniversary edition, there's a whole new chapter that I call house specials. And these are recipes that are special to me in some ways, such as my favorite childhood dishes from Southern Thailand or unique recipes that I created specifically for this YouTube channel. So whether you're new to Thai cooking or you've been with me since the first edition, thank you so much for being here and for supporting my work. And I will put the link to order and to more information in the description below. ขอบคุณค่ะ My wings are out. And now just one note, you may notice that I only cooked my wings for 10-12 minutes. And if you've seen other air fried wings recipes, you might see them cooking them for like 20 minutes, 25 minutes to maximize the crispiness of the wings. However, I'm not prioritizing for crispiness here because we're going to toss it in a wet sticky sauce. We're not getting crispy wings, okay? I'm not fooling myself with that. However, I am prioritizing juicy meat. And so as you see with these wings, the inside is super juicy and that's what I'm going for. Having said that, if you have a wing cooking formula that you know well and love, you can cook them however you want. Like if you've got a formula that works, you can stick with that. If you want to deep fry them instead, you can do that. You want to bake them because you don't have an air fryer. It doesn't matter how you cook the wings. What matters is that you cook the wings. And this right here is the magic, the sauce. Okay, so my sauce, I'm going to turn it back on and get it bubbling just on medium heat now. Okay. Mmm! I'm telling you, even cardboard would taste good dipped in this sauce. Okay, it's boiling now. All the wings are going in. Any juices sitting in the bowl, put them in as well. And then just toss. How good these are! Until the sauce is no longer pooling at the bottom. So the starches on the wings are also gonna cling to the sauce and slightly thicken the sauce. So you want to keep going until the bottom is dry and all the sauce are on the wings. Just like that. And then turn it off. You don't want to overdo it either because the sauce has sugar and it can burn. And now it's done! Look how good that is! Ah! Okay, let's plate. And now I want to hear from you. Are you a flats person? Or are you a drumettes person? Are you team flats or team drumettes? Because I am team flats and my husband is team drumettes. So it works out very well in my family. And then we used cilantro stems in the sauce. So the leaves, we didn't throw that away. Chopped it up and we do a final garnish with it. Ta-da! Wow! Oh, it even smells good. Oh my god. With like a cold glass of sparkling beverage. It's perfect. I totally get why this went viral. It's sweet and salty and sticky and umami in the best possible way. And it was so easy to get this flavor. I mean like I promise you, you put this out. They'll disappear in no time. It's really hard to stop yourself from eating it because it is just, you know, that perfect combination of sweet and salty. So I really hope you give it a try. If you try it with strips of fried pork jowl like the original, I would love to hear how that goes. I'll include all that information in the written recipe of like other things you could toss in this sauce. And the written recipe as always will be on hotthaikitchen.com. A special thanks to all our Patreon members who help support the show. If you want to know what that's all about, I'll put the link in the description below. Thank you as always for watching and I will see you next time. Sawatdee ka.