HotSauceDaily

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Tabasco Game Day Wing Recipes from Top Chef Floyd Cardoz

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Week of Wings III – Day 2 – Three Tabasco Wing Recipes

The second day of our Week of Wings III series continues with 3 different wing recipes featuring 3 Tabasco sauces, as created by Bravo’s Top Chef Masters winner Floyd Cardoz.

Chef Floyd’s re-imagined Buffalo wing recipe will be served at Maxim Magazine’s annual, celebrity-studded Super Bowl party in Indianapolis, where football fans, pro-athletes and celebrities alike will feast on Chef Floyd’s wings.
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Defcon Sauces Defense Condition

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We cooked another huge batch of wings yesterday for our “Week of Wings” series. I know what you’re thinking, “How many wing sauces can HotSauceDaily review in a week?” The answer… a lot! Well ok, 7. But the wing sauces we feel you need to know about today are brought to you by John Dilly of Defconsauces.com.

And while all 3 varieties are really a Cayenne Pepper based flavor, Defcon brings some class to the table with the addition of the cream and white wine vinegar. Kudos to John Dilley for “classin’ up da joint”!

All 3 sauces look the same in the bowls, and you’ll see that other than “pepper extract” in #1, they all share the same ingredients.

We followed our normal 3-step cooking procedure for wings…. bake, fry, and toss. For step-by-step instructions for making great hot wings at your house, check out Day 6

Defense Condition #3 – Low Heat – Ingredients: aged cayenne peppers, distilled vinegar, water, salt, garlic powder, cayenne peppers, cream, white wine vinegar, natural flavors. All natural. No MSG. Gluten free.

Defense Condition #2 – Medium Heat – Ingredients: aged cayenne peppers, distilled vinegar, water, salt, garlic powder, cayenne peppers, cream, white wine vinegar, natural flavors. All natural. No MSG. Gluten free.

Defense Condition #1 Extreme Heat – Ingredients: aged cayenne peppers, distilled vinegar, water, salt, garlic powder, cayenne peppers, cream, white wine vinegar, natural flavors, pepper extract. All natural. No MSG. Gluten free.

Defense Condition #3 – Low Heat

Marilyn: The mildest wing sauce has a great flavor profile. I can feel the heat on the front and middle of my tongue. You could serve this to wing fans and get raves all around, but folks who like it hot better step up to the next level, Defense Condition #2.

Brian: This is the mildest of the Defcon wing sauces. It has a good flavor, but it’s so mild I would consider it “comfort food” flavor – kind of tame.

Defense Condition #2 – Medium Heat

Marilyn: There you go, this is the one! The heat fills my mouth but doesn’t reach the back of my throat, so I can eat a lot of these…and I did!. I think you definitely want to have enough bleu cheese dressing and cucumber and/or celery to cool you off, but the flavor is wonderful. There’s a little lip burn, but that could be due to the winter weather here… or all the hot sauce we eat 🙂

Brian: Wow! This is a perfect Wing Sauce! The flavor profile is very similar to that of the Low, but with more heat for an extra punch. I notice that the ingredients of Low and Medium are identical, but obviously there’s a lot more fire in this batch.

Defense Condition #1 – Extreme Heat

Marilyn: First bite reveals a great flavor, but WHOA! No matter how much bleu cheese, celery, and cucumber spears I consume, I just can’t seem to cool off. This is definitely one for the hard-core fans with the genetic ability to tolerate tons of heat, AKA Mr. HotSauceDaily, my hubby.

Brian: This is the hottest Defcon wing sauce, with the exception of Zero, which sold out. This sauce has lots of flavor and lots of heat, thanks to the addition of extract. Even with the heat, you can still taste the chicken, so it provides a nice balance for the heat-lover’s wing recipe. It’s near the top of my tolerance for heat, but I wouldn’t mind the next notch up. Defcon has managed to provide heat with flavor, and we’ll be using his sauces again at our next soiree!

And finally, if you use parchment paper as we’ve been preaching all this week, your cleanup with be a breeze!

A big thanks to John Dilley and Defconsauces.com for some great products.
Shop for all these great sauces at the Defcon Sauces Store!

We hope you’ve checked out our podcast, HotSauceWeekly where this week in Episode 14, Scott Roberts reviews Defense Condition #2!
And for more great Wings recipes, check out his ScottRobertsWeb.com for 15 other wings recipes here.

How To Make Great Hot Wings At Home

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Week of Wings – Day 5 – Wings 101

Tips for making great hot wings at home.

We use a 3 step process:
1. bake the wings
2. deep fry the wings
3. take ’em swimming in the sauce

We cut the wings into flaps and drummies, discarding the tip (or freezing them to make chicken stock later), then dry them thoroughly with paper towels. It’s important to dry them thoroughly before baking. This helps prevent the skin from shrinking up.

Season the wings with salt and pepper or your favorite spices like Tony Chatchere’s or Todd’s Dirt or a jerk seasoning (Captain Thom’s Jerk Seasoning), and stick in the fridge to air dry uncovered for an hour or so – even overnight is ok. If you’re using a wing sauce with a lot of salt, bake them plain.

Bring the wings to room temp.

Place them on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper. Note: If you’ve ever baked wings on a baking sheet, and sprayed it with oil, or coated them with oil to keep them from sticking, you know you have a sticky mess to clean up. USE PARCHMENT PAPER (no oil needed) and you and your dishwasher will be happier. We promise!

Bake at 375 degrees for 20-30 minutes. Remove the wings from the baking sheet and let them “dry out” on a platter for at least 10 minutes to absorb any excess moisture (water & fat).

Fry in small batches, 5-8 wings at a time. We fry our wings in our Le Creuset Dutch Oven.

We used to use a FryDaddy deep-fryer, but it doesn’t hold the heat as well as a good enameled cast iron Dutch oven does. If all you have is a FryDaddy or other electric fryer, just allow time between batches for it to heat back up, because each time you place food in those fryers, the oil temp drops.

After deep-frying, place briefly on paper towels to absorb the excess oil, then toss them in your favorite wing sauce while they’re still hot. Let them sit a minute to soak up the sauce and regain their crispiness, and you’re ready to enjoy perfectly cooked wings!

Serve with celery sticks and our easy to make blue cheese dip. For a new and different twist, try some cucumber spears along with your favorite ranch or blue cheese dip. NOM!

Chipotle Glazed Tex Mex Meatloaf with Cheddar Chives Mashed Potatoes

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Another use for canned Chipotle peppers in adobo is this spicy meatloaf recipe.

Marilyn whipped up this easy meatloaf recipe for us today. Using chipotle peppers, adobo sauce, green chiles, and hot pepper jelly, this meatloaf is our new favorite recipe.

Here’s a pic of the finished meatloaves:

She combined aspects of both Emeril Lagasse’s Tex-Mex Meatloaf, and Rachel Ray’s Texas Hold-Em Mini Chipotle Burgers. We’ve made both recipes separately, and can tell you they are both delicious!

If you make anything from this recipe, do the sauce to drizzle on the meatloaf. It rocks!

She used canned chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, canned chopped green chiles, and Heine Hurtin’ Hot Sauce for the pepper jelly, but you could use any Jalapeno or other pepper jelly (Four Monks is good).

Because either one of these great dishes are made indoors, they give you the spicy, smoky, burger-esque flavors you crave from your grill when it’s just too cold outside to do it.

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Margarita Recipe 3-2-1 Style

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Mix, Lime Juice, Tequila, Cointreau

I’m a new fan of the 3-2-1 Margarita recipe… 3 parts Tequila, 2 parts Cointreau, 1 part lime juice. (Substitute Grand Marnier or Triple Sec for the 2 parts, and to make things sweet and economical, any decent Margarita “Mix” for the 1 part lime juice).

I love my Margaritas with salt, thank you. Strained into a chilled martini glass please. Bliss! This would be a Margarita “straight up”.

Actually, I prefer salt half-rimmed around the glass. That way, you can lick the salt and sip, or just sip from the un-salted part.

Margarita Straight UpPurists will say, “oh, the salt is just there to mask the flavor of low quality tequila”… that may be true, but I enjoy a little salt, just for the experience of a salty/sweet/smooth Tequila cocktail.

And the *best* Margaritas are made with Silver, or Blanco Tequilas, only. Period. Once you go Silver, you’ll never go back to “gold”. Gold being simply a colored tequila. Now, we’re not talking about Anejo or Reposado aged tequilas… While I still think they don’t belong in a proper Margarita… they are wonderful on their own, over ice… sipped. Especially the top shelf varieties.

This post was inspired by a nice Margarita Recipe page at Jeff Heusser’s neonmargarita.com that lists a few varieties of the sexy, sultry Margarita and all “her” variations. Margarita are female, aren’t they?

Nellie & Joe's Famous Lime JuiceJeff lists a 3-2-1 recipe, as well as mentioning he loves Nellie & Joe’s Famous Lime Juice as his secret ingredient. Made with Key Limes, Nellie & Joe’s is in our ‘fridge as an exotic offering of the lime juice component.

Do you like yours straight up or on the rocks? Silver or gold?