Dill Pickle Chicken Wings

Wing in the New Year: Part 1

The ingredients:

The chicken wings:

• 10 cut chicken wings

• 1 c. pickle (or jalapeño!) brine

• 1 bag dill pickle potato chips

• 2 tbsp garlic salt

• 2 tbsp flour

• 2 tbsp potato starch

• 1 tsp cayenne

• 1 tsp black pepper

• 1 egg

Dill yogurt drizzle:

• 2 c. greek yogurt

• 1/4 c. pickle brine

• 1/2 c. chopped dill

• 2 tsp. salt

• 1 tsp. garlic powder

The process:

To start, place chicken wings in brine and let sit in the fridge for at least an hour. In the meantime, pulse chips in a food processor until it becomes a consistent crumb. Mix with flour, potato starch, and seasonings to create your breading. Mix egg and dip each wing before dredging in dry mixture. Cooking method is up to preference: if roasting, place in oven at 425 for 30 minutes, flipping halfway. If air frying, place in air fryer at 365 for 13 minutes. Flip afterward, then air fry again at 400 for 6 minutes.

For dill yogurt drizzle, place all ingredients in a blender or food processors and pulse until combined. Drizzle across wings when finished.

The story:

God, I love a pickle. Spicy. Dill. Garlic. I don’t care how it comes, unless it’s bread and butter, which is gross. That is a tried and true fact I will simply have to fight you on if you disagree. But growing up, I could go through an entire jar on my own. My dad always used to be insistent that if I were going to pull one out, I needed to use a fork to do it sanitarily, but now that I’m an adult, catch me on a Thursday night, fishing those bad boys out with my own damn fingers. It’s my life! I can do what I want!

To start the new year, I wanted to do a little series called “Wing in the New Year” because if there’s anything I love more than pickles, it’s chicken wings. I remember the first time I had a buffalo wing. My mom used to shallow fry them on the stove, with breading, then put them in a baking dish and drizzle with hot sauce. The first night I had one, I snuck back into the kitchen to eat a couple more. Then a couple more after that. Long story short, I cleared the pan, and it’s been a love story ever since. If I had a final meal request, it would be my mom’s breaded hot wings, a healthy portion of roasted potatoes, and a bowl of her pasta salad.

While most of my chicken wing recipes do not include a breading (because, ultimately, we’re all trying to clear fifty years old here), this one does as an homage to my mom’s recipe and a way to include pickles in the mix. Combine that breading with the pickle brine (that is Chick-fil-a’s secret, by the way, so y’all can stop eating that hate poultry now!), and you have a perfectly tangy chicken wing worth kicking off 2024.