**The Art of Making Black Pepper Sauce and Fried Chicken Wings**
Making black pepper sauce is a relatively easy process that requires just a few ingredients, including fish sauce, oyster sauce, sugar, chicken stock, and cornstarch. To begin, combine three tablespoons of fish sauce, two tablespoons of oyster sauce, three sugar cubes (about a tablespoon's worth), and a teaspoon of cornstarch with half an ounce of water to create a slurry. The goal is to achieve a light, thin consistency that won't thicken the sauce too much.
As you mix the ingredients together, make sure to break apart the sugar case to release its sweetness and richness into the sauce. If the sauce tastes too spicy, you can add a little more sugar to balance it out. On the other hand, if it's not spicy enough, you can adjust the amount of fish sauce or oyster sauce to taste. Finally, add a few drops of black pepper to give the sauce its signature flavor.
To make the fried chicken wings, start by seasoning two pounds of chicken wings with salt and letting them sit for a little while before frying. Once they're ready, dip each wing into the cornstarch slurry to coat evenly. Don't overcoat the wings, as this can lead to a thick layer of batter that's prone to burning.
Next, heat up a pot of oil (such as canola or peanut oil) to 350°F, and then carefully add the chicken wings one at a time. Use a plate with paper towels on it to catch any excess oil, and have some tongs and a spider tool nearby to remove the wings from the oil once they're done.
Fry the chicken wings for about seven minutes, or until they're light and golden brown. Remove them from the oil and place them on a paper towel-lined plate to drain excess oil. While the wings are still warm, toss them in a mixture of the black pepper sauce and some chopped cilantro (optional). The result is crispy, flavorful fried chicken wings that are infused with the deep, rich flavors of the black pepper sauce.
**Tips and Variations**
If you want to make the black pepper sauce more authentic, be sure to use whole peppercorns instead of ground ones. The coarser texture will give your palate a better bite and texture. Additionally, don't overdo it with the cornstarch – too much can make the sauce thicken too much and lose its delicate balance.
As for the fried chicken wings, feel free to experiment with different seasonings or spices before frying them. Some people like to add garlic or ginger to their marinade for extra flavor. And if you're serving a large crowd, consider making a batch of black pepper sauce in advance – it's great on everything from red meat and chicken to noodles and vegetables.
**The Result**
When you take that first bite of the fried chicken wings smothered in black pepper sauce, the flavors will explode on your palate. The crispy exterior gives way to tender, juicy meat, while the sauce provides a deep, rich flavor that's both spicy and savory. It's a true culinary experience that's sure to satisfy even the most discerning palates.
"WEBVTTKind: captionsLanguage: enhi i'm angesan i'm the chef of menom restaurant and the new author of main on cookbook we're going to be doing a couple of recipes combined into one really fun recipe today we're using the sauce for black pepper crab and when combining it with the chicken wing today it's really simple takes no time at all really we got black pepper for black pepper sauce obviously but i also have white pepper and notice i really like to keep my my peppercorns fresh and in the fridge when i'm not using them and i always always use whole peppercorns to start with making this sauce we want to be toasting this so we're going to do about six tablespoons of black pepper and about two of that of white pepper the black pepper is is that rich heavy flavor and the white pepper gives it a light nuttiness the trick is when you're toasting spices to not blast it on high heat you know we want to go on medium to low heat to really slowly release the essential oils so as i'm toasting i'm just slowly kind of tossing it you don't want to play around with it too much it's nice to just move it around and you'll notice that there's going to be a little bit of shine coming out that's the essential oils coming through so i like to say cook with your senses i think asian cooking has always been more intuitive so you know look at it smell it you know like let that tell you if it's ready you're starting to smell the combination of black and white peppers now i want to take this a little bit further but i don't want to toast it all the way into my in my pan because this is the secret the biggest difference between a singaporean black pepper sauce is the butter so right here i have about a third of a cup so i just want to break that down a little bit i'm going to add that in and slowly cook that with my butter and that butter is going to give the flavor and the richness to what people love about singaporean black pepper sauce right now we're just going to go low temperature for about another five minutes or so just really bring out the flavor now you can smell the combination of the butter and the pepper while that's going right now we're going to start pounding a paste i like to do it in a traditional mortar and pestle and when you do modern pestos i always prefer to use the stone ones but we're going to make a paste with three cloves of garlic probably about two or three high chilies if you don't have thai chilies available or are in your fridge it's an optional ingredient because there is going to be a lot of heat coming from the pepper already the chilies obviously provide a sharper type of heat okay so we're gonna start with the garlic now whenever you're pounding things uh in the morning pesto i always put a bit of pour salt or this in this case sea salt from newfoundland put a pinch in there because it's like the sandpaper it's the grit that breaks everything apart okay uh chili's as well i i even like to use the stems of the chili because that's really nice flavor as you're pounding your paste you want to be careful not to be too curious with your eyes and stick your face so close to the morning pestle because you might get a chili in there so i always kind of do it have a hand slightly covered and pounding this is not up and down it's not grinding it's a combination so you want to strike your bowl on one side and having to grind in another side and it's always just the wrist as my paste is ready i'm going to take this out our pepper in the butter is ready we're going to let that cool for a couple of seconds here and we're going to add that into the modern pesto and ground i always like to separate the wet things from the dry things that way there's no splatter so i'm always gonna take out the peppercorns first so in here again we're just gonna pound this and what you notice you're not gonna really get ground pepper it's gonna turn into a bit of a pepper paste smells amazing actually so you want to do this until there's no visible whole peppercorns like that now how fine or how coarse you want to leave that really depends on you and i personally like a little bit of texture in the sauce so i'm going to leave it as this now we're going to put the butter back in and just kind of emulsify it back into a paste and now i'm kind of using a grinding motion to just make sure i got all the big chunks out of the way we're going to cook the garlic and chili paste in the pan let's go on medium heat we're going to use a little bit of oil and you want to fry the garlic and chili until it's aromatic so you can smell the chilies and the garlic so already that's producing a lot of really beautiful aromas we don't want to take this too far because we don't want to dry out the garlic which will make the sauce bitter because all the black peppercorns inside so right about there we're going to add all of the peppercorns and butter so to season now we're going to use some chicken stock some oyster sauce some fish sauce and some sugar i actually don't have sugar uh here at home so i i have some sugar cubes that i use to make manhattans with i'm going to add the chicken stock first probably half of this which is half cup that way when the fish sauce and the oyster sauce hit the pan it doesn't evaporate a little bit more for evaporation some oyster sauce let's see three or four tablespoons worth about two tablespoons of fish sauce i'm gonna do uh three sugar cubes in there probably about a tablespoon's worth if you find the sauce a bit spicy you can add a little bit more sugar to balance everything out just make sure you break apart the sugar case the sugar is not only there for sweetness and balance is actually there for richness as well so i think we could use another sugar too just to kind of balance off everything and i'm also going to add a little bit more chicken stock to open it up a little bit more an optional thing in in this sauce is cornstarch because the butter tends to separate from the rest of the sauce i put a touch of slurry in there just to tie everything together a teaspoon's worth and enough water to make that into a slurry in this case my slurry is quite loose i don't want it to be a thick sauce so start with half of it a little bit more and i think that's good so again you want a nice thick sauce your butter is going to separate a little bit that's totally okay so there you have it that's the black pepper sauce super easy to make you can keep it in the fridge it has a pretty good shelf life it's great with uh you know any kind of red meat or chicken uh it's really good with anything okay so next we're gonna make the the fried chicken wing part of this uh dish you wanna set up your pot with some oil and you never really want to fill your pot more than half full because you know frying when all the items goes in the oil expand you can make it a mess and it be quite dangerous use canola oil peanut oil whatever you like to fry with we're just going to add enough water to the corn starch so you just want to break apart the cornstarch with the water and what you want is to make sure you're slurry it's not too thick and it's basically whole milk consistency you want a really light slurry so that it's a really light crispy thin paper thin layer on the chicken wing a lot of people like to fry with cornstarch just dust it with the items the frying what i find is that corn starch end up just falling off into the oil and everything tastes burnt so what i like to do is the the slurry evenly coats everything and you don't have a thick layer on it so all we need to do is get the chicken wings ready i have here two pounds of chicken wings so before it goes into the story i can kind of season my wings a little bit which is salt don't need to go crazy because the black pepper sauce is well seasoned so keep in mind that it's going to add the chicken in here notice as it comes out it's barely coating the wings and that's what you want that's enough to create a really really crispy coating as the wings are ready and coated we're going to fry them in 350 degrees what i like to do is i like to take my temperature up a little bit to 365 that way when everything hits in when all the items go in there it'll drop down to where i want it to be don't drop too many at once one at a time have a plate with paper towel ready some tongs and some sort of spider thing to fish out the wings to be like move them around a little bit i'm just stirring it a little bit to make sure they're not sticking to each other they'll tend to want to do that a little bit but seven minutes for kind of the average chicken wing you can have ginormous uh chicken wings on steroids you might need to add a couple minutes to that they're not only light and golden but the batter on it is super thin and crispy four or five tablespoons of the sauce we made just enough to make sure all our wings are well coated put them inside there and let's do a little bit of a cilantro and there you go that's the uh hybrid version of chicken wing and black pepper crab together it's fried chicken wings black pepper sauce so it's one of my favorite snacks and i think next time if you're watching the football game or basketball game so the typical wings you can give this a try well the line smells so good on the black pepper it's going to get messy though i love it you really need to line because it balances everything and gives your palate a bit of a a rest because that the peppers are quite rich i personally like to leave the peppercorns a little coarser so you can get the bite and the texture and again please use whole peppercorns it's really really essential for this it's really delicious and i hope you guys enjoy you\n"
