To make the sauce:

remove the tips from 4 lb of chicken wings
brown the tips over a charcoal fire, make sure to char a few
coarsely chop the browned/charred tips and toss them into a sauce pan

add:
1 3/4 soy sauce
1/2 cup tamari
3/4 cup mirin
1 cup sake
1/3 cup rock sugar or pure sugar cane (I used turbinado)

simmer for an hour or so and strain out wing tips

to cook wings, I prefer to do them on the top grate of a wsm minus the water pan. I've found this method for applying the sauce to be pretty effective:

grill wings for 20 min (flipping at 10 min)
toss wings into pan with sauce, return pan to grill for 20 min
remove wings from sauce, return to grill for 20 min (flipping at 10 min)

the wings can be returned to pan with sauce, warmed on grill and held for service.

Bro,

Your recipe sounds awesome. You flip at 10m and then reapply the spice mix?

I will have to try this and get back with you. Thanks for sharing,

Greg Schaefer

quote:

Your recipe sounds awesome. You flip at 10m and then reapply the spice mix?

I upped the sugar in the above recipe (probably to 1/2 cup or more) so I didn't want to apply it too early. additionally, I wanted to keep the raw wings out of the sauce in case I needed to apply it late in the cooking.

That was the logic I was following, so let me clarify:

grill the unsauced wings for about 20 min, flipping once. This seemed like enough time to cook the outsides.

the wings go into a pan of sauce and back on the grill for 20 min. they simmer in the sauce. I shook them up once because they all weren't totally in the sauce. This method simplified the saucing stage and comments from my diners (I didn't get to try these) were along the lines of "the flavor was to the bone."

after that simmer, I wanted to grill them a bit to crisp them. It'll probably take 10 to 15 min a side depending on the heat of your fire to get them crispy. I went 20 min and they started to burn.

after that I'd say they're done. Because of my situation, I tossed them back in the sauce to hold.

Sounds like they blackened up beautifully. I'll go to Jungle Jim's here in Cincinnati with your ingredients list. Should be brutally good.

Thanks for the clarifications!

Greg