YOTE Chicken Wings

Years of Trail and Error. I love chicken wings, in particular I love buffalo wings. I have been working on my chicken wing recipe for about 25 years. I have culled inspiration from the likes of Alton Brown, Interstate BBQ in Memphis, Bubbalou’s Bodacious BBQ in Central Florida, and Food Network. My process, sauce, seasonings, preparation and blue cheese dipping sauce are brought together after many years of taking an inspiring recipe and working on it for the home kitchen with common ingredients.

The first undertaking was the sauce. Once I had the correct mix of ingredients, I made very little changes. The Process of the cook is what has changed many times over the years and I settled for a twice fry method that cannot be matched. I have been told from house guests that my wings are the absolute best they have had and I should open a restaurant with this recipe. That’s all fine and good, but I believe food and in particular taste can be a very subjective thing. Cooking buffalo wings is a fairly simple process but cooking buffalo wings that a vast majority of people that love them, can be a challenge.

Today I publish the soup to nuts procedure for the best chicken wings that you could possibly come up, bar none. What follows are the ingredient lists for the various sauces and seasonings….

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Mike’s BBQ Pork Rub

4 TB paprika
3 TB dark brown sugar
2 TB chili powder
2 Tb garlic powder
2 TB kosher salt
3 tsp onion powder
3 tsp black pepper
1 tsp thyme
1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp cumin

If I were only smoking pork for myself I would add some additional flavor to satisfied my palate. CAUTION – cayenne pepper goes a long way, don’t use too much. When having guests over, I would scale back or eliminate these spices…  

1 tsp cayenne pepper
1 tsp dark chili powder  

When mixing my dry rub for pulled pork, I use the cayenne pepper due to the size of the meat. 7-9 pounds with a picnic shoulder (fat trimmed) and 4-5 pounds with a boston butt. When using a smoker box, I add onion, celery, thyme sprigs, rosemary sprigs and lemon slices to the water as well as 1 cup of apple juice. In addition, I always spray pork with 1/2 apple juice and half water every hour. When smoking beef I use 1/2 apple juice and 1/2 apple cider vinegar.