A few years ago, Marge Simpson impressed her party guests with Wasabi Buffalo wings. I was intrigued, but after some google searching for a recipe, I concluded that this food was a fictitious creation by the writers of The Simpsons!
That is a shame because, if made correctly, wasabi wings would be just as spicy and delicious as buffalo wings, but your mouth would stop burning sooner (wasabi spiciness doesn't linger the way red pepper does) allowing you to eat more wings without getting that bloated, dragon-breath feeling. A superior kind of wing in many ways.
Nowadays there is a small handful of recipes for wasabi wings online. Not to slight these recipes; they were very helpful and I borrowed from them, but none resemble Marge's wings nor how I think true Wasabi Buffalo wings ought to look: pale green like wasabi paste yet shiny and glistening like buffalo wings.
Nor do any of the recipes include what I think is an appropriate dipping sauce. Blue cheese dressing would be out of character and the flavors wouldn't mesh well together; besides, that's for regular buffalo wings. I wanted something the kept with the Asian-American fusion cuisine theme, but which could cool down the burning of the wasabi and other spices.
Finally, I couldn't just serve them with celery. Celery is so ordinary that next to these wings, celery would just feel left out.
I set out to fill what used to be a gaping void in the world of superbowl fingerfoods in the most delicious way possible. This instructable is the story of that epic journey.
Ready?
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Signing UpStep 1: Dipping Sauce
First, the dipping sauce. There is something called "White Sauce", "Yum Yum Sauce", "Spicy Mayo", and a few other different things in Japanese restaurants in America. It is the perfect dipping sauce for wasabi Buffalo wings because it cools down the heat of the wings but is still zingy and flavorful. I found the recipe here and altered it slightly.
You need:
1 and 1/4 Cup mayonnaise
1/4 Cup water
1 teaspoon tomato paste
1 Tablespoon melted butter
1/2 teaspoon sugar
1/4 teaspoon paprika
dash of Sriracha hot sauce, cayenne pepper, or other hot sauce.
Mix it all together really well and stick it in the fridge.
I'm told it tastes even better the next day.
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IDK if i have ever had anything more delicious in the finger food area of cuisine
i just watched that episode:D
It costs less for a reason :P
My favorite link was the first one provided below by Bret Anderson. I couldn't tell if Spokehedz was criticizing it for not being peer reviewed, but I must say it was by far the most scholarly and thoughtful piece I have ever read on the topic.
(As an aside, while peer reviewed studies are the gold standard of scholarly discourse, I think they can become a fetish as well, to the point that we ignore well-reasoned arguments from individuals who are well-versed and directly involved with such research simply because they are posted on a site that is not part of PubMed or Ebsco or some other journal database. Can we agree that it is foolish to base ones lifestyle on a single peer-reviewed study?)
My take away message was this: Eat a variety of foods. This is the only consistent nutrition advice I ever really hear, and it makes sense. In this case, Dr. Enig surmises that the consumption of some oils is harmful not because it is heated, but because its effects are not mitigated by the use of other oils. In other words, if you eat just one kind of oil, its harmful effects can multiply. Include several kinds in your diet including Omega-3s and saturated fats, and they will balance each other out.
Good news for a voracious omnivore like me!
Thanks for weighing in yall!
(PS, do I get extra cred since I'm the author?)
All oils when heated to temperature are carcinogens. This is nothing new, or even contested. It has to do with the breakdown of the molecules of the oil and the interaction between the pan and loads of other stuff that make no difference between a virgin pressed olive oil that is $15 an ounce, or a bulk vegetable oil that comes from hundreds of plants and is mixed to be a uniform oil consistency.
It's just the nature of Oil. You heat it up, it begins to break down--and BAM. You have Carcinogen compounds.
Burger cooked on a grill? Carcinogen. Chicken seared in a pan? Carcinogen. Grilled veggies? Carcinogen. Soy beans? Carcinogen. Bacon? Carcinogen from both the nitrates OR the carbon monoxide they use to set the red hemoglobin in the meat.
So you are doomed from the start, and there's nothing you can do about it.
(also, Burrito Master, you realize that they use Canola oil on the grills at Chipotle when they make the chicken--and they burn the heck out of them to get those little marks on them that make people go, "OOH! Grilled food!" when it imparts almost nothing to the overall flavor of the meat.)
I must apologize for saying that 'Canola/ soy are major carcinogens WITHOUT heating it. What is more accurate is that "Canola and Soy oil are extremely toxic for humans to eat, not to mention that they are carcinogenic.
By the way, neither canola nor soy oil have been eaten very long. Before you say that, 'well soybean oil was found in caves in Korea in 56AD....." Yes this is true (I don't remember the date for sure), however the soy was not GMO, was not separated by heat and Hexane; and was not used to cook with especially for deep frying. It would have been made through a process of fermentation and used sparingly one drop at a time as it has historically been in Japan and China for thousands of years. It is only very recently that Asia has been using modern canola.
PLEASE REFER ANY QUESTIONS TO MARY ENIG. She is probably the worlds most knowledgeable person dealing with fats and oils. Younger folks may need to be told that she was the first person to really raise the whole healthy fat / unhealthy fat idea back in the seventies and eighties.. She is considered very credible and respected by her peers and has a wealth of books and reports that have involved a great scientific community. I currently live in a small town and would have no problem resourcing this information from my public library. I recommend that if you need further convincing to find out one of these resources as it is difficult to find credible scientific info on the web without being a scientist and searching through private scientific databases. Books are the way to go! There are also many books that have been written over the last thirty years that cite Mary Enig's and her colleges work such as Sally Fallon Michael Pollen.
http://www.life-enthusiast.com/index/Articles/Enig/The_Great_Con-ola
http://www.dldewey.com/canola.htm
Is that carcinogenic?
Let me clarify, so you don't get me another webpage with one person's PERSONAL OPINIONS ON THE MATTER.
A peer reviewed paper is one that is published in a scientific journal, such as Nature or equivalent, in which the claim of Canola oil has been shown to be toxic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Peer_review
Not a webpage that was copy-and-pasted from a magazine that is not fact checked.
Otherwise, you are not proving your point by looking for a webpage that supports your claims--I can make a webpage that says anything. Doesn't mean a thing. Just means you can go to Google and type in "Canola oil toxic" (which, by the way, your 'answer' was the number 3 result.)
I don't know what it is about the 3rd or 4th molecule but it's very bad, why are you on canola oils side so much are you married to it?
Who cares if it's easy to get ,so is cheese on a mousetrap for mice, does that make it the best choice? I'm throwing out to to inform the people so they might live an extra healthy 4-5 years.
If it is as dangerous as you make it out to be, you should have no issue looking up a published paper in a journal. Or several, as the case should be.
http://www.aspartame.ca/page_oho3.htm
http://www.aspartame.ca/page_oho3.htm#DEADLY
http://articles.mercola.com/sites/articles/archive/2000/01/23/canola-oil-update.aspx
The repeated heating of cooking oil (regardless of type) to its smoke point cause the formation of potential carcinogenic compounds.
PS, if anyone is thinking of making these, you ought to worry about the butter, mayonnaise, oil, and chicken lard stopping your heart before you worry about carcinogens!
I've always wanted to try to re-create Simpsons recipes. Especially those Dessert Dogs Marge made.
I've definitely trying this!
kthanxby,
Zucchini's monkey
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/wasabi
...or your preferred dictionary.
It's pronounced:
/wah/-suh-bee
You can also hear an actual Japanese person pronouncing it here:
http://www.forvo.com/search/wasabi/
Forvo is great for hearing native pronunciations.