Do you feel horrified when you see the name of today’s post? Yes, cola here is not for drinking but for cooking! I promise, the reason I use cola is not “those crazy Chinese people eat everything!”, lol. In Chinese cuisine, cola and beer can be fantastic broths for braising poultry or pork. They are carbonate drinks, so the carbon acid helps to soften the meat fibres and speed up cooking process. Cola is sweetened, the caramel sugar in it can coat on the meat as a beautiful glaze. Cola is also slightly seasoned. The unique combination of cinnamon, coriander and lemon flavour is quite hard to be recreated. So cooking with cola is actually a cheating way, just like using bottled sauce. We use cola for sweet salty dishes and beer for savory dishes. Of course, you should pick up a light mild beer if you don’t want too much bitterness.
I choose chicken wings because I love the skin texture. Drumsticks will be another good option. I have seen people cooking a whole chicken in this way too, lol. For better taste penetration, I would like to slightly pan fry them to get a bit golden crust, or make two or three cuts on the surfaces.
Cola Chicken Wings
- February 20, 2019
- 2
- 45 min
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Ingredients
- 500 g chicken wings
- 330 ml Coke cola
- ½ tsp fresh ground pepper
- 3 slices ginger
- 2 tbsp oil
- 1 tbsp cooking wine / sake
- 2 tbsp light soy sauce
- 1 tsp dark soy sauce
- 1 tsp cornstarch, mixed with 1 tbsp water
- some chopped coriander for garnishment
Directions
- Step 1
- Wash and pat dry the chicken wings, and marinate with pepper .
- Step 2
- Heat a pan in medium high heat. Fry the ginger slices into golden colour first. Then put in chicken wings and fry until light brown on both sides.
- Step 3
- Pour in around one third of cola and carefully scratch the bottom to get all the flavour.
- Step 4
- Transfer the wings and broth to a pot and discard ginger slices. Add the rest of cola, sake and soy sauce.
- Step 5
- Turn the heat to medium after it boils, and braise the wings for 15-20 minutes. You can taste the broth now to see if you want some extra salt. If the broth is not sufficient to cover the wings, you can gently turn them around during braising. Try not to add more water.
- Step 6
- Add in well mixed starch water in the end of cooking. The viscosity will help broth to coat on the wings.
- Step 7
- Serve with some coriander sprinkled on top.
