What happened?
Round 1:
Deboned 2 chicken wings (took 12 minutes to do first one, 8 minutes for second), stuffed with a mixture of 1 lb pork, 1 tbsp lemongrass, 1 tbsp ginger, 1 Makrut lime leaf, small box of oyster mushrooms, 1 onion. Heavy sprinkling of garlic salt outside wings, baked at 425F for 20 min.
Found it to have too much filling – each bite was basically just pork, outside could be crunchier, stuffing didn’t have enough flavor. Whenever a bite had lemongrass in it, it tasted much better. Garlic salt on the outside gave it a nice contrast.
Round 2:
Deboning now averaged 6-7 minutes! Stuffed less filling into each wing. Added Thai chili to the stuffing to give it more kick. Broiled a bit after 17 min baking.
Outside was a bit crispier but still not what I expected. Thai chili complemented flavors well, but it was more of an after taste than initial hit as we hoped. Stuffing was still pretty dry and not enough flavor.
Round 3:
Kept Thai chili in it, added green onion, more lemongrass and lime leaves, pan seared instead of baking.
Turned out much juicier on the inside, crispier on the outside, and more flavorful overall!
What went well?
Learned how to debone chicken wings. Learned what lemongrass and lime leaf taste like / how to work with them – as their name implies, they’re both very citrusy! Adds a nice refreshing yet herbaceous taste to it.
Consistent with previous learnings involving meat, pan searing gives a better browning / ends up with juicier meat. Ended with a pretty solid first try at this!
What could go better?
In order for this dish to work well, both the stuffing and chicken have to be stellar. Otherwise, you could have just used dumpling wrappers instead of chicken, and you could have just kept the juicy chicken meat instead of supplementing with stuffing.
Our last attempt was much better than our first, but it’s still not quite what I hoped for though. I suspect deep frying would be even better for maintaining juices while giving it the crunchy coat I wanted. And I want to try other types of fillings.
Perhaps something more similar to dumpling stuffing? Or other types of meat? Ground beef could be eaten at a lower temperature, so maybe it’d work better for deep frying. In general, need something with more upfront flavor.