Mmmmm... chicken. Organic Free-range chicken....

As most of you know, my eating habits have transformed many times over the years. I was raised vegetarian, but at about 16 my great bhaiya The Bhat introduced me to McDonald's Quarter Pounders with cheese and Chicken McNuggets. Ohh those wonderful, fake meat yet so tasty, little nuggets of "chicken". McDonalds' BBQ sauce is to die for too. Anyhow, I eventually became a Chicken and Beef lover, and in the process developed an expertise in cooking pan-seared ribeye steaks, chicken parmagiana, and chicken souvlakis.

Then something happened about a year ago when I decided to be a compassionate, psuedo vegetarian and began limiting myself to eating only organic, free-range meat. Not sure why this came about, but hey, it works for me. A few months ago, I was perusing the meat case at my favorite grocery store, Harris Teeter, and came across the jackpot - Organic, Free-range chicken breasts by Smart Chicken. Mind you they're about 3 times the price of regular chicken, at $7.99/lb. The first thing I made with them was baked Dijon Parmesan Chicken, which was off the hook. The chicken was especially moist and tender, something you don't get with the $2 bulk chicken from Giant (thou that's a great deal). Then Nima and I made some Pan-fried Buffalo Chicken Strips, which were again fantastic.

I continued to make weekly visits to HT so I could have chicken once or twice a week. About 3 weeks ago when I was making my weekly HT Organic Chicken Breast run, I discovered the gold mine of organic free-range chicken - WINGS. Thank you Harris Teeter! I haven't had wings for months, and I always said Wings and Sushi were the hardest things for me to give up since I went organic.

Well, the wings are back baby. The first thing I did was pick up 2 lbs of wings at $3/lb, and then went off to the internet to find a great homemade wing recipe, since I've never done it before. I ended up finding a couple good recipes online including a sweet blog, the Hot Sauce Blog. It turns out, making wings from scratch is easy, and your wings come out exactly the way you want them. We ended up flour-coating and deep-frying them, and then soaking them in a hot sauce of vinegar, melted butter, and Frank's Red Hot Wing sauce. Again, the Smart Chicken proved to be extra juicy and tender, which combined with a crispy fried skin resulted in the perfect chicken wing.




Going to town on some homemade, organic, free-range, chicken wings. Mmm mmm good.