# Canning hot wings?



## SouthCentralUS (Nov 11, 2012)

I figure if anyone has done this, it would be Davarm but a search turned up nothing. I would like to try canning wings with the hot sauce. Has anyone done this?

We have a lot of ice and I am stuck inside with a lot of time to think of what to do next. Nothing left to can today and I am bored.


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## camo2460 (Feb 10, 2013)

SouthCentralUS said:


> I figure if anyone has done this, it would be Davarm but a search turned up nothing. I would like to try canning wings with the hot sauce. Has anyone done this?
> 
> We have a lot of ice and I am stuck inside with a lot of time to think of what to do next. Nothing left to can today and I am bored.


 Why not? What I would do is make my hot wings in a separate pot until nearly done, and then can them with a little extra sauce. However don't take my word for it gypsy sue or Davarm are the experts.


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## Davarm (Oct 22, 2011)

I have never done it but it's actually on my list of things to try.

I think camo2460's idea would be a good place to start experimenting. 

If you can can "chicken nuggets" I'd bet you could do hot wings without a problem!


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## crabapple (Jan 1, 2012)

I do not care for hot food if the heat stay in my mouth after I drink my ice tea.
But I think the heat should help keep the food fresh & a vacuumed jar is great for this.
Let us know how it works out.


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## TheManComesAround (Jun 18, 2013)

No worries about the bones or the skin? I thought those things were a no-no - or would it not really matter because of the relative small size of the wings. I suppose you could cut chicken breasts or tenders into "fingers" and raw-pack in Buffalo Sauce. I gotta say.....If this can be safely done....it's gonna occupy 2/3 of my pantry!


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## SouthCentralUS (Nov 11, 2012)

TheManComesAround said:


> No worries about the bones or the skin? I thought those things were a no-no - or would it not really matter because of the relative small size of the wings. I suppose you could cut chicken breasts or tenders into "fingers" and raw-pack in Buffalo Sauce. I gotta say.....If this can be safely done....it's gonna occupy 2/3 of my pantry!


If Dave says it can be done, then do it. I plan to do this soon to surprise my next to youngest. His favorite foods are hot wings, fried okra and fried green tomatoes.

Thanks guys for the replies.


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## Davarm (Oct 22, 2011)

SouthCentralUS said:


> If Dave says it can be done, then do it. I plan to do this soon to surprise my next to youngest. His favorite foods are hot wings, fried okra and fried green tomatoes.
> 
> Thanks guys for the replies.


Thanks for the confidence, usually before I'll post the results of something "Unusual" or "Iffy" I'll get someone else to try it out just to double check me.



TheManComesAround said:


> No worries about the bones or the skin? I thought those things were a no-no - or would it not really matter because of the relative small size of the wings. I suppose you could cut chicken breasts or tenders into "fingers" and raw-pack in Buffalo Sauce. I gotta say.....If this can be safely done....it's gonna occupy 2/3 of my pantry!


The bones can be a concern if you dont allow extra time in the canner, I've canned bone in chicken(legs & thighs) without issues. I do crack the larger bones first to allow them to cook through more easily though. On the wings, the bones are small enough that you should just be able to up the canning time to allow for it, that's where the "experimenting" would come in.

I have never had a problem canning poultry with skin on, I dont do it very often though. The hot wings would be a case where I'd do it and not worry about it, it's gonna be a learning experience when I get around to trying it.


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## Davarm (Oct 22, 2011)

SouthCentralUS said:


> If Dave says it can be done, then do it. I plan to do this soon to surprise my next to youngest. His favorite foods are hot wings, fried okra and fried green tomatoes.
> 
> Thanks guys for the replies.


BTW, I have canned fried okra and french fries! They come out kinda soggy and need to be dipped back into hot oil to be crisped back up.

They are both pretty good!


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## Woody (Nov 11, 2008)

I would worry more about texture than safety. If you pressure can you know all bugs will be killed and it will be safe until opened. What they will be like when you open the can/jar is another thing.

I am certainly no expert! I am a beginner at the pressure canning thing. But, at 10# for 90 minutes it would seem that the wings would be fully 'cooked' by the time they are removed. All that would be required is to deep fry them to crisp them up? I have tried some canned cubed meats and they were fully cooked, just the texture was lacking. I tried a few minutes on open flame and they were hard and dry, in a stew they were alright.

Wouldn't you be able to add then to sauce, raw, in a jar and pressure can then crisp them up once opened?


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## Onebigelf (Sep 17, 2011)

I haven't done wings, but I've done both chicken breast fingers and random chicken chunks in wing sauce.

John


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## Jason (Jul 25, 2009)

Would the hot sauce go all wonky? I seem to remember reading that when you can meat you really don't want to over spice it, or it tastes bad. Would that apply to sauces, or just dry spices? On the other hand, we water bath can a lot of spaghetti sauce and it's spiced up before it's canned. 

I'm interested to hear about the experiment results.


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## AdmiralD7S (Dec 6, 2012)

"Good news, everyone!"

I just got 3 dozen wings from the store and I'm going to play tomorrow. I'll let you know the results in the evening sometime


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## SouthCentralUS (Nov 11, 2012)

We're waiting


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## AdmiralD7S (Dec 6, 2012)

SouthCentralUS said:


> We're waiting


We may be a little SOL here. I turned on my deep fryer about an hour ago and got no heat. It's currently disassembled in front of my TV and I'm looking for the problem 

The good news is that i have some pints canned up, so hopefully no later than tomorrow. I'll check back in one way or the other before too long here.


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## AdmiralD7S (Dec 6, 2012)

Okay, I got it working again, and I only blew one breaker in the house one time, so let's call that a victory and move on without any questions. Okay? Okay!

Since it's still disassembled, I'm going to take this time to clean it well because it really needs it, and then we'll start the grease back up. I expect that I'll be up to temp about 10:30 Eastern, and I'll try to get the full results up around the midnight to 1 AM time frame


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## AdmiralD7S (Dec 6, 2012)

*Success!*

Well, folks, here's how this went down:

I canned 6 pints of bone-in wings that I got from Krogers. Because my pints were regular-mouth, in order to fit the wings in, I had to cut the full wings into 3 parts: the drumette, the flapper, and the wingtip. I put a pair of drumettes and a pair of flappers in each pint, setting the wingtip aside for either stock or compost.

The first thing I noticed was that the 4 pieces occupied most of the space in the jars. I could have put a 5th piece in, and perhaps even a 6th with some finagling. 3 pints were raw-packed naked. The other 3 pints were raw-packed with 1/2 cup of Frank's Red Hot sauce, Montgomery Inn's BBQ sauce, and Famous Dave's BBQ sauce.

In to the canner they went at 10.5 PSI for 75 minutes, and then cooled. Coming out of the canner, the 3 raw-packs had quite a bit of juice in them (as expected). The 3 sauce-packs had more "sauce" than I put in (also as expected). I left those to cool off to a reasonable temperature and came back to them later. You can see them in the attached picture. Left to right: Montomgery, Dave, Frank, raw, raw, and raw.

While those puppies were cooling off, I had more wings to cook! 8 intact wings (drumette, flapper, and wingtip still connected) were patted dry (from package's water) with a paper towel and tossed around in flour, placed on aluminum foil and stuck in the oven. Next to them on another pan were 8 intact wings that went in straight (no flour, no patting dry, nothin'!). The oven had been pre-heated to 425, and they stayed in there for 45 minutes on the middle shelf.

Fiance and I pulled those out and sauced them right up with our hot sauce and pair of BBQs. After all, it was well after lunch and we hadn't had anything yet). The non-floured ones were okay (much better than the crock-pot style my mom raised me on); moist inside, but fairly soft on the outside. The flour ones did better with on "skin crunch" factor, and had the same moist inside. So, if you've got some flour, I recommend you roll your chickens around in them.

Several hours passed and I got to thinking it was time I should dig out the fryer and think about starting dinner. Cleaned the grease-pan out real well, wiped off the heating elements, plugged it in, and....nothing. Nothing? Yeah...nothing. D***IT! >.< Our hero and his holy quest were in trouble, but if you've been reading the thread in order, you already know I got it fixed without burning down the house, so let us continue on to the interesting stuff.

I got the brand-new Canola oil up to 390F and popped open my first jar of naked raw-packs. The wings pieces had shrunk considerably; I could easily have gotten another 4 pieces in there on top of the 4 that were already in. When I do this next time, I will stuff the jar full of those little buggers.

I had the basket on the ledge that lets it float above the grease to allow draining after frying. I put in the first two pieces from the first jar, and was rewarded with a toasty reminder that I should be drying the wings with a paper towel as hot oil does not mix well with water-based anything. Having learned my lesson, I loaded the other 2 pieces in the basket and dropped it in. 10 minutes later, I pulled them back out and let them drain off for 15-20 seconds, and then checked their temperature (mostly out of curiosity since they were already cooked from the canner). Once the needles passed 140 in a hurry, I decided to stop screwing around and sauce up my dinner.

I found the outside to be mildly crunchy, but the fiance thought it was a little overly crunchy. The inside was moist and extremely tender. These were, by far, the best wings I've home-cooked. I hesitate to say that they could beat my local bars/wingeries, but they're in the same league. A little tweaking and they could be my favorite.

So, overall, while it was a long day, I found the wings to b...what? What other jars? Oh, the ones that had the sauce already in them. Right! Yeah, let's not speak of those. Tender gave way to mushy, and I didn't want to ruin my grease with sauce-laden wings, so those were pretty much a wash. As an added anti-bonus, the wing juice made the sauce really thin, so I got a mushy, flavorless wings. You should consider punishing your kids with that for dinner sometime...they'll straighten right up after the first wing.

Okay, so here's my final tally, from best to worst:

BEST
1. Raw-pack w/ no sauce, then deep fry, then sauce
2. Oven roast w/ flour coating, then sauce
3. Oven roast plain, then sauce
4. Raw wings into a crockpot with sauce, serve 4 hours later
5. Perform an appendectomy on yourself just in case your appendix is starting to fail
6. Raw-pack your wings with sauce and heat them up in a dirty microwave, then cry into the bowl while you backtrack your life and figure out what mistakes you made to get here.


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