Chicken Lollipops
The perfect appetizer, these tender chicken lollipops have a light and crisp batter. They are served with delicious hot, spicy and sweet sauce. So much better than takeout!
Ingredients
Chicken Lollipops Ingredients
- 2 pounds chicken wings about 10 whole wings
- vegetable oil for deep frying
- 1/2 cup cornstarch
- 1/2 tsp baking powder
- 1/2 tsp garlic salt
- 1/2 tsp crushed black pepper
- 1/2 cup all purpose flour
- 3/4 cup cold water
- 1 tbsp rice wine vinegar
Sweet and Spicy Sauce Ingredients
- 2 tbsp sriracha
- 3 tbsp soy sauce
- 1 tbsp mirin
- 2 tbsp light brown sugar
- 2 tbsp honey
- 2 medium cloves garlic peeled and minced
- 1 thumb-sided piece of ginger peeling and minced
- 1 tsp sesame oil
- 5 tbsp water
- cornstarch slurry made with 1 tbsp cornstarch mixed with 1 tbsp cold water
Instructions
- First prepare the chicken. Take a chicken wing and cut it into 3 pieces – using the joints of the wing as your guide. Discard the pointy-ended piece.
- Take the middle piece and cut the chicken away from the bones at the fat end (don’t cut any meat off, you just want to detach it from the bone at one end). Push the chicken flesh down using your fingers until the meat is pushed down to the end. You’ll see there are two bones in this piece. The smaller bone can be removed easily once the chicken flesh is pushed down – just pull and twist the bone and it will come free.
- Take the final, largest piece of the chicken wing and cut the chicken away from the bone – this time at the thin end. Again push the chicken flesh down using your fingers until the meat is pushed down to the end.
- Repeat with the rest of the wings – so you have 20 lollipops altogether.
- Heat the oil to 350°F in a large, high-sided pan or deep fryer.
- Mix the cornstarch, baking powder, garlic salt and pepper together in a large bowl. Place the chicken wings in the bowl and toss to coat. Place the chicken wings on a plate.
- Add the flour, water and rice wine vinegar to the remaining cornstarch mix that’s left in the bowl and whisk together.
- One at a time, dip a chicken wing in the batter, let any excess batter drip off and carefully lower into the hot oil. You can cook about 5 chicken wings at a time in this way. Cook for 8 minutes, moving the chicken about in the pan once or twice to prevent it sticking together.
- Once cooked, remove the chicken from the oil and place on some paper towels.
- Repeat with the remaining wings (you can keep the cooked wings warm in the oven on low heat).
- While the chicken lollipops are cooking, make the sauce by mixing all of the sauce ingredients together except for the cornstarch slurry. Heat in a small pan until bubbling, then stir in the cornstarch slurry. Stir until the sauce has thickened, then turn off the heat.
- Serve the chicken lollipops with the warm sauce.