Pok Pok Chicken Wings
One of my favorite shows to watch is Guy Fieri’s Diner, Drive-ins, and Dives. I can watch hours of this show and I make mental notes of featured restaurants in my area. I just love good diner or dive restaurants.
I also love chicken wings: fried, grilled, baked…you pretty much can’t go wrong with a good chicken wing recipe. When I saw the episode on DDD featuring Pok Pok and their vietnamese chicken wings I knew I had to find the recipe and try it.
The recipe I did find was not the same as what they were using on the show (yes, I DVR’d the episode and watched it multiple times) so I sort of tweaked the recipe to combine the techniques and ingredients they used on the show.
Ike’s Vietnamese Fish Sauce Wings (serves 6)
Ingredients
- 1/2 cup Asian fish sauce + 1/4 cup for sauce
- 1/2 cup palm sugar (or reg. sugar) + 1/4 cup for sauce
- 2 TB honey
- 4 garlic cloves, 2 crushed and 2 minced
- 1 TB salt
- 2 TB lime
- 3 pounds chicken wings, split at the drumettes
- 2 TB vegetable oil, plus more for frying
- 1 cup cornstarch (or combo rice flour and tempura mix)
- 1 TB chopped cilantro
- 1 TB chopped mint
Directions
In a small bowl, mix garlic (2 cloves) and salt (crushing garlic), add about 1 cup hot water and drain in cheese cloth (garlic will burn in deep fryer).In a bowl, whisk the fish sauce, sugar and garlic juice. Add the wings and toss to coat. Refrigerate for 3 hours, tossing the wings occasionally.
Heat the 2 tablespoons of oil in a small skillet. Add the minced garlic; cook over moderate heat until golden, 3 minutes.
In a large pot, heat 2 inches of oil to 350°. Pat the wings dry on paper towels; reserve the marinade. Coat the wings in cornstarch. Fry the wings in batches until golden and cooked through, about 10 minutes.
In a wok, simmer the 1/4 cup fish sauce, 1/4 cup sugar, 2 TB honey (with garlic chili paste if want hot) & 2 TB Lime juice over moderately high heat until syrupy, 5 minutes. Add the wings and toss (you can add a little bit of water if sauce too thick). Top with the cilantro, mint and fried garlic and serve.
I substituted Mae Ploy Sweet Chili Sauce for the honey in the second batch and it was awesome! Thanks for your recipe, it is yummy! But I prefer a bit more heat. And the palm sugar adds an interesting flavor note that I love! Thanks so much.
Terry
Hi Terry, I tend to like them hotter as well. I am glad you enjoyed them. I had to watch the recipe repeatedly to get the ingredients but it was worth it 😉
Where do the 2 TB Lime go? In the marinade? The sauce? Both?
Hi Charles,
Sorry…I was so quick to eat the wings I wasn’t that clear in the recipe. I put the lime juice in the sauce. Hope that helps.
Thank you!! Thank you! You are correct on this recipes especially about the rice flour and termpura mix. I was also looking at the other recipes and all of them call for cornstarch. But I do remember him and (Guy) saying he uses rice flour and tempura mix. I think that makes a difference. Rice flour is much lighter than even cornstarch. These look amazing and I will have to try them. Did he not double fry them or am I mistaken. I will have to look at the DDD show.
Pam, I just re-recorded the DDD episode so I will watch it again (for like the 10th time) to see if he double fries…i did not. These are super tasty and would be perfect for the superbowl (i think that is when I last made them) but you need a big deep fryer because they go very fast!
I made this, added a little additional auger, the first batch was to crispy, make sure to dry the chicken before putting it in flour, this made my second batch perfect! Yum! This will be a perfect super bowl dish.
trying these a second time for the big game. First time I followed the recipe exactly …and I was frying the 6 lbs of wings for a long time…today I am going to try HOT convection oven,without the flour and see how they do,cause I think they’ll be “almost” as good…I’ll check in and let you all know.
Peg, I was going to try to do the same thing. I do an oven “fried” chicken and do not use any flour and it gets crispy so I was hoping the same would work for the wings. I usually have the oven on at 475-500 and I have a hot oven. Let me know how it works for you!
well now i have decided to use the turkey fryer outside so it’s no mess and thwy will cook in a heart beat as compared to pan after cast iron pan of wings…but i still believe it would work!! maybe I’ll hold out a few to try the baked way!!!