I’m not normally a chicken wing eater, but I hear about others liking them. Thought I’d get some at the store the other day, but they were $3.99 a pound while drumsticks were only $1.99 a pound.
For you chicken wing enthusiasts - why would chicken wings be worth the $2 more a pound? What are you doing with them? Talk me out of the drumsticks I bought instead.
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Marketing.
More seasoning to meat ratio. And the meat is tender like breast meat, but fatty enough to not be dry. Easy to eat with your hands and to share. Easy to cook fast and thoroughly in a deep fryer. And used to be dirt cheap. I remember 10 cent wing nights at bars to bring in people and make them thirsty. Basically selling them at cost. Would be more like 50 cents now. But they got popular, so you never see it anymore. Now they sell for a huge profit.
Very tender meat you get to eat off the bone, plus lots of crispy skin.
disclaimer: I don’t like wings either
I just find that they taste better. It’s the tastiest part of the chicken, especially the wing tip with 2 bones. Airfryer cooks them really nicely
I suppose it has to do with surface area. You could toss your drumsticks in buffalo sauce, but there’s a couple problems. It would be way messier and you’d end up with even more sauce on your face, and ultimately there’s more meat to surface in a drumstick so you’d end up with less sauce in each bite, including plenty of chicken closer to the bone with no sauce at all.
So-
- Convenience
- Maximum sauce
Max skin / crunch to sauce as well
Buffalo Wings! The best shi evah
They taste good. But i mean… Thighs are like the same meat and you get more of it for cheaper than any other part of the chicken except maybe the feet. 🤷🏻♂️
I’ve never had them, but my guess is that they’re essentially a sauce-delivery system?
I would love to tell you you’re wrong, but you kinda nailed it.
Also, what the fuck? How have you never had wings?
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They used to be thrown away or used for stock, poor people turned them into trendy food and now it’s expensive. Same with Osso bucco.
Damned poor people and their master plan of trend setting. shakes fist
Really though, poor people buy what they can afford and do what they can to make it delicious. Think the same thing happened with bacon and lobster.
I recall reading that lobster used to only be deemed fit enough food for prisoners.
I don’t think they planned on making it trendy, but cheap tasty food sure has a way of getting popular.
And lamb shanks! Used to be so cheap. Not any more.
I had my first taste at a dive bar in 1989. 5 cents apiece!
And lobster! Used to be prison food.
Skin to meat ratio. Drum sticks fill you up faster, I eat wings for the spices and sauces not the meat. You can eat 12 delicious wings for every 6 delicious drumsticks. If you just want to get full faster go for drumsticks. If you want to savour the action of eating, go for wings.
And if you are dirt poor … you use the wing as a dipping stick to lap up as much of the sauce as possible by double/triple/quadruple dipping before consuming the chicken wing meat.
They were a garbage cut of meat that were tossed to the freed slaves of the south, and as black folk do, they turned it into a delicious snack with spices and seasonings. As culture desegregated, it became a trendy dish and that drove the prices up on what was once a trash cut.
From a culinary viewpoint, the ratio of protein, fat and crispy skin is perfect and you won’t find it elsewhere on a chicken. The large surface area to relatively small amount of edible meat means a high ratio of seasoning per bite.
Makes for a tasty snack
I would buy the drumsticks too at that price. If you’re not looking for the historical reasons, then it’s purely preference and recipe. Drumsticks are higher in meat and chicken wings are higher in skin and sauce surface area. I usually prefer drumsticks but wings win when the recipe makes the skin super crunchy or I want a higher ratio of sauce.
I don’t know, man, it’s just like… the way that it is.
