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Matt Reynolds is a buffalo wing prodigy. He grew up outside Buffalo, N.Y., and started cooking wings with his mom at age four. ("She'd cook the wings and I'd make the sauce.") As a kid he ate wings two or three times a week, at one point downing 60 in one sitting. Then he moved to Eastern Europe, where buffalo wings were scarce. No matter. Reynolds finagled his American friends into shipping him bottles of Frank's Red Hot so he could cook buffalo wings for his new Slovak friends.
That's when lightning struck. "We had this idea to go back to the U.S. for a wing tour like you might go on a wine tour in France," he recently told Bon Appétit, "and gradually that just evolved into a mission to find the world's best buffalo wing." The result was The Great Chicken Wing Hunt, his first feature documentary, available today on iTunes after winning several festival plaudits.
Reynolds is dead serious about wings. His journey covered 2,627 miles and 72 wing stops. He had a scorecard with metrics like sauce consistency, skin consistency, aroma, and heat. He also compensated for judges' bias. ("How drunk were you when you ate your last meal of wings? 0 = stone cold sober, 10 = totally f'ed up.") In short, Reynolds is just the guy to give us the dope on making perfect Super Bowl buffalo wings.
What's your first memory of a wing?
There was an explosion of wings in upstate New York in the '80s. I remember having them really young and being put off by how hot they were, but then at some moment overcoming that. I remember being five and everyone being amazed that a five-year-old was eating such spicy food. I love the taste now, but I wonder if at the time I loved the attention... I almost had an ulcer when I was 7 and the doctor told me I had to stop eating wings for 6 months.
What's your favorite part of the wing?
I can go both ways. I think the flatty is a little tastier but it's more work.
Did you just call it a "flatty"?
Yeah, flatty and the drum. The flatty's the part with two bones.
How do you season your wings?
The standard recipe with just Frank's and butter is so good, and that's fine if that's all you want to do, but you can expand from that. You can add fresh garlic and fresh peppers. I add a little honey mustard. Sometimes a little bit of honey if the peppers are bitter. My favorites are ultrahot wings with fresh peppers. You can add a lot of heat to a buffalo wing by adding fresh peppers. Adding extracts is cheating. One minor point is it's a mistake to make an extra-hot wing by taking out the butter, because the creaminess of the butter is an important part of the flavor.
And I never bread them. You're not supposed to bread them for a true buffalo wing.
http://vimeo.com/38309749
What's your ideal fry temp?
It depends on your deep fryer. It's about 375, but I do it by feel.
You own a deep fryer?
I do. For people who live in small apartments who might not want a deep fryer, you can bake them in a 1/4 inch of oil. Just roll the wings in the oil and have a layer of oil on the cooking pan and bake them 'til they're nice and crispy. That's 90 percent as good.
What about condiments?
The traditional recipe is celery and blue cheese, but I know that people in the West like it with ranch. That's fine. I can understand that.
What's your take on non-buffalo wing preparations?
In the last 10 years, people have spent so much time making other kinds of wing sauces, you know the whole "novelty wing sauce" thing? When I went to Eastern Europe in the mid-'90s, there was just buffalo wings. When I came back there was honey mustard, teriyaki, Asian peanut sauces. I still think that the buffalo flavor is the best of them all.
What do you drink with your wings?
I personally like wings with kinda sweetish white wine, like a Riesling. A lot of people think of beer and wings. I find that something a little bit sweet is a nice compliment.
As someone who eats wings all the time, how are you mixing it up for the Super Bowl?
I like to make a buffalo chicken dip. It's like a layer of chicken with a ton of buffalo sauce, and then a layer of blue cheese, a layer of mozzarella, and a layer of celery. And then you bake it. And then you dip chips in it.
Now that the documentary's over, how many wings do you eat in the off-season?
People ask me at Q&As, "Do I still eat wings after the trip?" Absolutely. I probably eat them anywhere from two to six times a month.