Fish Sauce Wings

Over the Thanksgiving weekend, I went to see 'The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 1' with my sister. I read the books while I was in Turkey, in the spring of 2012 in anticipation that the movies were going to be released later that same year. As I am apt to do, I became obsessed, the way I did with Harry Potter, Twilight, A Song of Ice & Fire, and potentially with the Divergent series (which I have downloaded but have yet to read). What can I say? I love a good series. I dragged my sister along to the first movie and she's been my faithful companion to the second and now the third. I think she's a fan, which surprises me because we have pretty different tastes when it comes to books and media. I can tolerate reality television. She binge-watches reality television. I enjoy fear; I can't even say the word "horror" in front of M. She's a fan of cheese (i.e. rom-coms) and can watch a movie marathon of blonde protagonists chasing 'bad boys.' Me? Not so much.

We are so incredibly different, sometimes we question how we could even be related. But one thing we absolutely have in common is that we both love a good makeover montage and we absolutely love to eat. My sister always says that if not for her, my food blog would barely have any content because she's the one that eats everything I share. That's partly true. I think I'd still have a decent amount of content, but I think a lot more food would go to waste. M is the leftover champion in our house and she's kind of a scary beast when it comes to yelling at us about wasting food.

Anyway, it's awesome living together because she gets just as excited about planning the next meal as I do. On this particular evening, I was feeling a little uninspired. We had just gone grocery shopping that morning and from the protein choices we'd purchased, wings seemed like the easiest bet. I was going to make my usual Korean style wings but then I remembered the fish sauce wings that I had in Texas back in February. We'd gone to Houston to visit my cousin and her hubby and right from the airport, we went to an awesome eatery called Hay Merchant (which you can read about on my blog) where we had really delicious fish sauce wings.

I decided to take a stab at recreating them and it turned out to be a delicious experiment.

Ingredients [enough sauce for 1 dozen wings]:
½ onion, finely diced
4 cloves garlic, minced
2 tablespoons soy sauce
1 tablespoon Vietnamese fish sauce
1 teaspoon sesame oil
2 tablespoons honey
1 teaspoon rice wine vinegar
+chopped Thai chilies
+1 dozen fried chicken wings

Chop up the onions and mince up the garlic.

Grab a saucepan - I chose this cute and tiny one - and pop it over a low to medium heat. Add in a little sesame oil and then add in the onions and garlic and cook until soft. Pour in the soy sauce and fish sauce and honey and bring to a boil. Let the sauce cook for about 10 minutes until it's thickened.

That's it. It's the easiest sauce ever.

Meanwhile, fry up some wings. I share the steps and nitty gritties in my crispy wings post so if you need tips, check that out.

And all that's left to do is serve! I've mentioned this several times before, I like to serve the wings and sauce separate. This way, the breading stays crispy.

I served the wings next to a big bowl of Vietnamese-style noodles. I mimicked the flavors of the sauce (soy sauce, Vietnamese fish sauce, and honey) and tossed them into a big bowl of bean thread noodles with cucumbers, onions, peppers, carrots, and green beans.What can I say? I was looking to make the laziest dinner possible; and I'm 100% certain that I succeeded.

The wings are quite good, I have to say. If you're not a fan of fish sauce, skip these. If you haven't had fish sauce before, I can only describe the flavor as being quite salty, savory, and a little fishy. The wings themselves have a slightly sweeter flavor and they totally hit the spot.

You know, I'm so obsessed with crispy wings that I'll only spoon on enough sauce for each bite, as I take them. Is that odd? I think it's just me being prudent. I don't dare risk eating a soggy wing.

It's also super delicious with some pizza.

Since fish sauce wings alone would be super overwhelming with pizza, serve it with regular wing sauce and some gochujang wing sauce too. It's fun to have choices.

Here's the recipe page: