Baked Parmesan Garlic Chicken Wings

Baked Parmesan Garlic Chicken Wings

March 6th

2010

written by Cleone

Dressed up wings

Late night scouring of various food blogs have inspired me to try some amazing sounding recipes.  I realize I have stuck to mostly Asian themed dishes, but sometimes it is all AM and I crave.  Our trip to Costco yesterday left us leaving the place with some choice meats for upcoming tasty meals.

After coming across a couple of recipes for chicken wings, I thought why not try it since I haven’t had wings in a long time.  I remember craving campfire wings for a while.  It is strange because my version never had any seasoning.  The campfire provided enough of a unique flavor.  I haven’t camped or BBQ’ed in a while so it hasn’t occurred to me lately to make wings at home.

Along comes this Parmesan Garlic wings recipe and wow.  I must have repeated that word three times and heard it from AM another few times.  This recipe is DELICIOUS!!!  It is quite simple but incredibly tasty!  You must try it!  I found this recipe on Jaden Hair’s blog The Steamy Kitchen (must give credit where credit is due!).

Seasoning (clockwise from top right: rosemary, sea salt, cumin, and oregano)

The recipe calls for ground cumin.  I only had whole cumin seeds.  I delicately chopped up the seeds as much as I could because I didn’t want to use my coffee grinder and end up with cumin flavored coffee.  The challenging part about chopping up cumin seeds is that they are hard tiny little things so putting a blade to it results in seeds flying all over the place.  That’s why I had to do this delicately.

Seasoned wings ready for the oven

Basil and garlic

I like that this recipe uses fresh basil.  Since having my own basil plant, I will try any recipe which calls for this herb just to have an excuse to harvest some leaves from my beloved plant.  I have been taking really good care of it and it has rewarded me abundantly.  Yay for fresh basil!

BAKED PARMESAN GARLIC CHICKEN WINGS
(Adapted from a recipe from PizzAmore, Mount Dora, Florida)

Serving size: 4

Ingredients:
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 teaspoon dried rosemary
1/2 teaspoon ground cumin
1 teaspoon kosher or sea salt (1/2 tsp table salt)
2 1/2 pounds chicken wings
3 tablespoons extra-virgin olive oil (or melted butter)
2 tablespoons minced fresh basil
2 garlic cloves, finely minced
1/4 cup grated parmesan cheese
1/2 teaspoon seasoning salt (like Lawry’s)
1 cup blue cheese dressing (optional)
1-2 teaspoons Dijon mustard (optional, or to taste)

1. Preheat oven to 425F. In a small bowl, mix together the oregano, rosemary, cumin and salt. Lay the chicken wings on a baking sheet and season the chicken wings with this mixture.  (I put the wings on top of parchment paper on a baking sheet.  I find that the chicken doesn’t stick to the paper as it does to aluminum foil.)

2. Bake the chicken wings for 20-25 minutes. While the chicken is baking, mix together the oil, fresh basil, garlic, parmesan cheese and seasoning salt.

3. In a separate bowl, mix together the blue cheese dressing with the mustard (this is your dipping sauce).

4. When the chicken is cooked through, toss the wings with the garlic/cheese/butter sauce. Serve with the blue cheese/mustard dressing.

Note: I usually don’t like to dunk my chicken wings in dip or blue cheese dressing. Therefore I did not make the blue cheese/mustard dressing, which is perfectly fine because the wings were so well-seasoned that it really didn’t need anything else.