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Where do you get your wings from??

If brined properly, most of the added sodium from the brining solution will be rinsed away. It’s a whole osmosis thing where it enters into the cell structure, does it’s magic at making the muscle better able to hold moisture, then the sodium will exit the same way. This is why it’s important to always give your protein a very nice shower or bath before cooking, it helps to wash all that salt off the meat.
 
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I am starting to go to fresh wings also.
How much salt and water should be used with how many lbs of wings?
Also, how long do they soak and how long can they be stored?
Thanks for the replies
 
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This site has some good recipes and instructions to get started: http://www.virtualweberbullet.com/brining.html

And this explains what is going on in painful detail: http://old.cbbqa.org/articles/Salt/SaltBrining.html
There is no diffusion of sodium into the meat cells, because the cells themselves already contain a high concentrations of sodium. Even very concentrated brining solutions will be less concentrated than the intracellular fluids.
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However, as the intracellular fluids lose their free water molecules, their concentration of sodium increases, because of the loss of water. Therefore, the cells seem to have increased their sodium content, but this is only an illusion.

Edit: I was thinking about that explanation and it doesn’t sound correct to me as he has the water moving into a lower concentrated solution, so I went looking for more info.

Wikipedia says:
Brining makes cooked meat moister by hydrating the cells of its muscle tissue before cooking, via the process of osmosis, and by allowing the cells to hold on to the water while they are cooked, via the process of denaturation.[1] The brine surrounding the cells has a higher concentration of salt than the fluid within the cells, but the cell fluid has a higher concentration of other solutes.[1] This leads salt ions to diffuse into the cell, whilst the solutes in the cells cannot diffuse through the cell membranes into the brine. The increased salinity of the cell fluid causes the cell to absorb water from the brine via osmosis.[1] The salt introduced into the cell also denatures its proteins.[1] The proteins coagulate, forming a matrix that traps water molecules and holds them during cooking. This prevents the meat from dehydrating.
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In many foods the additional salt is also desirable as a preservative.

That sounds right to me… http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brining

Illegal Double Edit: I found some more information on how much sodium brining can add: http://www.salon.com/2010/03/23/brining … lculation/ and http://www.cooksillustrated.com/howto/p … docid=1630
 
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We buy a jumbo “rotisserie” wing from Sysco. They are precooked. They average 2oz each so a dozen weighs a pound and a half. We run them though the oven with one of several sauces and charge $9.75 a dozen. We have been advertising them and talking about how they are NOT “Bar-bargain mini wings”. They sell very well. We recently added 2 dozen and 3 dozen size orders with a slight savings. The 2 dozen sells pretty well. (Three dozen is nearly 5 lbs so we don’t sell that one too often!)
 
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I’m not too sure if Roysters article above is a bad thing or a good thing for the pizza industry. While most all of us offer wings, I would guess that in general they account for a small portion of our sales. Wholesale cost of wings being the highest ever won’t hurt most of us significantly while is would seem to make pizza a more competitive alternative to the chicken wing restaurants, whether they be sit down or delivery restaurants. Thoughts?
 
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This is an annual trend every January through March. The killer will be if they go up and stay up like they did a few years back, where cases were running $60 or $70 bucks and some higher. As long as they level back down a little, the small pizza and wings shops can still carry the chicken. Otherwise, profitability will definitely tank.
 
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The wing prices are killing me. They’re costing me $800 more a week compared to what I was paying at their lowest this past summer. I just raised the prices on my menu last week. I wish I would have done it sooner.
 
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We went with fresh wings a few years ago. The price per pound is attractive. What we did not count on was:
  1. Loss of weight in cooking adds about 30% to the price.
  2. Other ingredients.
  3. A bunch of labor.
  4. A lot more dishes to wash.
  5. Double the number of grease trap cleanings (we do not have a fryer so we only need to do this 3-4 times a year. Washing all the wing trays from baking doubled this.
  6. Walk-in complexity stocking prepped wings and raw wings…
All in all, they were great but added complexity, not profit. Went back to fully cooked.
 
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The biggest thing here to overcome is what Steve talked about. He sells BIG wings not the mini-bar app wings. This all falls down to your opertion and what your customers view your offerings to be. Steve sells high-end pizza options and prices accordingly. As such I would expect BIG wings if I ordered them from him. Now someone that sells $5-10 large pizzas is not going to have 2-3 oz wings on the menu at $10 a dozen. Even though these are different menu items…your customers will get an opinion of what level of quality and size of portions you offer. The chain restaurants fight this every couple of years it seems. They start to offer a couple of better menu items. Add a filet or something at a reasonable price…but their customer base is not going there for a great steak. They still do not accept a $30 steak next too an $8 special. Not too mention that most $8-10 an hour cooks cannot grill anyway. You buiness model is of utmost importance here. Decide who you want to be and offer at that level. If you confuse your customers you will not be their first choice as a destination when where to go is being discussed. Keep it simple and straight forward. I believe this can only help with you sales. :mrgreen:
 
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