There's no picture, because they were... not photogenic in the slightest.

I shouldn't really call this Attempt One, because I have tried doing this on a number of occasions in my life over the past two decades, but this is my first attempt in a very long time, and my first attempt in my new, bloggy attempts to master and perfect new techniques.

This was mainly prompted by seeing an article a few weeks back about an ideal way to do chicken wings in the oven. This is important to me, because I don't have a deep fryer, and wings are traditionally deep-fried. Unfortunately, I don't know where the fuck I read the article. It passed my eyeballs amongst the torrents of data that flow in front of my eyeballs every single day, and all I could remember from it was oil, a rack, 400 degrees, and 40 minutes. And I couldn't even double-check those numbers.

So that's what I tried. I first marinated the wings in a mix of canola oil, garlic powder, salt, and a bit of the traditional cayenne hot sauce. I figured this would both coat the wings in the oil they'd need to oven-fry and crisp up, and impart some flavor in the process. I left the chicken in the marinade for a couple of hours.

After 40 minutes, with one flip halfway through, the skin was still pale and flabby. I upped the heat to 500, and gave them another five minutes, which at least tightened up the skin and started to brown it, but it still wasn't right. I'm thinking that at least another 20 minutes at 400 would be called for. Maybe it's my oven, maybe I needed to do fewer wings on a rack, but clearly, whatever the technique for perfect oven wings is, it eludes me.

I had more success with the sauce, of course, but the sauce is simple. It's melted butter and hot sauce. There are no other ingredients, and anyone who tells you differently is making something other than Buffalo wings. All that remained was to determine a ratio. I wanted plenty of vinegar tang, but not too much heat, because first, I'm not the only one eating them, and second, honestly, I find the heat aspect to be about fourth on the list of why I eat chicken wings. I like 'em when they're spicy, but I like 'em when they're not spicy, too.

So I did some experimenting. Well, sort of. I started with one tablespoon of melted butter and one tablespoon of hot sauce, and I liked it just fine, so I stopped experimenting. If you're into atomic-style hot wings, this will not cut it for you, but for me it was just about right.

Now I've just got to figure out how to get wings crisp and browned in my oven.