It's Wing Time!

Why is the buffalo wing the unofficial food of the Super Bowl? What is it about that messy little bugger that will have Americans eat an estimated 1.23 billion wings this weekend?

The generally accepted “inventor” of the chicken wing as we know is Teressa Bellissimo at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York. Apparently she had a hungry son and his friends hanging around the bar late one night, so she dropped the wings in a fryer, then rolled them in hot sauce. This was in 1964, making hot wings only a few years older than the Super Bowl.

Word of the wings spread, and other bars and restaurants started serving the disjointed wings smothered in hot sauce. By 1975, the first wing chain, Wings N’ Curls, had opened in Florida. Buffalo Wild Wings opened its doors in 1982 and Hooters opened in 1983. Unlike the original Buffalo wings, these establishments offer mild, sweet, garlicky and all other varieties of wing sauce. True wing aficionados will tell you they’re not authentic, but we all know how protective New Yorkers are of their culinary traditions. Buffalo wings really hit the American radar in the early 1990s when Domino’s and McDonald’s both added wings to their menus.

So how did we come to associate the wing with the game, and vice versa? The solution is probably as simple as the fact that the Buffalo Bills got on a hot streak and went to four Super Bowls in the early 90s. If you’ve ever watched the pre-game shows, you know that the stations devote a lot of time to “getting to know” the cities the teams came from. Four years of media coverage of Buffalo and the producers were bound to come across this local specialty sooner or later. Domino’s probably also had something to do with it. You can figure that it was really easy to add an order of wings to the pizza football fans were already ordering.

I won’t be eating hot wings for this year’s Super Bowl, or any other one. My tastebuds can’t handle the heat. I really like BWW honey bbq or parmesan garlic sauce.

Recommendations from locals for the real stuff: Duff’s Wings in Amherst, NY

Make your own: Deep fry 2.5 lbs chicken wings for 10 minutes. Sprinkle with 1 tbs salt and 1 tsp pepper. Toss with 3/4 cups Frank’s REDHOT Buffalo Wings Sauce.

(from http://www.franksredhot.com/recipes/kickin-bbq-chicken-wings-RE1889)