They have more fat than chicken breast
Just watched the new Alton Brown Cooks Food. I don’t know why but I’ve always treated them like I would dark meat, letting them get up to at least 180. Why don’t they get dry and rubbery like a chicken breast would get at that temp? Are they just too small for it to really matter?
They have more fat than chicken breast
Flats are closer to dark, drums closer to white. Both are fattier than breast meat.
I take them to 200
They're only white meat by a technicality. Very fatty part of the bird.
Although chickens don’t fly long distances, they do flap their wings around so there is quite a bit of fat and connective tissue with the high surface area to muscle ratio, but it doesn’t have the same oxygen or myoglobin requirements that the legs and thighs have to run around.
Depends on what I’m making, but if I’m going for a Buffalo-style wing, it’s one of the very few proteins I like well done with a crispy skin. 180F at least for me.
Poultry typically needs to be heated to 165 degrees Fahrenheit. This is standard practice in a lot of food service places. If you are heating it to *at least* 180 degrees, you're starting to dry out your chicken. Personally, I like my chicken around 175-180, it's a texture thing for me.
Remember what happens to wings on your turkey or roast chicken and you cook it all together? The wings are dry AF. Wings don’t usually get dry when you cook just wings, because you don’t cook them long, they are small & uniform, and you can very predictably heat and cook them through. The reason they’re juicy is because the edible part is 30% delicious skin.
On the grill I usually go 200+ honestly. They can take it.
They are taking about the internal temp of the chicken.
Chicken wings are technically white meat, but you should cook them as if they're dark meat due to the ratio of fat, skin, and connective tissue they have to meat. If you only cook the wings to about 165F, the fat and collagen won't have time to render. If you want them to be tender enough to rip all the meat off the bone in one bite (and you do), you generally need to cook wings to 190F+. Wings aren't just white meat, they're also skin, connective tissue, and fat.
Technically schmechnically. It'll forever be categorized as dark meat to me.
. Why don’t they get dry and rubbery like a chicken breast would get at that temp? Are they just too small for it to really matter?
Because they're full of connective tissue and fat. The difference between white meat and dark meat is the type of muscle tissue. White meat is fast twitch muscle meant to move very quickly in short bursts for flying, while dark meat is slow twitch meant for regular ass walking around. That nature of it doesn't neccisarily drive cooking differences as much as you think.
The reason we can cook dark meat and wings to higher temps is because they're tougher cuts, with lots of connective tissue. And they've got a decent amount of fat. Both of which need higher temps to break down, and doing so will offset lost water from the higher temps.
Wings have lots of bone, skin, tendons, cartilage. And muscle that's moved aggressively and regularly. That means the white meat there, is going to more closely resemble the dark meat in the legs that are doing the same.
Breasts and wings in birds that actually fly are often pretty tough, because they move even more and do a lot more heavy work. Like duck wings pretty much need to be braised before frying, and on older and wild ducks the breast can be fairly chewy if you aren't careful on how you handle them.
Chicken are flightless, and we consume them fairly young. And that's why we can have a nice tender breast.