Have you ever used a soft drink as a readymade marinade to give your food an edge?
Cola can be an excellent and easy flavour booster for all sorts of dishes, especially meats. Coca-Cola cake is a famous dessert back where I grew up. Slow-cooked pork with cola is another popular dish. I remember my dad basted a ham with Dr Pepper once and the results were delicious.
This recipe uses cola as a marinade for chicken wings. Pretty much any cola can be used for this recipe, but I recommend Karma Cola. It’s tastier than others in my opinion. It actually has cola nut as one of few minimal ingredients while not having any science-y preservatives or additives that are in some of the more widely recognised sodas on the market.
Karma Cola is also the UK’s only Fairtrade organic cola with a direct relationship with cola farmers in Sierra Leone. Proceeds from each bottle or can of Karma Cola sold go to the growers’ families to re-establish their lives in the aftermath of civil war and ebola.
Find out more at karmacola.co.uk.
KARMA COLA WINGS Yum
Ingredients (16 pieces)
- 250ml of Karma Cola;
- Juice from 1 lemon;
- Salt to taste (about 2 teaspoons);
- 2 minced cloves of garlic;
- 150g of honey;
- Black pepper to taste;
- Cinnamon to taste (about 1 teaspoon);
- 8 wings (chopped at joint with tip removed).
Method
- Mix the cola, lemon juice, salt, garlic, honey, black pepper, and cinnamon together to make the brine;
- Score the chicken and marinade for at least an hour (overnight for best results);
- When ready to cook preheat your oven to 250°C;
- Toss the wings for an even coating and placed on a baking dish big enough for all the pieces to be spread as a single layer;
- Cook in the oven for about 45 minutes to 1 hour, checking them about 30 minutes in to see how they’re doing and turning them halfway through to make sure the wings are completely coated in the marinade.
Serve
Drain the wings of any excess liquid and let cool. But serve them while they’re still pretty hot for best results. A mustard-based sauce works really well with these wings.
Read more tikichris recipes.
