A perennial favorite of my mother’s barbecue is her honey-glazed chicken wings – whole wings marinated in a mixture of light soy sauce
As awesome as these wings are, the grilling process is not particularly fast, which can be a problem when you’ve got a horde of hungry guests. The wings just can’t be cooked too fast on the grill – the skin will burn, the fat will not have had time to render off, and the interior will still be raw. And with the wings taking up valuable grill space, you can’t even throw faster-cooking things on.
This weekend I experimented with accelerating things by starting the wings in the oven. I preheated the oven to 350 degrees Fahrenheit and put the wings in for about 10 minutes. From there, they were put on a charcoal grill and cooked until the skin turned mahogany. It worked out quite well, though the skin was a little drier than I’m used too. My fellow diners gave positive reviews, so I think I’m on the right track. I might try covering the pan with foil when the wings are in the oven to prevent the skin from drying out too much.
This definitely helped streamline the grilling process – without the wings hogging up grill space, food was ready to go much faster.
Soy sauce sidebar
Chinese soy sauces (Pearl Bridge, Kimlan, Lee Kum Kee), typically come in two styles, light (san chau), and dark (lou chau). If you’re wondering why my Chinese romanizations don’t match Wikipedia, it’s because I’m using an ad-hoc Cantonese romanization as opposed to the Mandarin pinyin. At any rate, light (san chau) soy sauce is a light colored sauce which is typically saltier than the dark (lou chau) and thinner in consistency. The dark has more depth of flavor due to the added molasses and works well with beef. The dark is also used to add color to a dish. Also, soy sauce works pretty well as a meat tenderizer.
, but for something like this I really can’t justify the extra cost. The Lodge Logic grill pan is $19 and the panini press is $15, compared to $88/$80 for the Le Creuset. And from what I’ve heard about the Le Creuset, even though it’s enameled, it’s really not much easier to clean than the Lodge. Don’t get me wrong, I like Le Creuset enamelled cast iron and aspire to someday purchase a French oven from them, but I think in this case the premium isn’t justified. Lodge also sells a round grill pan, which some have said that they prefer as it matches a typical stove’s heat distribution pattern, but I feel with cast iron this shouldn’t be much of an issue if you’re preheating properly. The square shape is nice if you’re dealing with skewers. The high sides limit spatter, but may make handling delicate foods like fish tricky if you don’t have a flexible spatula. A good oven glove is a must for moving this puppy around. Amazon lists this as being 8.3 pounds – surprisingly, that’s 1.7 pounds heavier than my 
at 6.6 pounds. It’s a good thing they both have helper handles.
