Ingredients
12 chicken wings
4 garlic cloves, crushed
1/2 tsp freshly grated nutmeg
1/4 cup Manawa Tāwari Honey
1/4 cup lemon juice
Zest from one lemon
Directions
Rinse and pat dry the chicken wings. Cut the wings into drummettes, wingettes and tips. Discard the tips.
Place the drummettes and wingettes into a zip-lock bag. In a bowl mix the Tawari Honey and the other ingredients, then add to the bag of chicken, and marinate for at least 2 hours in the fridge.
Place the chicken wings on a tray or dish lined with baking paper. Cook in a preheated oven at 200 degrees Celsius for 20 minutes.
Meanwhile place the marinade in a saucepan, and bring it to the boil. Gently simmer for about 10 minutes until it thickens in to a glaze.
Remove the chicken from the oven after 20 minutes and brush the glaze on. Return to the oven to cook for another 20 minutes.
Notes
We prefer Tāwari Honey to go with lemon in this dish, but you could also use Pua-ā-Tāne Wild Flower Honey. Avoid stronger tasting honeys in this dish so that the delicate lemon flavour is not overpowered.
It is even better if you can marinate the chicken overnight, but this isn’t always convenient. On the other hand if you are in a rush you can leave out the marinading stage. Just go straight to cooking, using the marinade ingredients as a glaze. You won’t get the full flavours through the chicken but it will still be absolutely delicious – I promise you.
Rather than waste the tips from the chicken wings, use them making a chicken stock for use in your other recipes.
If you don’t have fresh garlic then use garlic powder – about 2 teaspoons. Similarly if you don’t have whole nutmegs to get freshly grated nutmeg then simply use nutmeg powder – the same amount.
The cooking method here is aiming to obtain a sticky glaze on the chicken wings. So you can apply an extra layer of glaze at the end of the cooking if you want more of that effect.
Acknowledgements
There’s lots of recipes for Honey Lemon Chicken Wings on the internet, many of them very similar. We have developed our own recipe here that is especially suited to using our Tāwari Honey, but we referred to Paleo Leap for the idea of including nutmeg which is one of my favourite spices. A nice touch!
Recipe by Brenda Tahi, CEO Manawa Honey NZ