Chicken wing gyoza

Have you ever tried a chicken wing Gyoza/dumpling?
I haven't, I've actually never heard of such a thing, till now. I saw this recipe on one of my gourmand shows, and not only did they do a wing gyoza also called Teba gyoza in Japan, considered a pub food. In the show they actually made the gyoza into a feathered gyoza, which is instead of using flour roux type of batter at the end to give it that sort of webbed look, in the show they used cheese, parmesan cheese actually to give it that look and added crunch at the end, and a sweet and sour ketchup based sauce at the end to give it a little kick.

I have never before in my life deboned a chicken wing, I may have deboned a chicken in cooking school in the past, but that was a while ago, I kind of forgot, but with this recipe I freshened up my skills and sharpened by deboning skills again.

After three times doing this recipe I realized the hardest part is actually getting the skin crispy. Chicken skin when it's soft is sort of weird. I saw different techniques on how to crisp the skin and the one that worked best for me was, putting the gyoza/dumplings on a really hot pan, and then adding a weight on it, not touching it for 5 -6 minutes.

In the video you can see the gyoza looks a bit browner than idea but this is actually the caramelization from the oyster sauce that oozed out of the filling during the cooking process, caramelizing the outer part of the gyoza, but you have to be careful with the immense juiciness from the filling as it can counter act the ideal crispiness that you are trying to achieve on the outside part of the gyoza.

Teba Gyoza - Chicken Wing Gyoza
Recipe:
1 pack of chicken wings
Parmesan cheese

Filling ingredients:
1 cup of ground pork
4 tbsp of blanched minced cabbage
6 tbsp of minced shiitake mushrooms
3 tbsp of chopped garlic chives
1 garlic clove
1 tsp of crushed ginger
1 tsp of crushed black pepper
1 tbsp of soy sauce
1 tsp of salt
2 tbsp of mirin
2 tbsp of sesame oil
1 tsp of oyster sauce

Sweet and sour sauce:
1 tbsp of soy sauce
1 tbsp of sake
3 tbsp of vinegar
3 tbsp of ketchup
1 cup of broth
(Optional 1 tsp of sesame oil)
1 tbsp of arrow root powder

Directions:

1. Pre heat the oven to 425 F degree.
2. For the filling, you are going to finely chop your cabbage into tiny pieces, then blanch them in some boiling water, I like to use a metal mesh it reduces the risk of losing of that cabbage when I remove them from the boiling water, you are going to blanch the cabbage for 30 seconds.
3. Finely chop your garlic chives, garlic, shiitake mushroom and ginger, this is really important so you don't get any large pieces in your stuffing, it's a texture appeal that will make the experience a lot more enjoyable.
4. Mix in all of your filling ingredients together; blanched cabbage, chopped ginger, garlic, garlic chives, shiitake mushroom, crushed black pepper, ground pork, soy sauce, salt, mirin, sesame oil, oyster sauce. Mix all of your filling ingredients till they look evenly blended.
5. Now it's time to debone the chicken wings, you are going to need a small knife. Make cuts all around the two bones sticking out, you are looking for all of tendons, skins that are attaching to the bone. You are going to go between the two bones, right at the end where those two bones meet with cartilage (soft bone looking tissue) connecting them together, you are going to run your knife, and cut that cartilage separating the two bones. Next you are going to go where the wing part joins with the rest of the arm and you are going to twist that to break the ligaments that are holding the two bones with the wing part of the chicken. after you've successfully separated that part of the wing from the other part, you will start with the smaller bone that is sticking out at the end, making sure you've separated the ligaments, tendons, muscle and skin from that bone, twist it a little and pull it out. The small bone should come out clean, once you've pulled out the smaller bone you will do the same with the larger bone, twist and pull out. Now you should have after pulling out those two bones, a cavity inside of the chicken wing ready to be stuffed.
6. Now we are going to make the sweet and sour sauce. Take your 1 tbsp of soy sauce, 1 tbsp of sake, 3 tbsp of vinegar, 3 tbsp of ketchup, 1 cup of broth (Optional 1 tsp of sesame oil) and put the all in a small pot, at low heat you will mix temp for about 2 minutes and then add your 1 tbsp of arrow root powder, and mix in well, you will notice the sauce get thicker, do this for 1 minute, and turn off the heat, set aside.
7. Use a zip lock bag, cut off one bottom corner, to make a type of pastry bag. Put your stuffing inside of the ziplock bag and begin squeezing out the filling in the opening inside of the chicken wing, don't put to much filling inside because as the chicken wing cooks the meat of the chicken begins to shrink and will push out your stuffing if you put too much inside.
8. Turn on flat wide pan to high, add a little cooking oil and once you start to see the oil smoke a little it's ready. Gently place the chicken wings on the hot pan. Make sure not to move the chicken wings, put a plate on top or some type of weight to push down the skin wings, you will cook this side for 10 minutes.
9. Remove the plate and transfer the chicken wings over to a non stick tray. Place the tray in the oven, and let it cook for 10 more minutes.
10. Take out your tray once the 10 minutes have passed, and put a generous amount of your real parmeasean cheese all over the wings and all around the wings, then put it back in the oven for an additional 5 - 6 minutes, till you can see the cheese boiling and getting a nice golden brown color, then remove and drizzle your sweet and sour sauce lightly over your teba/chicken wing gyozas, and it's ready to be served, enjoy!

Notes: What I noticed when I made this dish, is that the oyster sauce really seems to come out of the filling and sort of caramelize outside of the chicken wing, which is what give it the illusion of burnt but it's actually a layer of glazed caramelized oyster sauce outside of the chicken wing. I also noticed I may of put too much filling inside, because I noticed that the meat shrank causing the filling to sort of come out of the wing gyoza a little. The parmesan cheese that I used was the powdered kind and I noticed that it didn't give me the look that I wanted, so I recommend shredded cheese for this recipe as it will melt better.