Finally, a recipe!

Let me start off by saying that I love my new slow cooker.  This appliance has opened up a whole new world of cooking for me.  I think I’m dedicating my Sundays to Slow Cooker Sundays and slowly working my way through all the crock pot recipes I can find!  I hope to share with you those recipes that I find work well, are easy, and are delicious!  My friend Kristen shared this recipe for Sticky Wings with me a couple of weeks ago, and I’ll be cooking them for the second time this week.  They were that good, we couldn’t wait long to have them again!  While the wings do require a quick pass under your oven’s broiler to finish, the bulk of the cooking time is hands-off, all taken care of inside your lovely slow cooker.

You can find the original recipe here, but here are my comments as well:

• The recipe calls for dark brown sugar.  Feel free to use light brown sugar, like I did, if that’s what you happen to have on hand. You’ll find the only difference would be a slightly lighter molasses flavor which I think only intensified the other flavors.
• Don’t have fresh ginger?  I certainly didn’t want to pay for it, and then grate it.  I used ground ginger, which I already had in my spice cabinet (gingerbread season is almost here!).  The conversion on my container of ground ginger states 1/4 tsp ground ginger = 1 tsp fresh ginger.  Therefore, I used 1 1/2 tsp of ground ginger (there are 3 teaspoons in a Tablespoon, FYI!).  I did, however, find the end result to be very ginger-y, which was still good, but I could have done with less, personally.
• My “dash” of cayenne pepper turned out to be more like a dump.  Nonetheless, I didn’t find this recipe spicy, just a bit of heat.  I think it would be great for kids, who would love the ooey-gooey-ness!

For a quick meal, we paired the wings with oven-baked fries and a salad.  It was a perfect meal for a lazy Sunday when paired with a football game!