Last week I made the Málà Salt and Pepper Chicken Wings from J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook.

The wings are first tossed with salt and potato starch and set aside.

The seasoning is a mixture of toasted cumin seeds, Sichuan peppercorns, fennel, star anise, dried chiles (I used japones), and salt. I omitted the fennel and anise as Megan and I just don’t like those flavors. The toasted spices are cooled and then ground into powder in a mortar and pestle. Brown sugar is stirred in.

The rested wings are fried. I think I finally learned from previous fryings and kept the batches small enough. Kenji must have a larger wok than I do. He calls for frying all the wings at once. I think I did it in three batches.

The fried chicken gets tossed with the seasoning, scallions, and cilantro.

Overall, this was a big hit. The seasoning was barely spicy. The potato starch coating puffed up and had a good crunch. The only problem was that they were too salty. Kenji calls for a tablespoon of kosher salt for 1½ pounds of wings during the initial seasoning. That was just too much.

I’ll make these again, but will cut back on the salt.

I am cooking my way through J. Kenji Lopez-Alt’s The Wok cookbook. Read more about it.