I love college football, especially the Ohio State Buckeyes.  Last Saturday was the start of the 2008 season, with a potential big year for the Buckeyes, coming into the season rated very high (that school up north is nowhere to be seen in the rankings, of course).  To herald in the season, my wife and I decided to make my version of wings and rings.

For the wings, I haven’t yet found anything I like better than smofried wings.  Smofried wings were shown last winter in my post about Superbowl Foods, with a description of how to cut down chicken wings to make them more like Buffalo wings.  It’s so easy that it’s not worth paying your grocer/butcher extra to do it for you.

I won’t recap all the steps of making wings, since it’s outlined well in the earlier post, but what I will describe ’smofried’.  It’s simple; it comes from ’smoked’ and ‘fried’, though I don’t do them in that order.  The problem with only smoking chicken is that the skin usually ends up rubbery, which isn’t very appetizing, especially on wings!  So what I do is deep fry the wings first, for 5 minutes, just to thoroughly cook the skin more than the meat itself.  Then I put the wings in a pan, sauce them and put them on the smoker until cooked thoroughly.

My go-to sauce for wings has become Nando’s Peri-Peri sauce.  It’s just good stuff, and as hot or mild as your tastes.  For my wife, I tried something a bit new: I tried mixing honey with medium and mild Nando’s.  She loved it, even suggesting we try using that on chicken in competition.  I used straight Garlic Nando’s, though I also love Wild Herb (I was almost out of it, though).

The result?  Deliciousness for the OSU opener against Youngstown State.  Now before you all laugh about the YSU matchup, all the big teams play lower tier teams by agreement between conferences, but the Buckeyes did win 43-0, and held YSU to -11 yards rushing (that’s right, minus rushing yardage).  The one downside was when Chris Wells got hurt; hopefully, he’ll be up to speed and ready to go by week 3 against USC!

Along with the rings, I decided that, since I had the oil heated up in the fryer, I should try my hand at making onion rings to go with the wings.  The batter I used was a very simple beer batter:

• 1 cup buttermilk

• 1 cup Shiner Bock beer

• 1 cup plus all purpose flour

• salt to taste

• pepper to taste

• 1 tablespoon ground ancho chile pepper

• a pinch of cayenne

I put the dry ingredients in a large bowl (flour, salt, pepper, ancho and cayenne) and mixed it with a fork.  Then I added the buttermilk and beer and used a whisk to mix it.  I found that I needed a bit more flour, trying to get a pancake batter type of consistency.  the beer will make the batter a bit darker than typical.  I also added a bit extra salt, as the first couple rings seemed to call for it.

I got the fryer up to about 375 degrees F with a gallon of peanut oi, and I cut Vidalia onions into slices.  These can be as thick or thin as you want, though we found we liked them about 1/4″ thick.  Once cut, the rings are easy to separate.  The middle section of the slices I saved for other uses, but that can also be battered and fried.

Using a fork, I did about 4 tings at a time.  I could have done this in a large skillet with an inch or so of oil, and I could have done more at a time, but I think the fryer does a better job as the oil keeps a pretty steady 375 degree temperature.  As the rings got done on once side (about a minute, maybe even less), I turned them over, then laid them on a cooling rack over newspaper to allow extra oil to drain.

The rings were so good, we decided to try jalapeno poppers (jalapenos filled with cream cheese) and baby eggplant, too, which also turned out great.

That’s all there was to it!  I had mine with a side of ketchup for the rings and a side of bleu cheese dressing for the wings.  What a delicious way to enjoy the Buckeye win!