Heroin Wings Recipe and Review

Dana Carpenter's Heroin Wings Recipe
and Review (Includes my own tweaks)

If you haven't tried Dana Carpenter's Heroin Wings recipe yet, you are definitely missing out on a great Atkins Induction treat.

These amazing wings come out tasting like oven-fried breaded chicken wings, even though the breading is made with dried Parmesan cheese that comes in a can and assorted herbs and spices.

Use your favorite fried chicken spices, and your family will start begging for more. And more!

These are just that good!

These wings are amazing!

And properly named, I might add, because they are super tasty and very addictive. Hubby isn't fond of chicken wings, but he kept going back for another and another.

Once you try them, you'll definitely want to add them to your weekly or monthly rotation schedule.

My own Heroine Wings adventure began when a low-carb friend gave me the recipe. However, I didn't rush into the kitchen right away. I kept putting it off because I couldn't understand how dried Parmesan cheese (the type that comes in a can) could make anything even close to a fried chicken crust.

Plus, I wasn't eating chicken skin at the time.

I was doing a low-carb, low-fat diet of mostly chicken breast and didn't want to enter the nightmare of trying to skin a dozen chicken wings.

In addition to the wings themselves, hubby doesn't like hot wings very much. They are too spicy for him, so when I moved to a diet break, I finally stepped up to the plate (or oven, as in this case) and took the risk . . .

And, boy oh boy . . .

Was I ever shocked! Parmesan cheese bakes up nicely into a fried chicken crust. I still can't believe this is real.

I'm guessing that the hour long cooking time is what did the trick, along with the chicken fat seeping out while it was baking, and perhaps, the non-stick foil I used beneath them.

When I tried this coating on chicken strips, they didn't crisp up.

I had better luck using the coating on chicken legs, but should have turned them over half-way through baking, I think. Plus, I put the chicken legs on a rack and, maybe, I shouldn't have done that either. Perhaps it was the foil that helped the wings fry up in the oven.

Next time I try making legs, I'm going to follow the recipe exactly and see how they turn out.

Even more amazing then how these wings crisped up was the fact that the breading didn't taste like cheese to us. There was only a hint of cheese flavor, once baked, so if you're not big on Parmesan cheese, you still need to give them a try.

I guarantee that you won't be disappointed.

500 Low-Carb Recipes by Dana Carpenter

The recipe my friend gave me comes from Dana Carpenter's low-carb cookbook, 500 Low-Carb Recipes. It's so popular, that it is still available at Amazon and still available in Kindle.

This is a huge, 496-page low-carb cookbook, with a recipe index that's 23 pages long.

It was published back in 2002, before the slurry of questionable low-carb products hit the market, but she offers quite a bit of info on specialty products that were available back then.

Even if you can't do wheat and dairy, it's still a very useful cookbook.

Not only does Dana walk you through all of the low-carb ingredients and flour alternatives that you need to know about how to create a sustainable low-carb plan, but the recipes are so versatile and there's so many of them, that you'll find plenty of things to try no matter what your individual food restrictions are.

Dana Carpenter is a long-term low carber, blogger, and cookbook author. I used to get her e-zine Lowcarbezine ages ago, which are still available at her website, Hold the Toast.

I first ran into Dana when the book club I belonged to featured her personal story: How I Gave Up My Low Fat Diet and Lost Forty Pounds!, which is still available at Amazon on Kindle or as a used book.

Over the years, she has written a total of 10 popular cookbooks, and is still writing.

Today, she is the Managing Editor for CarbSmart Magazine, so this recipe originally came from one of the best low-carb recipe curators out there.

Kitchen Hacks to Make the Best Heroine Wings

The friend who passed on the recipe to me advised me to use non-stick foil when making these crispy low-carb wings, and I am so glad that I listened to her.

Non-stick foil made them easy to turn over half-way through their cooking time, and clean up was a breeze.

If you don't have non-stick foil, use can use regular foil, but you should probably spray it with a non-stick spray or grease it with coconut oil really, really well.

Whatever you do, don't even think about skipping the foil. You'll be very sorry if you do. You'll end up scrubbing the pan for hours, and you probably won't ever want to make them again.

Not a good thing.

We like our food well-seasoned, so I tweaked Dana's herbs and spices a lot. Those tweaks are in parenthesis where applicable.

I'm sure the recipe would work with any herb and spices you like. Use your favorite fried-chicken spices for an extra special treat.

Today, I use a lot of Mrs. Dash Herb and Garlic Seasoning Mix and Lawry's Seasoned pepper, instead of regular pepper, but I'm leaving the recipe as I originally posted it because it came out really, really good exactly as written.

Heroin Wings

Ingredients:

2 pounds chicken wings, cut in half and wing tips discarded
1/2 cup dried Parmesan cheese (in the can)
1 tablespoon dried parsley (I used basil)
1/2 tablespoon oregano (I used pizza seasoning)
1/2 teaspoon paprika
1/2 teaspoon salt (I used not-salt)
1/4 teaspoon pepper
1/4 cup butter, melted (you don't need this much)

Line your cookie sheet with either non-stick foil or spray the foil very heavily with non-stick spray. Set aside.

Combine the Parmesan cheese with all of the spices in a pie plate.

Dip the chicken pieces into the melted butter, coating well, and then roll the wings into the seasoned cheese. Place the wings on your prepared cooking sheet.

Bake at 350 degrees for one hour. I turned mine over half-way through the cooking time.