Next hot thing in hot wings, 'trashed' or 'dirty,' breaks the rules of America's favorite bar food
America’s hottest hot-wing trend is garbage.
Bar-food aficionados can’t wait to take it out or enjoy it at the bar with a few cold beers.
Trash wings are a popular style of chicken wing served at pubs and restaurants in and around St. Louis, Missouri. The same style of fried chicken is called dirt wings in Connecticut.
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Trash or dirt wings are fried, doused in hot sauce — then fried again. The process creates delectable little poultry limbs with skin so crispy that it snaps when you bite into it. Yet the meat remains juicy inside.
They've grown into casual culinary traditions in both parts of the country over the past three decades.
Zach Jalbert, a customer at Fenton Bar and Grill in Fenton, Missouri, called its locally famous trash wings "beautiful." (Kerry J. Byrne/Fox News Digital)
"I like to then re-dip the wings in whatever sauce is available," Zach Jalbert, a customer at Fenton Bar and Grill in Fenton, Missouri, told Fox News Digital.
"Look at that! It’s beautiful. Wow!" Jalbert added, holding up a wing in front of his eyes before crunching into it.
"Look at that! It’s beautiful. Wow!" — Zach Jalbert, trash wing enthusiast
Trash or dirt wings appear poised to break out as a national phenomenon in 2024 — while disrupting 60 years of American culinary tradition established when Buffalo wings were first fried in Buffalo, New York in 1964.
"I love it when people step outside the box," America's "Wing King" and Buffalo native Drew Cerza, founder of the National Buffalo Wing Festival, told Fox News Digital.
Dirt wings are a Connecticut casual-dining tradition that originated in the 1990s at J. Timothy's Taverne in Plainfield. The wings are fried, sauced, refrigerated, then fried and sauced a second time when they're ordered. (Courtesy J. Timothy's Taverne)
"That's how cool new things are created."
Trash wings earned their name because cooking the saucy once-fried wings again "trashes the oil."
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J. Timothy’s Taverne in Plainfield, Connecticut, is the birthplace of dirt wings.
The bar-food favorite boasts a more personal origin story that "came about just by dumb luck," said beverage director Rino Ouellet.
"Wing King" Drew Cerza proclaims Miki Sudo the victor over Joey Chestnut at the 2022 National Buffalo Wing Festival. Sudo ate 233 chicken wings in 12 minutes, to 224 for Chestnut. (Courtesy Drew Cerza)
J. Timothy’s fielded a beer-league softball team when it opened nearly 30 years ago.
"We were all in our 20s. The oldest guy on the team, our pitcher, was in his 40s. We called him Dirt," said Ouellet.
The pitcher was, to the rest of the players, older than dirt.
"The trashed wing is a phenomenal culinary delight and is now synonymous with St. Louis." — Pat Imig, Imig Communications
One day, the oft-told tale goes, Dirt ordered wings at the bar and stepped out to have a cigarette.
He returned to the bar and asked for his now-cold wings to be reheated.
They were an instant sensation.
Trash wings at Fenton Bar and Grill in Fenton, Missouri. Double-fried trash wings are a culinary tradition in and around St. Louis. (Kerry J. Byrne/Fox News Digital)
"Pretty soon the entire softball team was coming in asking for Dirt’s wings," said Oullet.
Dirt wings are now a bar-food favorite at pubs and sports bars across Connecticut.
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Trash wings also appeared in St. Louis about 30 years ago. The simultaneous appearance in New England and along the Mississippi River of the similar wings appears to be complete coincidence.
Fenton’s touts itself as the "home of the trashed wing."
But St. Louis magazine reports they were invented elsewhere.
Fenton Bar and Grill in Fenton, Missouri, outside St. Louis, is a popular destination for trash wings. A local culinary tradition, trash wings are fried, sauced and then fried again, making for a crispy wing that's moist inside. (Kerry J. Byrne/Fox News Digital)
"My father started doing trashed wings 30 years ago at one of his restaurants, Frankie G‘s Grill and Bar in Oakville," Billy Gianino Jr., of Billy G’s in Kirkwood, told the outlet in 2022.
The story claims that Fenton’s general manager Chuck Nash "semi-corroborated Gianino’s story."
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"The trashed wing is a phenomenal culinary delight and is now synonymous with St. Louis casual cuisine," Pat Imig of Imig Communications, a local food insider and chicken-wing aficionado, told Fox News Digital.
Trash wings served at Fenton Bar and Grill in Fenton, Missouri; and Fenton manager Kelly Brannam. (Kerry J. Byrne/Fox News Digital)
After achieving local stardom in Connecticut and Missouri, dirt and trash wings have recently appeared on menus in Chicago, New York City — and even as far away as London.
A similar twice-cooked wing is found in Buffalo, New York — except these are finished on a grill after being fried and sauced, said Cerza.
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Double-fried wings "break the cardinal rule of wings here in Buffalo," claims the keeper of the city's storied wing-tradition.
But, he added, "there are no rules when you're creating new rules."
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