In this space, I'll be bringing you recipes and food stories from the globe's most cookin-est DJs, paired with carefully selected music for culinary enhancement. In my years in the music game, I have found DJs to be amongst the most discriminating food connoisseurs. This is no coincidence. When travelling, you're being taken to pre-gig meals, usually at a local flagship. When throwing parties in your own town, you're taking guests to dinner or hunting for late night eats. When home relaxing, you're making up for all the gutbuster airport tour food by whipping up some good home cooking. And of course, you're Instagramming it all.THUMP: Hey DJ Apt One, what are you doing interviewing yourself in your own column?
DJ Apt One: Funny story. I got drunk last weekend with my editor on a rooftop and convinced him to table this week's column so I could do a Thanksgiving edition in the style of a vaudevillian ventriloquist act. So go ahead and ask me the standard slate of questions, starting with the "Tell me why you're awesome" one.THUMP: Rep your gastro-sonic credentials. Any professional cooking experience?
I DJ, I produce music, I run a record label, and I write a bit, but no professional cooking experience, if you discount a five-month stint at a deli in high school. When I was 18 and moved out on my own to Philadelphia from Pittsburgh, I ate a lot of shitty food. I realized that I could make myself happy every day of my life if I learned to cook. Now, I work from a home studio and my wife works 9-5; I have been doing all the cooking for us for years. I take walks to get ingredients at my community garden or at the grocery store midday to clear my head while I'm writing music.THUMP: OK, so what are we cooking right now?
Smoked turkey wings—done on a regular home BBQ grill. When you do them right, you basically turn the skin into the meat equivalent of crack cocaine—really crunchy skin with blackened garlic and spices all over it. You eat them with your hands and get really greasy. It's gluttonous and satisfying. Whole turkey and turkey breasts are boring. White turkey meat is always dry. But wings are dark and oily and awesome, and they're really big so it's like cooking pterodactyl wings.THUMP: How did you discover this recipe?
By last summer I started to feel like I had grilled every cut of meat or vegetable worth exposing to flame. I decided to move on to smoking and roasting. I have a 22.5 inch kettle grill and heard you could use it as a smoker. I did a few smoked beer-can chickens and then decided to level up to ribs. The ribs were awesome but the recipe I developed takes two days of rubbing and whiskey-brining and then about six hours of smoking. Way too labor intensive. I'd had smoked turkey in Texas before and decided to give it a shot.I watched a few Youtube videos and created my own method and recipe. I experimented with a bunch of different rubs and treatments and I think the one I have here is pretty well calibrated.THUMP: Do I have to be a genius to make this? What's the trick to making the dish work?
To be honest, there are a lot of ways to fuck this up, so be on your P's and Q's with the directions. I wouldn't recommend doing this for Thanksgiving dinner as a first-timer.The big trick here is the brining—that gives you a lot more leeway to screw up because the salt in the brine will increase the liquid retention capabilities of the wings. There is a good chance you will cook the wings to the appropriate temperature before the skin has crisped. The skin is the whole key to this. If the skin isn't crispy, it's tough and rubbery, so getting the skin to be a brittle texture and dark gold color may require tossing it directly over the coals for a few at the end. The brine will keep the wings from drying out.You need a grill that is deep enough to let you keep the meat away from a direct heat source, I use a 22.5 inch Weber grill, but you can also do this with some gas grills. My estimations of briquette amounts and all that are designed to produce certain temperatures on MY grill, so adjust accordingly.You may have trouble finding turkey wings. You may have to request them from the butcher's counter, rather than just relying on a supermarket to carry them out in the refrigerated aisle. If you're having trouble, find a supermarket that caters to a Muslim or Jewish clientele—folks who avoid swine eat more turkey. Get the butcher to separate the "drumstick" type part from the rest for you, but ask him to leave on what I call the "Fugees leg"—the "little retarded leg" referenced in the legendarily un-PC "Chinese Restaurant Skit" on The Score.THUMP: Are you going to make wings for Thanksgiving?
Hell no. You account for about one-and-a-half whole wings per person, but you can fit a limited amount on my grill—maybe four. The more you add, the longer it takes to cook—these things are about a pound each and absorb a lot of heat. I'm having 11 people over, so this is not a possibility. Plus, in the cold, it's very hard to get the right grill temperature. I'm doing a bird oven-roasted in a parchment paper bag so that it steams and keeps from drying out.THUMP: Last question: what should we be listening to while we cook this?
When I get in my bag during grill season, I'm hosting BBQs every couple weeks when I'm in town. So I get in the studio and slap a live mix together to play in the kitchen and backyard while I'm doing my thing. This is one I made for a July 4th BBQ this summer.Grill-Smoked Turkey Wings by DJ Apt One
Recipe is for two whole wings, multiply as needed. Allow one to two wings per person. Add approximately 15 additional minutes of grill time per extra pound of meat. Total prep plus cook time is about 3.5 hours.Two whole turkey wings (approximately 1 lb each)
Approximately 5.5 lbs charcoal briquettes
Charcoal chimney
Olive Oil
Wood Chips
Sea SaltRub (for two wings, multiply as necessary)
1 tbsp celery salt
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp thyme (dried)
1 bay leaf, crushed
1 tsp cracked black pepper
2 cloves garlic1. Separate wings at the joint between the two largest segments if you want more maneuverability on the grill. Do not remove the little "Fugees leg." (see above)
2. Create a brine out of water and sea salt to taste. Aim for an "ocean" level of saltiness. Enough volume to submerge wings.
3. Soak wings in room temperature brine 2-3 hours.
4. Soak a handful of wood chips or small blocks in a bowl. Hickory or mesquite are preferred, but I've used downed Sycamore. Just no pine.
5. Make your rub out of celery seed, bay leaf, thyme, pepper, salt, garlic.
6. Light a charcoal chimney full of briquettes, (maybe 5 lbs worth) light it. Coals will be ready when the top ones are grey ash at the corners. If you're thinking of using lighter fluid, stop reading here and find another recipe. Lighter fluid is gross. Do not ruin my wings with it. If you use a gas grill, heat it to 375-400 degrees, leaving at least one burner unlit.
7. Remove the wings from the brine and pat until totally, completely dry
8. Cover the wings thoroughly with olive oil. Don't skimp—the more olive oil, the better your chance for ultimate crispy skin. I toss them in a big Tupperware.
9. Coat the wings with the rub.
10. Drain the soaking wood.
11. When the coals are ready put them in, separated along two sides so they leave at least enough room for wings to sit w/o being over any coals. Make sure all vents are open. Use a foil drip pan under the wings if you want.
12. Put the drained wood on top of the coals, or if using gas, put the wood in a foil pouch with a few holes punched in it, and put that pouch on your heat element.
13. Replace the grill, with openings (if any) over the coals to allow for addition of more wood if necessary. Cover and let the grill heat up to the 375-400 range (about 5 minutes.)
14. Put turkey on the part of the grill which is not directly over heat. Space as evenly as possible. Cover the grill with the top vents over the turkey to draws smoke over the meat.
15. Turn wings every ten minutes, rearranging as necessary to make sure each wing is evenly exposed to heat over the course of the smoke—your grill may have uneven heat. Add additional wood should smoke levels get low. Two wings should take about an hour. Each additional wing will add about 15 minutes of cooking for the entire lot.
16. The wings are "done" and safe to eat when a thermometer near the bone of a thick part of the meat registers 180 degrees, but they are only DONE when the skin is dark brown with a brittle, crispy texture. If your wings are at 180 but are not crispy, you can keep smoking, or you can sear them a few minutes per side by putting them over the hot coals, but keep an eye on them so they do not burn. The brine will make the wings fairly resilient to drying out.
17. Let the wings rest for about 10 minutes. Eat with hands.Michael Fichman is a producer, DJ and writer living in Philadelphia. Follow him on twitter at @djaptone.
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DJ Apt One: Funny story. I got drunk last weekend with my editor on a rooftop and convinced him to table this week's column so I could do a Thanksgiving edition in the style of a vaudevillian ventriloquist act. So go ahead and ask me the standard slate of questions, starting with the "Tell me why you're awesome" one.THUMP: Rep your gastro-sonic credentials. Any professional cooking experience?
I DJ, I produce music, I run a record label, and I write a bit, but no professional cooking experience, if you discount a five-month stint at a deli in high school. When I was 18 and moved out on my own to Philadelphia from Pittsburgh, I ate a lot of shitty food. I realized that I could make myself happy every day of my life if I learned to cook. Now, I work from a home studio and my wife works 9-5; I have been doing all the cooking for us for years. I take walks to get ingredients at my community garden or at the grocery store midday to clear my head while I'm writing music.THUMP: OK, so what are we cooking right now?
Smoked turkey wings—done on a regular home BBQ grill. When you do them right, you basically turn the skin into the meat equivalent of crack cocaine—really crunchy skin with blackened garlic and spices all over it. You eat them with your hands and get really greasy. It's gluttonous and satisfying. Whole turkey and turkey breasts are boring. White turkey meat is always dry. But wings are dark and oily and awesome, and they're really big so it's like cooking pterodactyl wings.
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By last summer I started to feel like I had grilled every cut of meat or vegetable worth exposing to flame. I decided to move on to smoking and roasting. I have a 22.5 inch kettle grill and heard you could use it as a smoker. I did a few smoked beer-can chickens and then decided to level up to ribs. The ribs were awesome but the recipe I developed takes two days of rubbing and whiskey-brining and then about six hours of smoking. Way too labor intensive. I'd had smoked turkey in Texas before and decided to give it a shot.I watched a few Youtube videos and created my own method and recipe. I experimented with a bunch of different rubs and treatments and I think the one I have here is pretty well calibrated.THUMP: Do I have to be a genius to make this? What's the trick to making the dish work?
To be honest, there are a lot of ways to fuck this up, so be on your P's and Q's with the directions. I wouldn't recommend doing this for Thanksgiving dinner as a first-timer.The big trick here is the brining—that gives you a lot more leeway to screw up because the salt in the brine will increase the liquid retention capabilities of the wings. There is a good chance you will cook the wings to the appropriate temperature before the skin has crisped. The skin is the whole key to this. If the skin isn't crispy, it's tough and rubbery, so getting the skin to be a brittle texture and dark gold color may require tossing it directly over the coals for a few at the end. The brine will keep the wings from drying out.
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Hell no. You account for about one-and-a-half whole wings per person, but you can fit a limited amount on my grill—maybe four. The more you add, the longer it takes to cook—these things are about a pound each and absorb a lot of heat. I'm having 11 people over, so this is not a possibility. Plus, in the cold, it's very hard to get the right grill temperature. I'm doing a bird oven-roasted in a parchment paper bag so that it steams and keeps from drying out.THUMP: Last question: what should we be listening to while we cook this?
When I get in my bag during grill season, I'm hosting BBQs every couple weeks when I'm in town. So I get in the studio and slap a live mix together to play in the kitchen and backyard while I'm doing my thing. This is one I made for a July 4th BBQ this summer.
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Recipe is for two whole wings, multiply as needed. Allow one to two wings per person. Add approximately 15 additional minutes of grill time per extra pound of meat. Total prep plus cook time is about 3.5 hours.Two whole turkey wings (approximately 1 lb each)
Approximately 5.5 lbs charcoal briquettes
Charcoal chimney
Olive Oil
Wood Chips
Sea SaltRub (for two wings, multiply as necessary)
1 tbsp celery salt
1/2 tsp sea salt
1/4 tsp thyme (dried)
1 bay leaf, crushed
1 tsp cracked black pepper
2 cloves garlic1. Separate wings at the joint between the two largest segments if you want more maneuverability on the grill. Do not remove the little "Fugees leg." (see above)
2. Create a brine out of water and sea salt to taste. Aim for an "ocean" level of saltiness. Enough volume to submerge wings.
3. Soak wings in room temperature brine 2-3 hours.
4. Soak a handful of wood chips or small blocks in a bowl. Hickory or mesquite are preferred, but I've used downed Sycamore. Just no pine.
5. Make your rub out of celery seed, bay leaf, thyme, pepper, salt, garlic.
6. Light a charcoal chimney full of briquettes, (maybe 5 lbs worth) light it. Coals will be ready when the top ones are grey ash at the corners. If you're thinking of using lighter fluid, stop reading here and find another recipe. Lighter fluid is gross. Do not ruin my wings with it. If you use a gas grill, heat it to 375-400 degrees, leaving at least one burner unlit.
7. Remove the wings from the brine and pat until totally, completely dry
8. Cover the wings thoroughly with olive oil. Don't skimp—the more olive oil, the better your chance for ultimate crispy skin. I toss them in a big Tupperware.
9. Coat the wings with the rub.
10. Drain the soaking wood.
11. When the coals are ready put them in, separated along two sides so they leave at least enough room for wings to sit w/o being over any coals. Make sure all vents are open. Use a foil drip pan under the wings if you want.
12. Put the drained wood on top of the coals, or if using gas, put the wood in a foil pouch with a few holes punched in it, and put that pouch on your heat element.
13. Replace the grill, with openings (if any) over the coals to allow for addition of more wood if necessary. Cover and let the grill heat up to the 375-400 range (about 5 minutes.)
14. Put turkey on the part of the grill which is not directly over heat. Space as evenly as possible. Cover the grill with the top vents over the turkey to draws smoke over the meat.
15. Turn wings every ten minutes, rearranging as necessary to make sure each wing is evenly exposed to heat over the course of the smoke—your grill may have uneven heat. Add additional wood should smoke levels get low. Two wings should take about an hour. Each additional wing will add about 15 minutes of cooking for the entire lot.
16. The wings are "done" and safe to eat when a thermometer near the bone of a thick part of the meat registers 180 degrees, but they are only DONE when the skin is dark brown with a brittle, crispy texture. If your wings are at 180 but are not crispy, you can keep smoking, or you can sear them a few minutes per side by putting them over the hot coals, but keep an eye on them so they do not burn. The brine will make the wings fairly resilient to drying out.
17. Let the wings rest for about 10 minutes. Eat with hands.Michael Fichman is a producer, DJ and writer living in Philadelphia. Follow him on twitter at @djaptone.