How the 'boneless wing' became a tasty culinary lie

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This weekend, according to the National Chicken Council, Americans are set to eat 1.45 billion chicken wings. So if you ever wanted a deep dive into what it means to eat the wings that aren’t — and how the chicken wing’s proximity to beer, good times and football sent it soaring — now’s the time.

Today’s food landscape is brimming with these gentle impostors — things we eat that pass as other things we eat.

Surimi is fish that effectively becomes crab or lobster meat for many of us — and stars in California rolls across the land. Carrots are cut and buffed until their edges are curved and smooth, becoming “ baby carrots ” or, slightly more truthfully, “baby-cut carrots.” Impossible Burgers are plant-based delicacies that carry many of meat’s characteristics without ever having been near an animal. And “Chilean sea bass”? Not a bass at all, but a rebrand of something called a Patagonian toothfish.

Part of the reason for the rise of the “boneless wing” is money. In recent years, with prices of actual chicken wings rising, the alternative became more cost effective. The average price for prepared “boneless wings” is $4.99 a pound compared with $8.38 a pound for bone-in wings, according to Tom Super, senior vice president of communications for the National Chicken Council, citing the U.S. Department of Agriculture. He calls it “a way to move more boneless/skinless breast meat that continues currently to be in ample supply.”

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https://apnews.com/article/super-bowl-boneless-wings-culinary-lie-7bae0f861af227f53318e5ddfcce771f