Chicken Lollipops Recipe: How to Make Chicken Lollipops

A chicken lollipop is a fried chicken appetizer popular in India, often served at Indo-Chinese restaurants. The dish features trimmed, marinated chicken wings that get deep-fried and coated in a spicy Szechuan sauce.

The name “chicken lollipop” is a nod to how the chicken wings look after trimming. To achieve the lollipop-like appearance, the meat on the chicken wing gets partially cut from the bone and pushed down, a technique known as “frenching.”

Here are some ways to customize chicken lollipops to your liking:

1. 1. Baked chicken lollipops: For a version of this dish that uses less oil, try air-frying or baking your chicken lollipops instead of deep-frying them.
2. 2. Breaded chicken lollipops: For an extra crispy variation, coat the chicken lollipops in panko breadcrumbs before frying. The fried breading gives the chicken a satisfying, crunchy texture.
3. 3. Smoked chicken lollipops: Experiment with coating the chicken lollipops in a BBQ dry rub and smoking them for a showstopping appetizer.
4. 4. Tandoori masala chicken lollipops: Flavor your chicken lollipops with Indian tandoori masala and toss them on the grill. Tandoori masala features a blend of black pepper, cardamom, cinnamon, cloves, coriander, cumin, fenugreek, garlic powder, ginger, and nutmeg. Grilling the lollipops will give them a tasty char and juicy interior akin to the tandoori preparation style.

To transform wings into lollipops, follow this step-by-step process for frenching chicken wings:

1. 1. Divide the chicken wing. Start with a whole chicken wing. Using a sharp knife, cut it into three parts: the drumette, the flat, and the tip. The drumette is the part that attaches to the body of the chicken and runs from shoulder to elbow. The flat (also known as the midsection or winglet) covers the area between the elbow and wingtip. The tip is the end of the wing and contains almost no meat, just skin and cartilage. Save the crunchy and chewy tip for chicken stock.
2. 2. French the drumette. Holding the drumette (which looks like a chicken drumstick) by the meaty end, use a sharp boning or paring knife to cut around the less meaty end of the bone, separating the meat from the bone. Using your knife or fingers, push the meat down from the less meaty end (where you made the incision) toward the meatier end (in your hand).
3. 3. French the flat. For the flat, which contains two bones, cut the joint where the bones meet. Trim a small section of the meat from the circumference of that area to expose the bones. Remove one of the bones and push the meat to the end of the remaining bone to form a lollipop.