A Food Creator Just Made Crispy Transparent Chicken Wings

Fried chicken wings have a way of inspiring greatness, and that’s definitely the case with Cai Nan, the self-proclaimed “unorthodox food blogger” who just created edible transparent chicken wings.

The viral video, named “I want to make the fried chicken transparent, but the result is strange,” gives a step-by-step breakdown of how he went about making the chicken meat, bone, and the skin transparent—and how he even ensured the skin to be crispy. 

To replicate the bones, he created a mixture of bone marrow, collagen, and cold gel and put it into bone-shaped molds to set. Making the meat transparent was a bit more complicated, but was achieved with a science-y machine that extracts liquid from foods — the essence of its flavor profile. 

Next, Nan used “spherification,” which is a method used in molecular gastronomy that turns liquids into moldable gel, to recreate the muscle fiber structure. The meat then went into its own meat-shaped mold to set. 

With the chicken bones and meat out of the way, Nan was faced with the hardest part yet—recreating the crispy skin. His first approach was the traditional way by actually dipping the transparent chicken wing into flour and trying to fry it. But the flour ended up turning the chicken wing white. 

He then tried tapioca flour, only to experience the same results. So next, he lowered the heat and tried low-temp frying, which made the wings less white, and more opaque. From there, Nan takes an entirely different approach and the process, admittedly, gets pretty complex to follow. Check out the rest of the video below to see how he pulls it off.