Ahhhhhh, chicken wings and a spicy dipping sauce. A Laotian staple. This is one of those meals that you eat like once a week with your family with a side of steaming hot sticky rice. Pair it with spicy papaya salad and there’s no other meal like it.

This spicy dipping sauce is called “jeow” and it’s a pretty universal name used for most sauces. The one I made here is the tomato version, “jeow mak-len“. My mom was always the go-to person to make a large batch of these and then she’ll put it in Tupperware and it can be refrigerated for up to 2 weeks! I don’t have the luxury of making large batches since there’s only 2 people in this household, so making it fresh each time is perfectly fine with me 🤓

Ingredients for the chicken wings:

• 12 large chicken wings, with the drum and tail attached
• 1 tbsp sugar
• 5 tbsp oyster sauce
• 1 tbsp dark soy sauce
• 1 tbsp chicken seasoning
• 3/4 tbsp yellow curry powder
• 1 tbsp fish sauce
• black pepper
• 1 tbsp chopped lemon grass
• 1 tbsp garlic powder or 2-3 cloves chopped garlic

Directions for chicken wings: Very straight forward– just combine all of the ingredients and let it marinate for 20 minutes or overnight. Then I cooked it on broil at 425 F for a total of 45 minutes, flipping the wings to the other side after about 20 minutes. Tip: I lay the wings out on a tray upside down on purpose. So when it’s time to flip it, the top part of it will be nice and crispy (cause’ that’s the best part).

Ingredients for the tomato jeow:

• (serving for 2 people, with leftovers)
• 5 grape tomatoes
• 3 shallots
• 3 Thai chili peppers (or more, but mine are very spicy so 3 is a good medium spice for me)
• 1.5 tbsp chopped cilantro
• 2.5-3 tsp fish sauce
• 1.5 tsp sugar
• 1 lime slice
• mortar and pestle, OR something to smash the ingredients with i.e., rolling pin and ziplock bag

Directions for the tomato jeow:

Step 1: Slice the grape tomatoes and shallots into halves. Lay out the chili peppers with the stems removed. I cooked this in my air fryer for 5 minutes, but you can do this in anything (i.e., toaster oven, large oven).

But if you’re going to do this in an air fryer like me, you must do it BELOW the basket cover. This is to prevent any vegetables from rising and getting stuck in the heat source, thus causing a fire. Please see photo below! Cook at 400 F for 7 minutes.

Step 2: After 7 minutes, your vegetables should look charred a bit. This is exactly how you want it! Remove from foil and throw them into your mortar and pestle. Smash it until you get a thick consistency and everything looks well mixed.

Step 3: Squeeze a lime slice. Add in fish sauce, sugar and cilantro. Mix thoroughly. The consistency of this sauce is supposed to be on the thicker side, but if you like it more liquidy, feel free to add in a tsp of h2o.

Step 4: Finished product!!! I like to dip the chicken into it and scoop some into my rice.