 As we move forward in building our new civilization and start to dive further into the Bronze Age, I now have some pretty fundamental tools and ingredients for cooking food, a variety of cookware, utensils, cooking oil, an oven, and fire. Potentially all the core essentials needed to cook almost anything. So in the coming weeks I hope to explore the historical roots of many dishes, as well as hypothetical ones that could have potentially been made at various points in history. With the Super Bowl earlier this month and its most common appetizer, for today's episode I want to take some inspiration and see if it might be possible to make my own hot wings. Using my very limited Bronze Age-era arsenal of tools and see if I can make some primitive hot wings out in the wild over a fire. Everything we use comes from 8,000 generations of collective innovation and discovery, but could an average person figure it all out themselves and work their way from the Stone Age to today? That's a question we're exploring. Each week I try to take the next step forward in human history. My name is Andy and this is how to make everything. Be sure to subscribe and turn on notifications so you don't miss the next step in this journey. Right now we are currently at the year 3200 BCE and the hot and spicy chicken wings involve two elements that were well within use by this era, but on opposite sides of the globe. Over several centuries these two elements would spread around the world, become stable elements of cuisine and most cultures, and eventually inevitably collide to make the hot wing. To trace their path, let's start first with the source of the spiciness, the chili pepper. Originating in northeast Mexico, they were first eaten by humans by at least 7500 BCE and became one of the earliest agricultural crops in the Americas, spreading as far as parts of South America. Chili peppers get their spiciness from a collection of compounds called capsaicinoids, which act as defense mechanisms specifically against mammals whose molars would crush and destroy the seeds, and produces a burning sensation wherever it makes contact to discourage consumption. Birds however do not have an apparent reaction and are free to eat and spread the seeds. For some reason, this compound that was originally tended to repel mammals like humans was found to bring an interesting flavor, the flavor of pain to cuisine and was widely cultivated. Once the Colombian exchange occurred in 1492, it quickly spread around the world thanks to Portuguese traders who was cultivated into many unique varieties. Before we began the reset, I planted a variety of different chili plants with the intention of extracting the capsaicinoids to make my own pepper spray. Hope to still get to that project later, but until then, I'm holding off on blinding myself. I planted green peppers, jalapenos, habaneros, ghost peppers, Trinidad morigascorpion, and Carolina reapers. The seventh, second, and number one, hottest peppers, at least at the latest sources I checked. Hotter and hotter peppers are already being bred, and early frost threatened them before they get fully developed, so I harvested some of them and then also transplanted some inside to hopefully try and get them to finish maturing indoors. Got a variety of different peppers here. Don't remember what I planted where. These look like... I don't know. This is uh... I don't know what this is. These are jalapenos. I can at least harvest them for sure. And I think these are the Carolina reapers. They're supposed to turn red. Supposed to go through a few different color changes, but they never made that far. Probably aren't going to, because it's already been the first frost and they don't like it cold. Starting to get a little bit of it. Tasty. Got a bell pepper. Ooh, getting some spice now. I don't know if I can transplant these indoors. I think I'd try to go habaneros. These eager to come inside. It is cold out. In addition to the peppers, I have an assortment of other root vegetables like onion and garlic I've grown before, as well as salt I've collected to season it. Previously, I also have ground wheat, I grew and milled for my bread episode, and all the olive oil I crushed for my oil lamp. Also ahead of time, I'll need to make some apple cider vinegar, like I previously made in the past. By laying some naturally present lactobacteria ferment a mixture of apples with some water and honey. Lastly, one more dish in addition to the collection of bowls I've made before, my own frying pan. With those prepped, now I'll set up and get things cooking. All right, so we got a nice warm fire here on a chilly winter day, and I got all the ingredients now to make some hot sauce. Got the chilies I grew, the apple cider vinegar, it's been fermenting, a little some onion and garlic, it's all been growing. Let's make some hot sauce. Pretty sharp. It's just fat. So I grew a variety of different ones. I'm not sure which ones are which or how spicy they ever got, so let's try some. That was hotter than I expected. I should have brought milk. I'll try this one, I guess. Now we're not too much. Still burns? Don't let me wipe my eyes after this. Just drizzle some olive oil. I'm frying up. Ooh, sizzling. That was quick. That's really good. Yeah, it looks a bit sweet in there. While the sauce is cooking up, let's prep some pan-fried bread that I can use for breading on the chicken. A ground flour in the Utah mine. Brush that up a bit. Equinox in. Pretty good. A little raw still, but it's good. The salt is really good. Some nice fried dough balls. I'm just gonna leave them out to dry out. I'm gonna use it for the breaded chicken. Oh, god. A little too hot, I guess. I just handled everything else. Now it breaks. One casualty. I put this into your blender, but I can make do here. A little sharper. This in the bottle. All right, so that should wrap everything for today. Next up is a little bit of patience as we wait for the hot sauce to ferment for the next couple of weeks. And meanwhile, the bread will dry out, go a bit stale. Be perfect for bread crumbs for the breading of our chicken wings. What's the nature to take its course? Birds? Birds. With the spicy sauce already made, the next important ingredient is the meat, the chicken. Commonly seen as dumb, brainless creatures, these secretly cunning beasts are descendants of one of the few species of dinosaurs to survive the KT event. They do not forget when they once ruled this world and have been carefully enacting an 8,000 year strategy of world domination, allowing them to rise to become the world's dominant bird with over 24 billion chickens suddenly ruling from the shadows. All by enacting the very devious strategy of tasting delicious. Some time around 6000 BCE, the Red Jungle Foul enacted the first step of their plan, by allowing itself to become domesticated, likely in what is now Thailand. From here, they launched a two-prong attack, slowly spreading east and west to expand their control, spreading through the Indus Valley, then east and reaching China by 5400 BCE, then west, extending to Greece and Eastern Europe by 3000 BCE, and the rest of Europe by 1000 BCE, and then down into Africa, extending their reach to the near entirety of Afro-Eurasia. But still not satisfied, they still had their eyes set on the last frontier of the New World of the Americas, where they would base their stronghold as one of the most popular forms of meat to consumed in the majority of it. At this point, we're not even sure how they achieved it. Most likely links the assistance of Christopher Columbus in his voyages, but there are also theories that suggest the chickens laid claim to these continents even earlier through Polynesians, theoretically reaching South America a century earlier. Recent evidence puts this on shaky ground though. Today, there is one last continent that stands in defiance of total chicken domination, Antarctica, which bans live chickens to help protect the indigenous penguins from their diseases. Nevertheless, these diseases have still managed to affect some penguins, leaving it only a matter of time before they complete dominance. What are the next stages of their dastardly plans? Who knows. But as a common vector for many diseases, we may already be entering the final endgame of their insidious plan. But in the meantime, let's make some wings. Alright, so we're back. The hot sauce should be fermented now. The bread has gone nice and stale, and a chicken has died of natural causes. His head fell off, all of his feathers very convenient, and he left us an egg. Let's make some hot wings. Yeah, sharpen my knife. Every time I cut on those hands, the only doles it. One wing. Oh no, it's a little alive. Trying to make a run for it. Two wings. And then the rest of the chicken, we just throw in the fire. Cut off the wing tips. Those can be saved for chicken stock. Man, right off the drumlet, trim the wing. Cutting donations. What's going on with that? Leaking out the oil, just fliming up, and that's that's gonna be an issue. So then we'll have to switch from the frying pan into the pot. It's a little difficult because we are limited in the number of containers. The other one broke last time. It'd be a little bit juggling to get this breaded, breaded, breaded, breaded. Yolked bread fryer. Let's see if we can get this to work. I'll just throw it all in, I guess. Some big chunks in there. Hopefully we have oil left over the time it gets there. Hopefully the salvage is left with oil. Oh yeah, it's got a massive crack in it now, and it's on fire. Last pot. This doesn't break, and hopefully that's enough. All right, then for the best results, you want to let it refrigerate before you fry them. And so we're just going to let it sit out here because in Minnesota the world is our refrigerator. Only even if they need. My original plan was to deep fry them, but that's in the bowl. Pretty good. Can use some hot sauce. That's gotta be done. Oh, that one has extra seasoning. A fork or tongs would be nice right now. Better off stabbing them. Yeah, actually looks really good. All right, next batch. All right, time for the hot sauce. These are chunky. They keep everything. That looks really good. I'm a little afraid to try it after that little bite. All right, let's give it a taste and see if it'll warm up. It's been getting kind of cold out here. It's got a kick. Oh boy. It's good though. Oh, it burns. I'm also cold and very hot. I wish I had brought some milk. What do I have? Uh-oh. Wings turn out really good. Very rustic cooking it over the fire and everything. Ended up having a few casualties along the way and a little limited in the utensils, but the fact that it probably could have been done better is just the ability to chop things up a little bit finer. My bronze blades are a little thick. It makes it a challenge. Other than that, they turn out really good. Really spicy. My lips are still burning, so this is kind of a unique bronze age attempt at a meal that wouldn't have been possible in the Bronze Age. Chickens from Southeast Asia, chili peppers from Mexico were still several thousand years from intersecting. Couldn't have done this in the Bronze Age, but they would have had the technology too. I'm really cold, so let's go back to the studio. I end up all the time to prep the ingredients, including the previous ones, like milling the wheat and crushing the olives. These very primitively made wings took around 32 hours of work to produce, putting their minimum wage cost at around $260 for a plate of them. You end up actually having a fair amount of leftover hot sauce, so our $75 patrons will be getting a bottle of that, and we're going to be looking into selling some of it in the near future. I think you can do all of our supporters on Patreon without you this won't be possible, and if you like our content and want to see more, be sure to support us. Any amount really helps. If you enjoyed this video, be sure to subscribe and check out other content we have covering a wide variety of topics. Also, if you've enjoyed these series, consider supporting us on Patreon. We are largely a fan-funded channel, and depend on the support of our viewers in order to keep our series going. Thanks for watching!