The Best Recipes To Try With Your Favorite Buffalo Sauce
There's something about the sweet-spicy flavor of buffalo sauce (hailing originally from Buffalo, New York, hence the name) that's addicting. Maybe it's the affiliation it has with game day parties and the general ambiance of people rooting for their favorite team while enjoying a flavorful kick in the mouth while chowing down on party snacks. Or, more likely, it's just because buffalo sauce is insanely delicious and shouldn't be limited in your repertoire to your once-a-week hot wings recipes.
If you've been looking for a way to expand buffalo sauce into your cooking routine, look no further than the recipes included here. Whether you decide to go with a classic wings recipe, you try to lighten things up by switching out chicken for cauliflower, or if you really mix things up by making buffalo mac and cheese (yes, for real!), you won't be disappointed by the results. Check out these buffalo sauce recipes you just have to try.
Buffalo wings
If making buffalo hot wings from scratch has always seemed a lot more complicated than picking up the phone and ordering delivery from a restaurant, you're about to be pleasantly surprised. This easy buffalo wings recipe from food writer Keith Kamikawa may take about 50 minutes to make from start to finish, but that includes making from-scratch buffalo sauce, bleu cheese dipping sauce, and frying up those hot wings. And if you think about it, it takes at least 30 minutes (or more) to get a delivery of hot wings from a local joint, so the difference in time isn't that much, and you're likely to save some money in the process.
The result with these wings is a spicier flavor due to the combination of Frank's Red Hot sauce and Tabasco, but you can always nix the tabasco for a milder version (or if you love extra heat, throw some extra Tabasco in there to kick things up a notch). And once you see how easy it is to make a batch of wings, you can try different sauce combinations and recipes to serve up a wing smorgasbord the next time you have family and friends over to watch sports.
Buffalo cauliflower
Whether you're personally trying to cut back on meat consumption or you have family or friends who follow a vegetarian diet, you'll want to keep this buffalo cauliflower bites recipe on hand. While subbing cauliflower for chicken may sound like a misguided idea, it's surprisingly tasty when the bites are served hot — similar in flavor to that of true hot wings. The trick is to batter the cauliflower bites before frying or baking them (this recipe keeps things healthier by baking them in the oven) to give them the same breaded outer layer of a chicken wings recipe.
One tip you won't find in the recipe itself? You can keep your hands clean during the battering process by putting the batter and cauliflower pieces into a large Ziploc bag and shaking the bag until the florets are fully coated. It's also important to remember that if you're baking your bites, you can separate them on the baking sheet to allow for a crispier coating, and be sure to flip them at least once or twice so all sides crisp up evenly.
Buffalo chicken dip
When you're looking for a flavorful dip to add to your game day (or any day) repertoire, look no farther than this protein-packed buffalo chicken dip that you can pair with chips, vegetables, or bread for a fun weekday meal. It takes about 35 minutes to make from start to finish, with only 15 minutes of prep time when you use pre-cooked chicken (pick up a rotisserie chicken from your local grocery store for an especially flavorful dip).
Unlike most buffalo dip recipes, this one eschews ranch dressing as part of the base in favor of mayonnaise, which adds an extra creamy consistency that's only heightened with the cream cheese. And after making the recipe once, you can customize the flavors to your liking by increasing or decreasing the total amount of buffalo sauce, bleu cheese crumbles, and crumbled chicken you add to the dip. You're going to love it.
Buffalo chicken mac and cheese sandwich
If you're on a low-carb diet or you're generally trying to watch your calorie and fat intake, this buffalo chicken mac and cheese recipe probably isn't for you. But if you're looking for a decadent, creamy, cheesy, gooey, carb-filled comfort food to indulge in on a cold winter evening? Look no further. This 45-minute recipe includes making a full batch of from-scratch buffalo mac and cheese featuring a three-cheese blend of bleu cheese, extra sharp cheddar, and Colby jack, so you can always enjoy the pasta leftovers on their own or have extra to serve sandwiches to a crowd.
And don't worry, it's not just a sandwich made of pasta layered between bread — you'll be cooking up buffalo-doused chicken breasts, too, before layering them with the mac and cheese, ranch dressing, and slices of mozzarella (yes, more cheese!) between your favorite type of toasted bread. Clearly, this isn't an everyday type of meal, but for a once-in-awhile treat? The flavors are hard to beat.
Copycat Buffalo Wild Wings
If Buffalo Wild Wings is your favorite pit-stop for grabbing chicken and beer with your friends, there's no reason you can't save a few bucks and move the party to your own house. Not only is it easy to buy the restaurant's wing sauce online (making it easy for even amateur cooks to get an authentic flavor when frying up wings at home), but you can easily make a copycat from scratch with this recipe for copycat Buffalo Wild Wings medium sauce-coated wings.
There are a few tricks for making the copycat recipe as authentic as possible — don't bread your wings, make sure you deep fry them, and use an egg (yes, an egg!) in the sauce to achieve the perfect, glossy coating and crisp, wingy texture. And if you have leftover sauce, you can store it in the fridge for about a week.