7 Buffalo Recipes to Fire Up Your Game Day
You can buffalo so much more than wings.
Matt Taylor-Gross / Food Styling by Amelia Rampe
"Buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo buffalo buffalo Buffalo buffalo" is a grammatically accurate, difficult to parse sentence developed in 1972 by professor William J. Rapaport to demonstrate the wackiness of the English language. It is also the mantra in my brain whenever chicken wing season begins, annually coinciding with the beginning of football season and ending with the sports- and advertising-appreciation night that is the Super Bowl. But despite this ritualistic celebration of buffalo wings, I have a theory. We have been needlessly limiting ourselves. You can buffalo more than wings. With a little bit of ingenuity and a lot of hot sauce, you can buffalo anything you want.
Buffalo sauce is named after the city where it originated, Buffalo, New York, where, in 1964, the Anchor Bar served up its first plate of buffalo wings. The sauce was put together by Teressa Bellissimmo, who served the wings with blue cheese and celery because that's what she had on hand. Bellissimmo's trick was combining hot sauce with melted butter, a combination that cut the peppery, vinegar-based sauce with fat and turned it into a condiment perfect for coating fried chicken wings. You can also use it in, say, a buffalo chicken calzone or buffalo chicken dip. But you don't even need chicken to be a part of the set-up. Anything that takes well to a sauce could be buffaloed.
Buffalo cauliflower has become a popular meatless option, but there's no reason to stop there. Melt together two tablespoons of butter to about four tablespoons of hot sauce — the standard, thanks to Anchor Bar, is Frank's Red Hot, but any cayenne pepper sauce will work. Then use it wherever you want. Toss roasted potatoes in it. Roast some brussels sprouts on a sheet pan and then serve them with a side of buffalo. Throw some into a batch of popcorn and toss it around — or better yet make buffalo and blue cheese popcorn. Swirl some into sour cream or Greek yogurt for instant dip. Try it as a salad dressing if you're feeling spicy. There's no limit to what you can buffalo.
Of course, there are times when you'd rather have a spice mixture than a sauce. You can buy a pre-made buffalo spice mix online and at some supermarkets, but if you already have a well-stocked spice pantry, you probably also have what you need to throw one together. For ours, we use half a teaspoon of cayenne and a quarter teaspoon each of garlic powder, seasoning salt, paprika (sweet, not smoked), lemon pepper, and sumac. If you want things hotter, up the quantity of cayenne. If you want more of a bright, acidic hit, add a bit more sumac or lemon pepper.
Dust the spice mix on deviled eggs, or mix into a bread crumb topping of baked macaroni and cheese. We make buffalo-flavored chips by shaking some up in a bag of thick, crispy kettle chips. But if you wanted to dust it on ice cream or use it in your next pot of beans, it would work equally as well. Buffalo is a seasoning, not a season. The world is your buffalo. Embrace it. — Margaret Eby
Buffalo and Blue Cheese Popcorn
This recipe is a smart way to bring buffalo wing vibes to the party when you'd rather not spend your time deep-frying and coating chicken wings. Half of the popcorn is tossed with a buttery buffalo wing sauce and the other half with blue cheese powder and celery salt. Mix them together and you get the flavors of buffalo wings dipped into blue cheese dressing in an easy snack.
Buffalo Turkey Hand Pies
These delicious, savory hand pies are made by filling store-bought puff pastry with diced leftover turkey that's been tossed with a Buffalo-style hot sauce. Feel free to use leftover rotisserie chicken instead.
Buffalo Wings
Matt Taylor-Gross / Food Styling by Amelia Rampe
There’s no substitute for a classic buffalo wing when it comes to snacking while watching a game or relaxing on a weekend afternoon. These wings are fried, then tossed in a buttery hot sauce and served with blue cheese dipping sauce and celery. The tangy blue cheese dressing is the perfect counterpart to the wings.
Buffalo Chicken Dip
This crowd-pleasing dip, from Food & Wine's Justin Chapple, has all the punchy flavors of Buffalo chicken wings. It gets its creamy texture from a combination of cream cheese and sour cream. Serve it with tortilla chips and celery sticks.
Buffalo Chicken Calzones
To make the most of rotisserie chicken, F&W's Justin Chapple tosses it with a buttery buffalo-style sauce, then bakes it into a calzone with Monterey Jack cheese. In keeping with how traditional buffalo wings are served, he offers celery sticks and blue cheese alongside the calzone.
Buffalo Chicken Fajitas
Doused in a spicy buffalo-style sauce and nestled in a chewy tortilla, this mash-up of two game day classics can easily be scaled up or down, depending on your number of guests.
Firecracker Shrimp with Blue Cheese Dressing
Andrew Zimmern's shrimp fry up quickly, and get their buttery, spicy flavor from hot sauce and butter.
Firecracker Shrimp with Blue Cheese Dressing
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