Spicing and Dips - How to Spice Buffalo Chicken

Buffalo chicken traditionally uses butter, hot sauce, vinegar, cayenne pepper and blue cheese that give it its unique flavor. However, you can choose to vary these ingredients depending on how you want your wings to taste.

Hot Sauce

When Teressa Belissimo rustled up chicken wings for the very first time at the Anchor Bar she used Frank’s RedHot Sauce for spicing up the dish. Even now the basic ingredient for any Buffalo style cooking is this same hot sauce.

Frank’s RedHot sauce uses a special mix of chile peppers to create that unique flavor that characterizes Buffalo chicken. These chile peppers are grown in Mexico and New Mexico. Once the peppers have been picked, they are made into a mash and stored. This helps in the ageing process. The hot sauce finally takes shape at the Springfield, Missouri plant. Additional spices are added before the sauce is ready for consumption.

Hot sauce is used as seasoning not just for chicken wings – it also works well with pizza, pasta and even popcorn.

Butter

The original Buffalo chicken recipe uses melted butter as part of its secret sauce. Butter has long been used in sauces especially in French cuisine. Hollandaise sauce for instance is made from butter and egg yolk. Whisking cold butter into any water-based sauce gives it greater body and lends a glossy sheen to it, not to mention the buttery taste. Butter can also be used for frying and sautéing although it tends to get scorched quite easily.

Butter was considered bad for health so margarine was used as a substitute for many years. In recent times, however, margarine has earned bad press for containing trans fats.

Vinegar

Cider vinegar was used in preparation of the classic Buffalo chicken. There are several varieties of vinegar though that you could experiment with such as wine, malt, balsamic, fruit, rice, palm etc. Cider vinegar is made from apples which give it its brownish-yellow color. It is generally sold in an unfiltered form and is a natural product.

Apart from its use in sauces such as ketchup and mayonnaise, vinegar is used to pickle food and to make salad dressings such as vinaigrettes. Some chutneys also use vinegar. (Image credit: Wikipedia)

Cayenne Pepper

Cayenne pepper is also known as bird pepper, Guinea spice, aleva or simply red pepper. This type of pepper is essentially a red chili pepper that is used for adding heat to food or even in medicines. Red chili peppers are dried and ground before being mashed and made into cakes by baking them. These cakes are then ground and sifted before being commercially sold as cayenne pepper.

Cayenne pepper is used as a spice in cooking, either whole or in powdered form. Sichuan cuisine makes use of whole Cayenne peppers. Powdered cayenne pepper is commonly used in vinegar-based sauces such as Buffalo wing sauce. Credits for the image go to Wikipedia.

Cayenne pepper is loaded with vitamin A and also contains vitamins B6, E and C, riboflavin, manganese and potassium.

Blue Cheese

Buffalo wings are traditionally served with blue cheese on the side. Blue cheese can be made out of cow’s milk, goat’s milk or sheep’s milk. This cheese gets its name from the blue veins or spots on its surface. Blue cheese is characterized by its sharp and slightly salty taste. Many people find blue cheese pungent. This pungency is due to the bacteria that are cultivated on the cheese. This strong flavor and smell make blue cheese an acquired taste. This is why some people prefer making their Buffalo chicken dip out of ranch dressing instead of blue cheese dressing. Blue cheese can be eaten on its own or melted or crumbled while adding it to food.

Another variation with a truly American flavor would be a Alfredo sauce recipe. This would go also well with Grilled chicken.