Zesty Buffalo Sauce Recipe (+VIDEO)

Name: Zesty Buffalo Sauce Recipe
Prep time: 5 min
Cook time: 5 min
Total time: 10 min
Ingredients: ½ cup Butter (unsalted); 1 cup Hot Sauce (*see Notes); ½ Tablespoon Sugar; ½ Teaspoon Salt (optional); ½ Teaspoon Black Pepper Ground; ½ Tablespoon Worcestershire Sauce

Helene Dsouza

Flavorful buffalo sauce recipe. Preare this sauce within 5 minutes over he stove top trom scratch. Including seasoning options for extra zest!

Total Time: 10

Prep Time: 5

Cook Time: 5

16 servings

4.50 from 6 votes

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A flavorful Buffalo Sauce, made from scratch at home in minutes with extra zest!

Use it to coat your chicken wings or simply added it to your favorite pasta dish.

Here you will find the sauce recipe and some ideas to use, store and enjoy this amazing sauce!

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📕 What's Buffalo Sauce?
🧅 Ingredients
🔪 How to make it?
🍴 Uses
🍱 Storing
💭 FAQs
📖 Recipe
💬 Comments

📕 What's Buffalo Sauce?

Buffalo sauce was created by an eating establishment in New York Buffalo. This is where the name came from.

The sauce is a combination mainly of hot sauce and butter and it's most famously used to prepare buffalo chicken wings.

The sauce is sweet, tangy, creamy and the heat develops with every bite. My recipe has a zesty touch to it.

There are countless buffalo sauce recipes out there. This DIY buffalo sauce recipe was inspired by the chick a fil buffalo dip.

It's not a copycat recipe but it has a touch of the sauce and it also includes some of the McDonald's buffalo dip flavors.

🧅 Ingredients

butter - unsalted
hot sauce - I like to use Louisiana or Frank's hot sauce, both are great. You can use tabasco too and if you want to go creative, try this recipe with a mango habanero hot sauce. Fiery hot, fruity, and sooo good! You can also use Texas Pete hot sauce or even sriracha Thai hot sauce.
sugar - regular or brown sugar. You can also use honey, which acts as an emulsifier and helps in binding the sauce.
black pepper - freshly ground for the best effect!
salt - I'm obsessed with Himalayan pink salt as it adds some umami to the sauce.
Worcestershire sauce

Seasoning Ideas

The sauce can be enhanced with some more seasoning if you like. Add any of the following or combine two, three of them:

garlic powder
onion powder
cayenne pepper
mustard powder or dijon mustard paste - emulsifier. Helps in binding for a thick sauce.
turmeric - for a yellow-orangey shade and it helps in preserving the sauce longer
lemon pepper seasoning

🔪 How to make it?

Here is an overview of how this sauce comes together. You will need about 5 minutes of your time to make your own buffalo sauce.

The US and metric measurements are in the recipe card further below.

Step 1

Melt butter and add hot sauce.

Whisk the two ingredients together.

Step 2

Season with salt, black pepper, sugar and Worcestershire sauce. Mix.

Pour into a jar to store or use directly in your food.

🍴 Uses

The most popular way to use this homemade zesty buffalo sauce is coated over wings and served with a blue cheese dip.

Buffalo sauce finds many uses besides as classic chicken wing sauce. Here are some fun tasty meal ideas:

buffalo chicken pasta
drizzled over pizza
cauliflower wings
coated paneer (as in tikka tandoori paneer)
chicken dip
in burger
buffalo shrimp
as a dip with chicken tenders

... and here some special sauces based on this buffalo sauce.

bayou buffalo sauce - add cayenne pepper and cajun seasoning to your buffalo sauce
barbalo sauce - buffalo + BBQ sauce combined

🍱 Storing

Place the sauce in a clean sterilized jar and close tight with a lid.

Keep it in the fridge until further use.

The sauce is good for 1 week or about 10 days. Use it up before that.

You can also freeze your sauce in smaller batches and reheat to defrost and get it back into its liquid oily state.

That way the sauce can be stored for a longer period of time.

💭 FAQs

Why does my buffalo sauce separate?

The emulsion between the butter and hot sauce breaks when the butter and sauce have been heated too much. Don't overheat your buffalo sauce. If the sauce separates, it might not stick to the chicken later on. You can also use a blender stick to blend it together, which usually helps as well. Also adding an emulsifier can do the trick such as mustard and honey. Commercial sauces add xantham gum, but I don't have any experience in that. Let us know in the comments if you tried adding xantham gum.

How to make this buffalo sauce vegan, gluten-free?

To make this sauce vegan switch the butter with margarine. To make it gluten-free, pick a hot sauce and a Worcestershire sauce that say that they are gluten-free. For other special diets, the sauce is already low carb and keto-friendly, to make it low sodium, pick a hot sauce and Worcestershire sauce that says low sodium. Also, to make it sugar-free skip the sugar.

How to make my sauce thicker?

You can prepare a slurry with 2 Tbs water and 1 Tbs cornstarch. Mix some of the still-hot sauce to the slurry and combine. Then add the mixed slurry to the remaining hot sauce in the pan and combine well with a whisk, while heating it up over a low heat setting. Do that until it all thickens and you are satisfied with the thickness and result.