A flavorful Buffalo sauce, made from scratch at home in minutes with extra zest! Use it to coat your chicken wings or simply add it to your favorite pasta dish.
Global Food Recipes
with Spices and Herbs
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TL;DR
Buffalo sauce was created by an eating establishment in Buffalo, New York. 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, and 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-fil-A 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.
Ingredient Notes
- 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 get 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
Process Overview
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.
📖 Recipe
Zesty Buffalo Sauce Recipe
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
Instructions
- Place butter into a sauce pan and melt it.
- Add hot sauce to the butter and whisk in. Control the heat, it shouldn't get too hot.
- Season with salt, black pepper, sugar and worcestershrie sauce. Combine
- Control the heat, It shouldn't get too hot or else the sauce will separate but the sauce needs to reduce a bit for a minute or two to combine.
- Pour sauce into a clean sterilized jar and close with the lid OR use straightaway over your food or to make buffalo wings.
Notes
- For the hot sauce use frank's, Louisiana style, mango habanero or tabasco
Nutrition
Seasoning Ideas
The sauce can be enhanced with some more seasoning if you like. Add any of the following or combine two, or 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
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
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 xanthan gum, but I don't have any experience in that. Please let us know in the comments if you tried adding xanthan gum.
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 say “low sodium.” Also, to make it sugar-free, skip the sugar.
You can prepare a slurry with 2 Tbs water and 1 Tbs cornstarch. Mix some 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.
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