Buffalo Chicken Burgers

I've been noticing a lot of recipes with a "Buffalo Chicken Wing" theme lately, and decided to join the party. I have to admit I have resisted for quite a long time, though. The trouble is that in my early twenties I had a job as night-cook at a bar, and what I mostly made was Buffalo chicken wings. It gave me a jaundiced view of them.

I find it thoroughly bizarre that Buffalo chicken wings have become a kind of fancy thing. They are the creation of working class bars (in Buffalo, duh) made with the sole aim of selling a little food and encouraging the consumption of beer. Consequently, the recipe needed to be made of ingredients available from the cheaper food service companies and simple enough to be assembled by stoned minimum-wage workers late at night.

I'll tell you the original "recipe": Throw chicken wings in the deep fryer until done to a golden brown. Meanwhile, mix hot sauce and melted butter in a bowl, the proportions to depend on whether the customer has ordered mild, medium, hot, or suicide. When the wings are fried, drain them and toss them in the bowl. Dish them up and serve with a little blue cheese dressing from a bottle, and celery sticks. I see a number of gussied-up recipes with garlic and paprika out there, and let me tell you, no. Nobody in a bar is going to mess around like that.

The hot sauce was either Franks or Tabasco, depending on whether your bar had any pretensions to gentility whatsoever. There was no "wing sauce" which is apparently a thing you can buy now; I don't know why. I guess so you can have yet another half-empty jar of gunk in the fridge. There was absolutely no sugar or honey in it, which is a thing some people add now because people add sugar to absolutely everything, ugh.

So, anyway! These were good, and I would definitely make them again. You do need to make the Blue Cheese Dressing in advance, because let's face it; bottled blue cheese dressing is nothing to write home about, even when you are on your third beer. And a nice burger with lettuce and pickle is way better than gnawing on some boney, greasy, over-priced wing. Once the dressing is made they are really no harder or slower to make than any other burger.

4 large or 6 small burgers
20 minutes prep time for burgers
15 minutes prep time for Blue Cheese Dressing

Make the Meat Mixture:
450 grams (1 pound) lean ground chicken
1/4 cup oat bran
1 large egg
1 to 3 tablespoons Tabasco or Frank's hot sauce
1/4 teaspoon salt
freshly ground black pepper to taste
1/4 cup rice (or other) flour

Put the ground chicken in a mixing bowl with the oat bran, egg, hot sauce, salt, and pepper. Mix very well.

Put the rice flour in a shallow bowl sufficiently large to hold each hamburger patty as it is formed.

Also you need to have your blue cheese dressing made by now or it is tooooo late. Probably a good time to cut up the veggies as well.

Make the Burgers:
1 recipe Blue Cheese Dressing
4 to 6 hamburger buns
4 to 6 sturdy lettuce leaves
4 to 6 slices dill pickle (optional)
4 to 6 slices sweet onion (optional)
2 tablespoons unsalted butter
2 or 3 medium carrots, peeled and cut into sticks
2 or 3 stalks of celery, trimmed and cut into sticks.

Slice the buns and set them on plates. Wash and dry the lettuce leaves and put them on the buns, along with a dollop of blue cheese dressing and a slice of pickle and/or onion if desired.

Heat the butter in a skillet (or two) of sufficient size over medium heat until sizzling. 

Meanwhile, divide the meat mixture into 4 or 6 equal portions. Form each into a patty and dredge in the rice flour. Add them to the sizzling butter and cook for 4 minutes on each side until done. Put them in the buns, close them up, serve them with celery and carrot sticks. If there's a little extra dressing, pass it for the vegetable sticks.




Last year at this time I made Turnips with Bacon & Onion.

Posted in: Ontario Food