How to make Buffalo Chicken and Bleu Cheese

Yes, I was just going to remind you.

But yeah, it was a wonderful evening. I'll, you know, I'm not a drinker anymore. So I'm a little woozy today. But we'll get through this. And then I just got another— it was— it's been a good week to be me.

Good.

This just came delivered from Australia.

Wow. Australia.

Why?

What is it?

It's a cast iron Solid Technics Ozzie Pan. It's a seamless one-piece cast iron. I think it's cast iron or it's some kind of iron. Actually, I've gotten a cast iron skillet from them before and this is a different kind of makeup. So we're actually going to have this guy on. Even before he sent it, I didn't even know he was sending me one. It was quite a surprise.

And wow, that's fantastic.

Yeah, so it's like, poof, it doesn't look like cast iron though. I don't think it is. I thought originally it was supposed to be. Let's see, it just came in. Seamless one-piece Australian iron commercial pan. Okay, pre-seasoned, all ready to cook. So it is an iron pan, but it's not cast iron. So it's a low-carbon, mild steel.

It looks—

it's absolutely a high-tech, high-tech, you know, I'm just wondering if it'll work with a burner while we're here. And guess what? It works in Dutch.

Yeah, yeah, iron does, iron does. That's fantastic.

So anyway, well, let's get started. Everybody's here, please feel free to tell a little bird. And we're gonna make my favorite buffalo chicken wing recipe. Not difficult, there's just a couple little things that you want to know about making the sauce to make your life easier. And hi, McGuire Organics is in there, how you doing? Uh, Michael's here, Hippie Homemaker is here. We've got quite a crowd already, and hopefully we'll get some more people in. Sherri, how you doing?

Yeah, we do. And you know what? I, you know, when you talk about chicken wings and tailgating, you know, you think about entertaining, or even if you don't entertain, you know, you're cozy, you have the fire going, you're, you know, in your warm flannels and everything. And so I wanted to share some thoughts about the cozy kitchen, how to get your kitchen cozy for the warm months. And wait till you see this slideshow.

I know, and that's good because it is getting a little chilly. We hit 69 this morning, I think it was.

So, okay, I'm, you know, people are gonna hate me again. I know. Yeah, I hate you.

But let's start. Before we get to the warm, we need blue cheese dressing. All right, and blue cheese dressing is easy.

Thank you.

And we're going to start with that. Let me grab this. So there's a few easy ingredients, okay? And again, you can change these, but I'm using mayonnaise. And if you like other ingredients, you can feel free. You know, you can use a vegan mayonnaise. I don't know how blue cheese would be with a vegan because there's no vegan blue cheese. But anyway, you can use different kinds of mayonnaise. This is sour cream, but you could easily use Greek yogurt.

So what is it, about a cup each?

It's about a half a cup.

Okay.

About a half a cup each. And then I'm going to put in some granulated onion. Kind of stiffened up a little bit. Onion will do that. And I like granulated, not powdered, because powder tends to clump.

Oh gosh, I don't even know if I knew there was a difference.

Sometimes they call granulated powder. You just don't want that flour-like spice.

And what did you just put in?

I just put in some black pepper.

Okay.

And I'm going to hold the salt until I taste it because sometimes blue cheese has salt. Now I'm going to put in a little bit of milk. Actually, it's half and half because I don't have milk in the house. And then I'm going to put in about a quarter cup of blue cheese chunks.

Nice.

Now you can either put it into your blender, your food processor. I'm going to use my induction— my, uh, not induction—

immersible. What is it called?

Immersion blender. Yeah, my mind is just not quite there. And we're just gonna— let me turn this Okay.

So now I'm wondering, now let's see if he leaves some chunks. I'm sure he'll leave some chunks in there. We can't hear, we, yeah, we, Dennis, can you hear us? No. Okay. Okay, good. Now that looks good. I mean, it looks like 1, 2, 3, it's done. I don't know, just give me a spoon.

Okay, now I heard you say you hope I left some chunks in, but I didn't. And actually, I'm used to making really big amounts of this at school because, yeah, girls just loved it. And I would make like a gallon or 2 gallons of this to go with. So what I would do, plug this, is I would use my food processor and I would put the blue cheese in with a little milk and make more of a creamed blue cheese and get it because this is the secret to the flavor. Now, I don't have chunks in here right now, but I'm going to add some more chunks.

Okay, thank you.

And now we have a nice chunky blue cheese dressing.

Thank you.

Now with dressing, how quick that was to make, how easy.

I know, that was what, you know, 30 seconds.

Couple minutes. Yep. Let's taste. Little bit of salt.

Okay.

And we're done. I was gonna put the spoon back in because it's probably just me that's gonna eat it. But I won't.

Nice.

And we're done. Now, if you can make this a day ahead of time, you could use Greek yogurt instead of the sour cream. And you know, would give it a little bit more tang.

That's exactly what Hippie Homemaker asked, if you can use Greek.

I saw that. Yeah, give it a little bit more tang. I don't have any plain Greek yogurt. I would not use a flavored Greek yogurt, and I don't have any plain. I do have flavored, but if you can make it up a day ahead of time, it's going to taste a whole lot better.

Oh, really?

Shipping address, shipping address. Well, I'd have to send it refrigerated. I'm gonna put this in the refrigerator, speaking of refrigerator, and that'll be good for later. But again, the flavor is going to build with anything like a salad dressing. It takes a little time. So now let's make the sauce. All right, oops, it's back over here. Wrong way, wrong way. Sorry about that, guys. I don't get you Blair Witch dizzy there, but we're going to start the sauce. Let's turn this on. There's really only one real trick Making the sauce. I'm not making a lot, so I'm going to use half a stick of butter. Rest away.

Everything's better with butter.

Well, I am going to make a lot because I'm going to save it for later.

Everything's better.

I'll use the whole bottle because I have more wings in there. I didn't— I'm not cooking them all right now. So we're going to melt the butter, and really the only thing you want to do is you want to get the butter good and hot. And this is where a lot of people make mistake with sauce. Have you ever gone out for wings and in the bottom of the basket is nothing but grease? The sauce— yeah, it's, it's broke. The sauce got too hot, plain and simple. The sauce— okay, this is the secret to not letting that happen, is you want to get your— as soon as your butter's melted We're going to mix the other ingredients in. And let me rinse off— I knew I had that whip for another reason. It was there for my, uh, sauce. All that blue cheese off of it. But I would make this again. I would throw 5 pounds of butter in and get a gallon of hot sauce, and we would make it up big time. Wow, it's melting.

So far so good.

So far so good, just about melted.

So that's a half a stick.

Yeah, that was a half a stick, and it's a pretty simple ratio. Uh, half a stick is what, 4 ounces of butter? I'm going to add in about, oh, 10 ounces of hot sauce. So now I'm going to turn this off. Butter's melted, it's off. It does not have to get any real more hotter. Now you can use—

wow, that's a lot!

Well, Well, I'm going to make enough for— I have more wings in there, so I'm actually put all 12 ounces in here. It's going to be a little bit hotter, but generally I use 6 ounces of butter to 12 ounces of hot sauce. So that would be half butter, 2 parts hot sauce, and then a half part of the butter, which is 3 ounces of honey. You don't have to put the honey in. I like it. Okay, going to give that heat just a little bit of sweetness.

I was just going to ask if it kind of tones it down or something.

Just a little bit, because I like hot, but I like hot sweet. Okay, now you're going to see as I mix this up and get everything in, and I've still got it on the heat, so it's warming up a little bit. But you got to remember, your wings, whether they're coming out of the oven, whether they're coming out of a frying pan, or whether they're coming off the grill, because you can do them any way you like, are going to be very, very hot. So your sauce does not have to be boiling. Okay, you just want to mix everything in. And once it's all mixed in, your sauce—

And like you said, you probably, you have to be careful not to make it too hot so it breaks down, right?

Well, heat-wise hot.

Yeah, that's what I mean. That's what I mean. So at this stage, you want to be, you want to watch it. You don't want it to be overly hot.

Yeah. Okay. That's what will cause it to break into separate. Okay, now it's, it's thick. All right, it's gonna cling. See how it's holding to the spoon like the spoon test?

Yeah. So then maybe you put it on like a medium setting. Well, you put the induction on medium. What do you have the induction on?

I have it off right now. Okay, I turned it off once my butter was melted. I turned it off. Oh, Okay.

Okay.

This is all you have to do now. It's done.

Okay.

You don't have to cook it. You just want— in fact, I'll put a little bit of honey in there because I didn't put quite as much butter. I just want to tone it down. And again, make it how you like it. Yes, there you go. Emulsifying. That's, that's it. And that's what you're doing is you're emulsifying it. And you can whip this and it would get a little thicker. Now I have made this with coconut oil. Can't even taste the coconut oil instead of butter. It's excellent that way. So it just doesn't quite thicken up as much, although if I let it get a little cooler, it probably would, because the whole thing with this is the cling, the cling to the chicken. And I did put the recipe in there up at the top, uh, before we started. You can check that out. And I also don't just use straight hot sauce because I'm a little bit of a wimp. I like flavor, not as much heat. This has got some heat to it, but it's not going to kill me. So I use Frank's wing sauce. All right. So I don't— it's already cut a little bit. It's not just straight hot sauce.

Oh, oh, I thought you were using straight. I mean, I didn't know there was a difference of straight and not straight.

I mean, that's, that's supposedly ready to go on wings. Not that good just that way.

So maybe like a medium hot?

Yeah, you know, it's got some heat to it, but it's not, it's not killer.

Oh, huge difference. Huge distinction.

And I actually made it one day, same recipe, and it'd been so long since I used to use Louisiana Hot for everything. Couldn't find it. Found it down here. Thrilled to make my hot sauce. Well, we're used to this now, and it was a little too hot. So I went back to this. This is— this— the recipe's down this way. But, you know, whatever amount of heat you like, whatever kind of heat you like. Before I forget to let me make you a co-host, I'm just looking at the—

oh yeah, please.

Whatever kind of heat you like, you know, use whatever hot sauce you like. It doesn't— again, this is your wing recipe. I'm just showing you how to make the sauce so it clings really well. So this is going to go off to the side now.. And then let's start our wings.

I mean, that's a 2-ingredient, uh, that's a 2-ingredient sauce.

Yeah, well, 3 if you count the honey.

Okay, 3-ingredient sauce, easy.

2 parts butter, 1 part honey, 2 parts butter, 3 parts hot sauce.

Okay, 1, 2, 3, easy to remember.

All right, so that's easy enough. So let's just do these. Now here I have whole wings. Sometimes you can buy drummies already made. Let me turn this back. I thought I lost the camera for a minute. I saw that. Okay, so whole wings. I don't use this part of it, the tip, so I'm taking them off, but I'm going to throw these on a pot on the stove. I have some stock that I've been working on for a while now that's in my freezer. Every time I get some chicken scraps, I cook it down and make a little bit more stock. So eventually I'll have enough to make a soup. So, you know, I'll just take these and we'll throw them in later. Any other scraps I might have, if I don't have enough, I might just save them. And then we're just going to disjoint them and they're really easy to do.

I can't— I don't know. I— yeah, do it in slow motion.

Okay.

I can't do that.

When you can also come in here and break it by hand.

Okay, that I could do.

That'll let you find where to cut.

Oh, life-changing.

Okay, life-changing tip until you learn, because it's just a little— and you just want to let your knife fit in that little space. You want to find that little space, and your knife will go to it eventually. And so you cut it up. So here I have an order of wings. I have 10 wings. Pretty simple to do. This is going to be lunch today. Now I've got my flour.

Flour. I didn't expect that. I did not expect that.

These are Jersey Shore wings. All right. They are not naked wings.

Ah, okay.

These are flour dipped and you don't have to use flour. You can just fry them plain. You can use gluten-free flour. I have done that too.

Well, does that— I mean, I would imagine the flour makes the skin more crispy.

Yes.

Okay. That's— there we go. Hey, guess who's with us? Nazim is with us.

Hey, Nazim. So this is, this is the perfect for me. And again, this is Jersey Shore wings. I've had them the other way, but this is kind of how I like them now. Some people will even put a little cornstarch on them.

I think that flour is the secret weapon. I think that's one of the big secrets.

Looks to me it really gives you a little bit more crunch. And, you know, when I was taught to make wings, the guy that taught me to make wings, it was 7 minutes in the deep fryer. That's what he said. No, not before, not longer. 7 minutes. And that's kind of how I gauge their doneness. Now, it's harder when you're doing them on the stovetop. They do take a little longer. So let me take this, and while they're cooking, you can talk about kitchens. So let me get this started, get the pan hot. Okay. And what I'm going to do now is I'm just going to put some oil in it as soon as the pan gets hot.

Okay, should I take it away?

Yeah, take it away. I'll be cooking them while you're talking. And at this point, all I'm going to do is get some oil in here, put them in, and if it starts to get too loud from the crackling, I may turn my sound down a little.

Okay, cool. All right, so here we go. I'm going to move my camera very quickly. Here we go. Okay. Oh no, that's not— here we go. Good. Something like this. All right, everybody. So this is the new technology for screen sharing for our lab. And you know what? You know what? Who loves a cozy kitchen? Do you have a cozy kitchen? Do you want a cozy kitchen? I have some great tips for you, really good tips on how you can make your kitchen— you don't have to do a whole remodel, but some things you may want to borrow. So here we go. Here's— yep, this is good, looking good. Okay, here we have, you know, let's look at the floor first in this image. The floor is beautiful. It's some kind of brick or terracotta, but it's warm. You have warmth. We have baskets in this kitchen. We have the beams. We have a huge window. You know, things like that, they really warm up the kitchen and they make the kitchen, you know, a living area, a place you want to really just live in. You don't always have— this is a kitchen I designed up in Rhode Island. You don't always have to have, you know, tons of wall cabinets. You don't have to have wall cabinets everywhere. Here, you know, we added a tall pantry, a tall open pantry, and then we added large window. So don't always— and Chef, please listen to me on this— though it's not all about how much cubic feet of storage you can possibly get into your kitchen. It's not about that. It's about, you know, aesthetics are every bit as important as function, in my opinion. Here we have beautiful— this is a beautiful Jerusalem antique tile. And here, you know, we just— we have a beautiful pantry door. Look at this door. And, you know, beautiful little hutch here. This is in the kitchen. It looks like it could be in a foyer or something, but it's in the kitchen. Here's a— and that's actually a kitchen I designed, a little piece of it. Here's another kitchen I designed. Rich cherry wood, big, big window, antique lighting. And of course, what do we see? We see books. And the books on this— books are just, you know, I mean, we need cookbooks in the kitchen. I'm sorry, this is going up and down a little. Here we go. You know, we need cookbooks in the kitchen, so why not, you know, find a place for them? And here's a wider shot of this kitchen that I designed. Again, rich, you know, cherry wood, plants, lots of plants, the books, there's even a little lamp in the backsplash area. So, you know, you don't have to remodel your whole kitchen. You can just take little pieces of it. Here's a kitchen I designed too. Again, minimal wall cabinets, but we have some, we do have storage on the other side, huge window and pots and pans on the backsplash, you know, beautiful wood floors. This is a hutch that I designed in a kitchen and just warm tile plates, you know, bring in pieces of furniture, baskets. We have here warmth and beautiful warmth. The wood countertops, it's lots of warmth. Here we have some antiques, you know, lots of antiques. We have lava stone on the countertops. You know, just lots of, you know, this is actually an appliance home and I'll show you, here it is, here it is in the close-up and here's a kitchen, this is a kitchen I designed, a French country look.

It's beautiful.

So it's not always cabinet after cabinet after cabinet. Here's one I designed on the East End of Long Island and we have a beautiful rug there, which is actually, I import rugs, believe it or not. My website, The website is ScandinavianMade.com, and you can put rugs everywhere in the house. I put them in kitchens. I can't— now, this doesn't look so utilitarian, but it is. It's warm, it's homey, and we have, you know, beautiful artifacts. We have some wood countertops, we have books. Here's another shot of that kitchen, and you know, it makes the This is cozy too. So many things, the sconces, we have the light fixture, the little artifacts, it's, you know, little snapshots and little areas in your kitchen where you can group items that you love and that are also useful as well. Another kitchen, another rug in the kitchen, wood countertops, you know, different kinds of things. You know, don't do everything cookie cutter. Just add in pieces, you know, as you want to. You know what? Don't be so serious. Here's a tile. Get some happy tiles in your kitchen. Don't be so serious. You know, what's happening now are, you know, large sort of Middle Eastern, Moroccan, Spanish tiles with large, you know, motifs, large beautiful motifs. Leaves on them. This is a kitchen I designed. It's actually my daughter's kitchen. And again, the rug, we have the rug here. We have, you know, we don't have a million wall cabinets and it's more of a living area kind of feel. Again, one of my rugs on the floor. Look at the sheepskins. We have sheepskins on the back of the, but you know what? They're useful. They're warm in the, you know, more months and not one rug, but two. Why not? Where are the wall cabinets? Well, I designed the pantry, you know, in another part of the front of the kitchen, which is, you know, very, very useful. And on the other side of the kitchen, and you know what, I'll tell you, my daughter wanted to design her kitchen around this, the waste can, believe it or not. So, you know, that's what we did. And here's a banquette that I designed for her. That's a beautiful table. It's actually shaped— that was my parents' table. Now this, I mean, I'm sure so few of us— I saw this at a trade show in Germany and I took a shot of it. I mean, here's a spot to sit down in the kitchen. Why not? And herbs in the kitchen. Very big now, you know, put them anywhere, do a wall herb garden, put a shelf right in front of your window, it's so much warmth. This is a modern design, but take a look at the texture on the walls, you know, so anytime you can add, oh, you can do wood veneers, you can do brick veneers, you know, whatever. This is a collection of art, of my own collection that I put into a kitchen. Kitchen I designed. Here are some pieces. You can see, you can, you can do a composition. I mean, just add a shelf in your kitchen and, you know, do a composition. And this is a kitchen I designed for American Standards' new collection. And it's, you know, again, we don't have wall cabinetry, but we have beautiful art and artifacts, and it's just it's like a living room look. So here are some of those pieces of art from my own collection that I showed a couple of slides ago. We have open shelves where, you know, it's the mix of useful and pretty items, but not only that, it's the ability to change. Then when you're tired of it, take those paintings down, take that artwork down, change it up, change it up. Here's This is actually one of my rugs in this kitchen I designed for American Standard, and it's kind of furniture-like. It's like a real furniture feel. Now, this is one of their, you have this useful sort of industrial faucet, and then you have these beautiful things behind you. Here's a closer shot of the kitchen and the appliances, which are so built-in, yet they are what they are. Also, look at the wallpaper on that and the little artifacts on the shelves, lighting, living room lighting, bring it in and put it low, hang it low. This you may find in a fine dining room, but this is actually in a kitchen. Gorgeous hardware, a few pieces, and let me tell you, it will make up the kitchen. You know, this kitchen's very modern, but it has warm shades to it. And then of course, you know, any kind of reclaimed wood, get a piece for a shelf or two, put it in a countertop. And then, you know, don't forget the plants. You know, they add so much. Put them in the shelf in front of a window. And there you go. Some thoughts on cozy kitchen.

Great. Love it.

So how are we doing here?

We're doing good. We are doing good. And I was gonna— I still have a little time there. I was gonna unlock the seat if anyone wants to come in and say hello while we're cooking, because these chicken wings are going to have a little bit more. So that was a lot of nice ideas for a kitchen. And especially, you know, I get more and more questions about the smaller kitchens. You know, what do you do with a smaller kitchen?

Oh, we should— oh, I should absolutely do one on that because my own kitchen is, is kind of small. And I hope you get some ideas for your kitchen too, which we're in the middle of.

I did, I did. I had—

I'm going to try to influence you. Go ahead.

I looked at the pictures that you sent, and, um, my first thought honestly was to fill in that gap where you don't have any cabinets.

I knew it, I knew it. I know it.

So, but it's laid out very nicely. I like how you have the refrigerator placed. First I had to find it. I wasn't sure that was a refrigerator. So now we know.

Yeah, that's the wrong configuration.

It's similar, but, but anyway, yeah, if anybody wants to join, Nazim, you want to pop in for a minute, or I don't know. She asked if you saw her idea. She was thinking out some plants in her kitchen to make it alive. Her kitchen has very good sunlight.

Oh, please do. Yes, yes, yes. In fact, I'm planning to put a tree in my kitchen, a small one, but I want something, I want something tall and, you know, kind of significant in terms of a volume and so on and so forth. So yes, by all means, bring in the plants.

We'll see if you can come in today. We'll call you in. Let's see if you have capabilities. Last time we couldn't quite get you in here. We'll give you a shot. We can't see you. Are you there?

Yeah, no, can't see anything.

All right, well, that's farther than we got last time. Yeah. So anyway, yeah, these wings are just about done. And the whole trick to these is letting them cook long enough. It's— and it's not so much that they aren't done, it's that they're going to get a little more tender so that when you eat them, they eat a little easier. Because there's nothing worse than, you know, you get a wing, you bite into it, and you really have to pull and chew, you know. Buffalo wings come off easy.

Tell me about the oil. How much oil did you put in and what kind?

I use corn oil for any time I'm—

oh, look at that—

frying, like a fat kind of frying. I use corn oil. I use olive oil for everything else, but if I'm deep frying like this, then I use corn oil because it's got a higher temperature for this type of frying.. And I'm a little worried about some of the other oils. Well, I'm not supposed to have soy oil, so I stay away from soy products whenever I can.

So you kind of put it halfway up to the middle of the chicken wing?

Yeah, I used about— I probably used about 2 cups looking at it. If you just want to be able to not let them take all day to cook. You know, a good— you know, so you can get half of it done, turn it over and get the other half done. Now I'm just getting some color on them, but I would give them probably 7 minutes on each side, somewhere in that range. Um, you can also, like I said, grill them. They're great grilled. And what I would do, maybe even grill them, season them up good, grill them, and then hit them in the sauce, put them back on on a little bit, or you can just toss them in the sauce one way. And then you wouldn't use flour if you grilled them. And if I did them in the oven, I probably wouldn't use flour either. I would just bake them in the oven, put them under the broiler to let them get nice and crisp, and then sauce them after that. These are just about done. And I can tell because the frying has kind of got a little less violent.

Did you see the question? Can you make them ahead of time and refrigerate them? Or do you have to eat, you know, make them and eat them right away?

They don't hold up as well if you make them ahead of time. I would fry them and then finish them in the oven to get them hot again and then sauce them. So you could do that, but once you put the sauce on them, they're just not going to quite be the same. So yes, you can.

No, I was going to say, can I make a suggestion, or what do you think about this? What if you have a convection oven, you know, which is really great for making things crispy? Do you think that could help? Well, you know, if you refrigerate and then put it back in. Yeah.

At that point, you just want to— you just want to get them a little crisp again and get them hot. You don't want to overcook them. So you want to push them in at high heat, really give them a quick shot in the oven. And take them from there. So what I did do is I drained them on paper towels a little bit just because I don't want to add any extra oil. Let me move this over, I guess. Any extra oil to the sauce, it's going to have enough oil in it. All right, so now that I've drained them a little bit, you know, I wouldn't take them right out of the pan and put them into this because what's going to happen is you're going to have more oil in here Now I'm just going to add a little bit of my sauce to it. And the sauce— well, the sauce will be— you can refrigerate it and save it. And if you've ever had a buffalo chicken grilled cheese sandwich, that is just insanely delicious.

No, I haven't.

Oh, wonderful. One of my favorites. Okay, so you can see the steam pouring off. Let me move these back over here.

Oh, they look great. Wow.

The glaze.

So we have the best of everything. We have a crispy skin. We have, you know, moist meat underneath, and then we have a finishing sauce. There we go. We have the crisp and the tender and the sauce. That's the way they should be, I think.

A little hot.

I gotta have the crispy.

I'll take one for the team.

Oh geez. That looks pretty good.

Oh my God.

You need a napkin. I guess you don't have napkins when you have chicken wings.

Oh, paper towels.

The girls do. The girls do.

Roll of paper towels.

Yeah, that's right.

Oh, it's so hard to eat chicken wings out because of how good these are.

Wow.

We get— I mean, we— I love chicken wings. Okay, just about everywhere. Now, if you don't want to bother with wings, these work really good with tenders. The girls at school didn't like bone wings, but they love tenders, so I would do the tenders. And then just drop them in here. Any kind of little nuggets that you make, any way you want to do it, it's just wonderful.

I think the flour is one of the big secrets. I really do.

The flour really helps. And again, you want to get them crisp. Like if you want to cook them, you know, if you're going to cook them for earlier, you could fry them earlier, get them almost done, not quite done. Just get them some nice color on them, get your oil nice and hot, then do them in the oven. Before you serve them and pop them in the sauce. Just remember, key to the sauce, not to let it get too hot. Melt your butter, add in the hot sauce after the butter's nice and hot and melted, add in the hot sauce. I use honey if you wanna use honey, stir it in, whip it up, and you're emulsifying the sauce so it thickens. And see how nice, and see, you don't see any grease.

No.

See how slow, I mean, it's even.

That's true.

That's how nice and thick it is.

Wow.

You know, it clings. This is really good dipping sauce. And if you want to take your wing in there and roll it around a few times, like Lisa loves to put her celery in the sauce.

Well, you know, we are big Mets fans up here and they are doing so well. And, you know, one more game to go and they're in, you know, the championship. So I think this is the perfect— I think I'm going to make this for the game.

Oh, you'll make it.

Looks good.

Make enough. And we had a question: do you use wings that have a lot of meat on? I try to. You know, wings used to be like throwaway food no one would eat, and now all of a sudden you're paying $3 a pound for them, which is insane. I did find some really nice organic or grass— grass— not grass-fed because chickens don't eat grass— bug-fed at, uh, I don't know if it was Costco's or one of the big box stores, but I got some, uh, 3-pack of like, was like 6 pounds of wings. Each pack was 2 pounds, and they were nice. They weren't quite as meaty. Sometimes they're meatier than other times, and if they're really meaty, you just got to give them a little extra time. Some people leave the little tips on them because they look cute, but I don't, I don't like to have any extra on them if I don't need them.

Yeah, yeah, no, I don't know. Maybe you have to hoard them when you see them, the chicken wings. You know, it's not, I guess it's not so easy to find good ones.

Yeah, you know, well, so many places are using them now. They're running out of chickens. You gotta start eating all the other parts.

There you go. So Nazim's asking, can they be done in the oven instead of fried? Which is a good question.

Season them up well, a little olive oil, salt and pepper, any other seasonings you like. Put them in the oven, get them crispy, and then just dip them in the sauce. Great on a grill too. I like to grill during the summer. I'll grill wings. The sauce doesn't have the edges to cling to them quite as much either way, so they won't look as pretty, but they're still pretty darn tasty.

Okay, so where's the blue cheese? Let's not forget about the blue cheese. I got it.

I was dipping in it.

Oh, that's right, you were.

Yeah, I was dribbling down my chin.

Nice.

And sauces also, you know, and again, Nazim just mentioned barbecue. You could even add a little bit of a barbecue sauce in if you want to make it a little different. I've used a lime hot sauce. Chula, I think it is, makes a lime hot sauce. I still like my basic regular wings, but you can go a bunch of different directions. Like I said, I've used coconut oil instead of butter and you really couldn't tell the difference. It didn't get quite as thick. It, it thinned out a little bit more, but it was still pretty tasty. I've used the same sauce for shrimp. I used to make buffalo mussels. They were outrageous. Anything you can buffalo, this is great for. And it's good, like I said, for a sandwich, for making— I did a buffalo shrimp po'boy with it. And again, with the buffalo chicken on a grilled cheese sandwich is just lovely.

Buffalo ribs.

Buffalo ribs.

Buffalo ribs.

I had some chicken fried ribs. It would have been perfect with those, the little ribs, and they were breaded and fried. So, you know, you can do all kinds of things with this. The sauce is just fun. Now I'll take— thigh meat. I'll just roast some thigh meat and I'll mix the sauce into it, and then I have buffalo chicken meat for a topping for pizza, for sandwich.

Wow, that's great.

Yeah, it'll kind of like pull it almost a little bit or shred it up a little bit.

Oh my God, I mean, my husband is always getting the buffalo chicken pizza.

Yeah, well, buffalo chicken—

that's what he gets.

And put it on, like cook the pizza. If you make your pizza, cook the pizza almost done, then put the chicken on it and pop it back in. Right. And you can, you can put the blue cheese on it then.

Fantastic.

But for a sandwich, like, I like buffalo chicken tacos. You know, you can make up the meat, mix the sauce into it, have it set there, and then have your blue cheese, cheddar cheese, sour cream, whatever else you want to have, and just make some tacos for game day again. Doesn't all have to be wings. You know, you can do all kinds of things with them. Wow.

That was easy. That was the— there's no excuse to, you know, look for the Tyson package. Tyson, no excuse.

No. You know, it's always if you're in a bind and you want to, but, you know, it's easy to make when you really want some deliciousness at home. And, and here's a tip. The way you can tell chicken has been frozen If the bone inside is black, chicken is frozen. Really?

Okay.

And we call that black bone. Wow.

If you can see it, if you can, if you could see it. So I guess sometimes you can, but good. I'm gonna look, I'm gonna look when I go to the market.

That's how you know. Well, not generally, not raw, you can't see it. It's when it's cooked. When it's cooked.

Oh, when it's Cooked, after it's cooked.

After it's cooked. So if you're out at a restaurant that's a wing specialty place and all of a sudden you notice that the bones in your chicken are black.

Yeah.

Oh well. Okay.

All right.

Find a new wing place. Okay, do you use boneless chicken for the sandwich? I use boneless thigh, or I'll just roast thighs and pull the meat off of them. It's boneless when I finish it, but I'll just shred it up and mix the sauce into it. And what else were we making? I think it was— my favorite was the grilled cheese. And I'll use orange cheese because it looks prettier. American cheese, which really they tell me isn't cheese, but I don't care.

I like it.

And a little bit of blue cheese in it and then grill them. I've actually got an idea. I'm going to make a— is it buffalo chicken? I had an idea and I lost it. It was a grilled chicken frittata. I have to think about that. But I was gonna make some grilled cheese, cut them up in cubes and make a frittata out of it.

You know what else I'm thinking? What about panini?

Mm-hmm.

I want us to do a show on panini.

Okay. I don't have a press, so we'll have to use a brick or something, but—

Yeah, yeah, yeah. I have some kind of grill pan and then I have a top to it, like Chris said, thing that I haven't made it before. But you know what, when we're entertaining around the holidays and we have guests or sleepover guests or whatever, it's good to have something easy but different, interesting. You know, we should do some panini things.

Oh, very good.

Come up with that.

And they're good for get-togethers, not just game day, but any get-togethers, 'cause you can slice them up almost like a Cuban sandwich we could do too.

Yeah, but I'm thinking chicken thigh, buffalo chicken thigh paninis. Yeah. Absolutely. With cheese.

With cheese. Gotta have cheese. Gotta love it. Good. All right, well, that's it for today, and thank you for coming. Next week we do have the— oh my goodness— the scones on Tuesday, and Wednesday we'll be playing with some pizza. So we'll show you how to make up some little pizzas for you too. So that's it for today, and thanks for coming around our kitchen table. I'll see you later, Susan.

See you. Okay, bye-bye everyone.