#nonwingsunday = Buffalo Chicken Sandwich

 

All the flavours of a Buffalo wing dinner in sandwich form.

This is super easy if you've got the items on hand. We had leftover rotisserie chicken, so I shredded the meat, tossed it with Buffalo sauce (butter + Frank's), and heated that up. Toasted some ciabatta buns, sliced up some celery on an angle. Top with some blue cheese dressing and dang you got a good sandwich.

It's got that salty/tangy/creamy blue cheese. Tender chicken meat. The spice and richness from the Buffalo sauce. And that celery adds a crunch for texture, but also adds a peppery and watery flavour to cut that salty blue cheese and the rich Buffalo sauce.

So. Very. Good.

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

It's Super Bowl time!

I'll be honest, I don't care about football at all, let alone the Super Bowl, but I do love Super Bowl food. When you think about game day food, chicken wings is #1. In fact, more chicken wings are ordered on Super Bowl Sunday than any other day of the year.

Now when you do up Super Bowl eats, you want something above and beyond. So I developed 4, NEXT LEVEL recipes for your event. These are extreme flavours that will ensure you win over your crowd whether or not your team is winning. Touchdown!

 

 

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

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SUICIDE WING CAESAR COCKTAIL

BACON BLUE CHEESE

ZINGING HOT CHEX MIX

BACON WRAPPED INJECTED WINGS

Next Level Super Bowl Recipes: SUICIDE WING CAESAR COCKTAIL

OK, so it's game time and your crew has probably been drinking a bunch of beer. But maybe you have some folks who don't want an ale. Or maybe you have someone like me who isn't a drinker, but if I do, a Caesar is my drink of choice.

What is a Caesar? You might be more familiar with a Bloody Mary - this is the Canadian edition that uses Clamato instead of straight tomato juice. What is Clamato? Clam juice in tomato juice. I know that sounds gross, but it isn't. It doesn't taste fishy or anything. In fact, I can't drink tomato juice (makes me want to puke) but I can drink Clamato. Caesars are savoury cocktails and a little spicy ... and when you make them like I do ... they become NEXT LEVEL.

There are three parts to making this cocktail:

The Rim - seasoning mix to put on the glass
The Cocktail - what makes up the drink
The Garnish - stuff to make the drink look even more impressive.

This recipe is for making a single cocktail - there is a lot to go into the cocktail, but it is Next Level.

The first part is the rim. This is to apply seasoning and added flavour to the drink.

1. Apply the lime wedge to the rim of the glass to get the edge wet for the seasoning to stick
2.  On a plate, mix celery salt and Frank's dry powder
3. Turn glass upside down and swirl edge until rim is covered 

After its rimmed, add your ice, then all the cocktail parts of the drink. Stir together.

The last part is to add your garnish - washed and dried celery stick (maybe you already used your celery to stir the drink?) and take 2 fried and sauced chicken wings, impaled on a skewer. Add a straw. BOOM - Suicide Wing Caesar.

What does this drink taste like? Amazing. First off, you have the presentation - a forrest with giant chicken wings, a red crystal moat, and blood red lake of drinkable fire - how can you not like that?  This cocktail has a lot of heat here from the Extra Spicy Clamato, the Frank's X-tra Hot sauce, Sriracha and extreme beans. But then you have that salty kick from the rim, coupled with the tang of the Extreme Bean brine and the lime juice. Then you have tomato/clam drink. When you have a drink, you're mouth is going all over the place - it's an experience not just a beverage. Then you bite into a chicken wing and well you are just going on an adventure.

Now I don't drink (or very rarely) so I made this virgin, but add vodka. Do it, and you've got a whole new dimension t the drink. Suicide Wing Caesars are truly fit for an emperor!

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

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BACON BLUE CHEESE

ZINGING HOT CHEX MIX

BACON WRAPPED INJECTED WINGS

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

Next Level Super Bowl Recipes: BACON BLUE CHEESE

When you have Buffalo Wings, you have to have dip, and that dip better be blue cheese. But if you are having a Super Bowl party and you want each aspect to impress the fans, you have to take that blue cheese to the NEXT LEVEL. I do that with bacon, and a bunch of other stuff.

Yes this is a lot of ingredients for blue cheese dressing, but we aren't holding any punches. We also have to balance this dressing out.

Assembling this drip is easy. Having done it in a mason jar was not. I was thinking about the presentation, not the practicality. Mix this in a bowl folks, then transfer to a jar if you want.

The only real work is cooking the bacon and chopping it. The other part is softening the cream cheese to make it spread and mixable.After that, you just add it all and mix. Then chill.

There are a lot of layers of flavour and textures to this dressing. The cream cheese makes it thick and creamy. The lemon juice and cider vinegar give a bright zing to the sour, pungent blue cheese.  Then you have garlic and pepper seasoning. Oh and bacon, crispy chunks of salty bacon. This batch  did not last long.

This may be too thick as say a  salad dressing, but to dip stuff in, it's aces. Dip wings in there, celery and carrot sticks, add it to the Chex mix - add it to whatever you want to add some seasoned, salty, creamy goodness. Usually blue cheese is just used as relief from spicy food, but people will be finding anything to use as a vessel as an excuse to eat this dressing.

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

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SUICIDE WING CAESAR COCKTAIL

ZINGING HOT CHEX MIX

BACON WRAPPED INJECTED WINGS

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

Next Level Super Bowl Recipe: ZINGY HOT CHEX MIX

When you are watching the game, you need a salty snack to munch on. Yes you can do chips or pretzels, or even standard Chex Mix. But why not take that Chex Mix ... to the Next Level?

This mix is spicy, salty, zingy goodness. Trust me.

This is a dry/wet recipe.

DRY

• approx 3 cups Chex cereal
• 1 cup Peanuts
• 1 cup Jalapeno Ranch Cornnuts
• 1 cup Cheese Nibs
• 1 cup Pretzel Sticks
• 1 cup Wasabi Peas (added at end of process)

WET

• 1/2 cup butter or margerine
• 1/4 Frank's Hot Sauce (or other cayenne based hot sauce)
• 2-3 dashes of Sriracha hot sauce
• 2-3 dashes Worcestershire sauce
• 1 tablespoon of cayenne pepper

This is an easy snack to make - mix the dry ingredients, mix the wet ingredients, then mix them all together. Bake, stir every 15 minutes, and boom - you have Zing Hot Chex Mix.

Make sure you use a big bowl because this is a lot of ingredients that can go flying when trying to mix. Use the biggest bowl you've got.

As you can see, my bowl just barely fit all the ingredients. That's ridiculous and trying to mix the sauce into everything is also ridiculous. I put another bowl over the top so I could shake the two together. And you need to mix thoroughly so as not to have soggy mix.

With the sauce and the baking the snack kind of takes on a monotone golden colour. Lets change that up by adding in some green peas that are covered in white wasabi.

That's better. Has there ever been this much crunch in one bowl? I hope your chompers are ready. You have the overall wing sauce flavour going on here, but you pick up the hints of  Jalapeno Ranch from the corn nuts, the cheese from the Nibs, the dry mustardy zing of the wasabi.

One thing is that this snack is SALTY. All these salty snacks mixed in, it can be a lot. I actually took some of the Blue Cheese dip and mixed it in. Actually, I took a chicken wing, dipped it in blue cheese, then rolled that in the mix. Whole new world my friends, whole new world.

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

SUICIDE WING CAESAR COCKTAIL

BACON BLUE CHEESE

BACON WRAPPED INJECTED WINGS

NEXT LEVEL SUPER BOWL RECIPES

Nutella Chocolate Cake Balls with Cream Cheese Marshmallow Frosting

No not a wing recipe, but I just made a batch of these to reward some of my staff for helping me out and I felt it was good enough to share. 

I did not plan to post so I didn't document along the way, but here is the final result.

Cake balls have been a fad for a while now, but they are easy to make and taste pretty awesome.

Rough instructions. I don't measure so it's all relative.

What I would do differently next time is add Nutella to the melted chocolate stage as well because you can't taste it in the cake.

Otherwise, this is rich, chocolaty, and gooey good. Excellent way to finish off a wing meal . . . if I was eating wings right now.

Thanksgiving Wings & Mashed Potato Poutine

I'm on my own for Thanksgiving again this year - working over the weekend - which meant declining two Thanksgivings outside the city. But that's ok because it's also nice to spend some time solo, and cooking. A few years ago I did the same and I made a Turkey wing. I felt I would do something similar but I wanted actual wings . . . but what if I made them Thanksgiving style? What did that mean?

When I think of T-Day, I think turkey obviously, but the other flavour of this holiday for me is stuffing. Stove Top stuffing to be specific. So what if I combined that into a chicken wing breading?

Here are my ingredients:

• 7 Chicken Wings (fresh, split)
• Salt & Pepper
• Cajun Seasoning
• 1 Egg
• about 1/4 package of stuffing (Turkey flavour)
• flour 

I prepared my breading station.

The stuffing mix is basically breadcrumbs and seasoning. Seemed like a natural breading. But would it work?

1. Pack wings in flour/seasonings on wings to give egg wash something to stick to and give some underlying flavour.
2. Dip dusted wing in beated egg.
3. Roll said wing in dry stuffing mixture. Coat well.

Well that looked like it was going to be a big crunchy wings. If it works. PS: those are some jumbo wings even before the breading. I got them from St Lawrence Market. Awesome fresh jumbo wings.

I put the 7 wings on parchment paper and baked them in the oven at 450 degrees for 40 minutes, turning once. I baked them because a) I thought deep frying might burn the bread and b) You roast a turkey in the oven right? Well these should be roasted then.

I gotta say, the smell in the house was roasted poultry and stuffing good. They wings came out and they were lighter in colour than I expected, but the crispy coating looked good. The breading actually stuck on there too!

I like my wings with spice, or at the very least some sort of bold flavour - so I feared that the stuffing flavoured wing (even with some Cajun seasoning) might have been a bit boring. So I made a sauce.

Now I didn't have cranberry sauce, which I thought would be the best accompanyment for this wing. Instead I looked to a pepper jelly sauce, that I have experimented with before (but haven't yet logged on the blog). It's simple; those three ingredients boiled down. The bottle on the right is Third Degree Sauce.

This sauce is sweet, tangy, and zingy with heat. The pepper jelly is my secret ingredient for a wing sauce. Guess the secret is out. Dang.

I decided the wings should be drizzled with sauce and not tossed - partly as to not soggify the wings, but also to make sure the breading stayed on.

Guess what I found at the grocery store? EGG NOG!!!! I can't get enough of this stuff. And for my Egg Nog Project - the Irresistible brand is good - creamy and eggy. Mmmmm.

So at St Lawrence market I picked up some cheese curds. I bought some potatoes and decided I would make poutine. But I got lazy to make fries, and decided to experiment and make Mashed Potato Poutine.

The ingredients above are almost too similar in colour to tell apart.

I used a St Hubert poutine gravy packet - this was some good gravy! Poured over the hot mashed potatoes and the cold cheese.

Now that's a Feast for 1. I also forgot a salad I made and was in the fridge. Oh well, it will go over well with leftovers . . .

The colour palate of the meal was very autumn-like but without the salad, lacked and greenery. But dang it was a good meal.

The mashed potato poutine was a hit. Good potatos, warm soothing gravy. The only complaint was the curds weren't that squeeky, and not all of it melted because I put them on cold.

The Thanksgiving Wings worked out pretty well too.

Structurely they held up really well. The Stove-Top breading clung on well, and the drizzled stinger sauce was just right. Actually, more sauce would have been better. I expected a stronger flavour from the stuffing, but it was kind of mild. But the stinger sauce really kicked these wings up. Sweet and stingy.

These wings truly recreated the experience of a Thanksgiving Meal. 

And as I said the last time:

I am thankful for family

I am thankful for friends

I am thankful for my job and my coworkers

I am thankful for my health

I am thankful for chicken wings

I am thankful for the wing nation and for those of you that read the blog.

Happy Thanksgiving!