We’ve been to Buffalo several times, and we’ve seen quite a number of Buffalo (really, Bison) over the years, but we’ve never previously made Buffalo sauce. We’ve just never needed it, that is, until now. Just last week, or perhaps the week before, we saw a recipe that called for Buffalo Sauce, and, while we could just buy some at the store and be done with it, we figured it wouldn’t hurt to see if we could make it ourselves. It turns out that we can, and you can, too, fellow Scratcher. Just follow along.
Our 5-minute in-depth scan of recipes and Wikipedia on the Internet reveals the truth about Buffalo sauce. It’s simply hot sauce with butter added. Well, now we’re really glad that we didn’t buy any, because they can’t be adding real butter to hot sauce and then selling the stuff off the non-refrigerated shelves. And, if they don’t use real butter, we’re not sure it can be as good as what you could make at home, and we don’t think we want to ingest whatever butter-flavored chemicals they use in place of delicious butter.
We found the recipe on All Recipes, and just scaled it down so we wouldn’t have a cup’s worth of Buffalo sauce when we were done. That’s the only change.
Buffalo Sauce
Ingredients
- 45 g hot sauce (3 Tbs)
- 30 g butter (2 Tbs)
- 5 g white wine vinegar (1 tsp)
- Few drops Worcestershire Sauce (see note)
- Pinch cayenne pepper
- Pinch garlic
Instructions
- Combine all ingredients in a small saucepan over medium heat. When butter is melted and suace just simmers, whisk thoroughly.
Notes
Ingredients discussion:
Our research indicates that, traditionally, Frank’s Red Hot Brand sauce is used, but we had Tabasco Brand Pepper Sauce in the house, and used that. Naturally, use real, unsalted butter; you might as well do it right. Now, we did use our homemade Worcestershire sauce, but we think you can get by with some commercial brand.
Procedure in detail:
Combine and heat. Combine all the ingredients in a small saucepan and place over medium heat, stirring until the butter melts. Continue stirring from time to time, just until the sauce starts to simmer around the edges, then remove from the heat.
Whisk. Use a whisk to incorporate the butter fully and use the sauce immediately, or, if you wish, pack it into a small air-tight container and refrigerate. Just be aware the butter will separate out and solidify on top of the sauce in the cold. Warm and re-whisk before using.
That’s it. Just bring the ingredients to a slight simmer and whisk to incorporate the butter fully and you have a nice spicy Buffalo sauce. And, you can use whatever is your favorite hot sauce, change the amount of cayenne, or even make it more buttery. As far as we can tell, this is just like the “real” Buffalo sauce. What could be simpler? An easy five stars.
Tomorrow we’ll show you why we needed Buffalo Sauce, and, no, it isn’t for Buffalo wings.
