What Is Buffalo Sauce? | Sauce Shop (2024)

A classic buffalo sauce is sharp, rich and hot.It should be tangy, salty and almost have a creamy texture. This type of sauce makes the perfect partner for chicken wings, but also works on a grilled cheese sandwich or as a dipping sauce.

Our Buffalo Hot Sauce is one of the classic Sauce Shop recipes. It’s been around since we started in 2014 and is now available on our website, in Sainsbury’s, Asda and Waitrose.

What Is Buffalo Sauce? | Sauce Shop (1)

What does buffalo sauce taste like?

As a starting point,it should always be pretty hot. A dominant feature of this sauce is the tanginess that often comes from vinegar. Our recipe is made using lots of vinegar and aged Jalapeno peppers, which means it will linger on the tongue and lips. Check this article out to see how we make our Buffalo Hot Sauce.

As buffalo sauce is often used to coat chicken wings, the consistency will likely be thicker than a traditional everyday hot sauce. It should coat wings easily and have an almost creamy mouthfeel when being eaten. Some recipes feature butter, but our recipe is vegan friendly.

Are buffalo sauces spicy?

Yes! A buffalo sauce should be spicy.To taste great and do food justice, it has to offer a spice hit. It can’t all be about being tangy and rich. If you need to cool things down, serve it with a cooling ranch sauce or blue cheese dip.

In our Buffalo Hot Sauce recipe, we use our Signature Chilli Mash (more about that here), which basically means we make it using aged Jalapeno peppers. This is what delivers the heat but also a lot of the flavour. What that means is, we blend chillies with salt, sealing them in barrels. This is where the fermentation happens. After 2-3 weeks, our chillies have taken on a wealth of complex new flavours and are ready to be used in making our hot sauces.

What's the difference between sriracha and a buffalo sauce?

Despite both being chilli sauces, they are actually pretty different in style and would generally have quite different uses. They'rebothgenerally thicker than an everyday hot sauce (more along the lines of a ketchup consistency) andare a little bit tangy. Sriracha though will have a fruitier profile than a buffalo sauce and will often have a heavy garlic presence. In terms of uses, a sriracha style hot sauce is suited well to seafood, noodle dishes or kebabs.

Have you tried our Sriracha Chilli Sauce? Take a look here.

What sauces go well with buffalo sauce?

As we’ve covered, a solid buffalo sauce is spicy, tangy, creamy and rich, so when thinking about a sauce to complement that, you want something that has a different profile.

You can’t go wrong with a creamy, mild mayo or aioli for this. We’d recommend our Ranch Mayo, which is the ultimate dipping sauce forhot wings. Featuring buttermilk, sour cream, garlic and all of your favourite herbs, you don’t need to go further than this. It’s available in Waitrose stores and on our website.

How to make buffalo chicken wings

Great buffalo wings need a great sauce – we recommend using ours! There are so many ways to cook chicken wings, whether you’re frying in oil, baking in the oven or grilling on the BBQ. The easiest way at home is to oven bake or air fry, check out our Ultimate Easy Baked Buffalo Chicken Hot Wings Recipe here.

What food does buffalo sauce go with?

The obvious answer here is chicken wings. The tangy sharpness ofthis type of sauce is perfect to cut through the fat of a wing and the texture is ideal for coating. Besides wings, you could use it to spice up a mac & cheese, a grilled cheese sandwich or with cauliflower. Here are 6 ways to use Buffalo Hot Sauce.

What Is Buffalo Sauce? | Sauce Shop (2024)

FAQs

What is the meaning behind Buffalo sauce? ›

Buffalo sauce gets its name from its city of origin, Buffalo, New York, where Teressa Bellissimo is said to have invented buffalo chicken wings at the Anchor Bar in 1964. In its simplest form, buffalo wing sauce is a just a combination of cayenne pepper hot sauce and butter.

What is the Buffalo sauce flavor? ›

A classic buffalo sauce is sharp, rich and hot. It should be tangy, salty and almost have a creamy texture. This type of sauce makes the perfect partner for chicken wings, but also works on a grilled cheese sandwich or as a dipping sauce.

Is Buffalo sauce really spicy? ›

It can be! Buffalo sauce is usually available in mild, medium, and hot options. When you make homemade Buffalo sauce, you have the ability to control the spiciness level — use more cayenne pepper if you like it hot or less if you prefer milder flavors.

What is Chick Fil A Buffalo sauce called? ›

Zesty Buffalo Sauce

A flavorful hot sauce with a smooth, bold flavor.

Why is buffalo sauce so addictive? ›

Basically, when you eat hot sauce, the pain receptors in the mouth are triggered, and they tell your brain that you're in pain. The brain, not understanding that your mouth isn't literally on fire, sends endorphins to counteract the perceived pain.

Why is buffalo sauce so good? ›

One of the main reasons buffalo stands out from other types of hot sauce is because of its distinct flavour profile. As mentioned above, buffalo sauce is known for being quite creamy, tangy, and salty, whilst also having a sharpness to it.

Is buffalo sauce healthy for you? ›

Buffalo Sauce Has Plenty of Health Benefits

In addition to the hot sauce, most Buffalo sauces contain a fat for added flavor. Just choose an option with a healthy fat, like grass-fed butter or coconut oil, and consider this condiment a heart-healthy win.

Is Frank's red hot just buffalo sauce? ›

Buffalo sauce starts just like Frank's RedHot® Original – aged cayenne red peppers, distilled vinegar, water, salt and garlic powder. But really, it ends there. (So, what's thedifference between hot sauce and buffalo sauce?) Natural butter flavor and paprika.

Does buffalo sauce have buffalo meat? ›

Some people may be turned off by the name Buffalo sauce, thinking that it's a sauce made from the animal of the same name. Rest assured, Buffalo sauce does not contain any part of the buffalo animal. Many brands of Buffalo sauce are actually vegan because they use artificial butter flavoring rather than actual butter.

Is Buffalo sauce spicy at Popeyes? ›

Buffalo Saucin' Wings

This is the first time sauced wings are available on Popeyes restaurant menus in the UK, following their success with fans in the US. Niamh: "I was seriously impressed with the wings, they were so tasty and definitely had a spicy kick to them with just the right amount of heat.

Why is Buffalo sauce orange? ›

Plain ordinary hot sauce is usually a darker red. Most mild flavored wing sauces will be a lighter orange color. The lighter color of wing sauce is typically due to the amount of butter or oil added to the hot sauce.

Is Buffalo sauce the same as wing sauce? ›

First thing's first - what is buffalo sauce? Buffalo sauce, often called wing sauce, is very similar to your typical hot sauce, but it is usually richer and creamier because of the addition to butter.

What is the most popular Chick-fil-A order? ›

When it comes to Chick-fil-A, their waffle fries cannot be beat. The crispy potato treats have been the fast-food chain's most popular menu item for years—and for good reason!

Why is it called buffalo sauce? ›

Just kidding, of course, it isn't the pituitary gland at all, it's taken directly from the bison's nostril- Alright, for real this time: The sauce gets its name from buffalo sauce's origin: The Anchor Bar in, you guessed it, Buffalo, New York.

What is ice cream called at Chick-fil-A? ›

A delicious, frozen dairy treat with an old-fashioned vanilla taste.

Why is buffalo called buffalo? ›

The origin of the place-name is in dispute, as buffalo (bison) did not inhabit the area; it may reflect a mispronunciation of the French beau fleuve (“beautiful river”), in reference to the local Buffalo Creek. The first steamboat on the upper Great Lakes, Walk-on-the-Water, was built at Buffalo in 1818.

Why do they call it buffalo wings? ›

The name comes from Buffalo, New York, where the dish was created.

What is the meaning of buffalo chicken? ›

: a deep-fried chicken wing coated with a spicy sauce and usually served with a blue cheese dressing. Etymology. named for Buffalo, NY.

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