All You Need To Amp Up Classic Buffalo Sauce Is A Little Roasted Garlic
Buffalo sauce can do no wrong. The magical mixture of Frank's Red Hot and butter makes chicken so much better, from crispy chicken wings to tenders, and even thighs. Its spicy, rich flavor is also an amazing base for dip, nachos, pizza, and cauliflower alike. Believe it or not, however, there's room for even more flavor in your next batch of Buffalo sauce. If you add roasted garlic to the mix, you can take any Buffalo sauce-based recipe to the next level.
In its simplest form there only two base ingredients in Buffalo sauce — hot sauce and butter. It is one of the easiest recipes to make. When you throw some roasted garlic into the mix, however, you add a savory, umami balance to the sauce, which opens up a whole new world of possibilities. A few cloves of garlic will have you Buffalo-ing everything from roasted vegetables to boiled potatoes and deviled eggs. You can even thin it out with a little olive oil to make a kicking salad dressing. Plus it's a great excuse to make a batch of roasted garlic that'll leave your home smelling heavenly.
Make lots of roasted garlic
To make sure you get a lot of roasted garlic to infuse into your homemade Buffalo sauce, you're going to need a fair number of cloves. While it's pretty sharp and acrid when it's raw, garlic mellows out and becomes very mild and earthy when it's roasted, so you'll need more roasted garlic than you would if you were cooking with fresh garlic. Just like when you roast mushrooms, roasted garlic has a rich, almost meaty umami flavor. By adding garlic to your Buffalo sauce, you can get that richness with without needing meat or broth to generate that savory flavor. So while roasted garlic will not only make Buffalo chicken wings even tastier, it's also perfect for spicing up a meatless menu including tofu, tempeh, and fresh vegetables.
Roasting garlic is easy, all you need is a few bulbs and some quality olive oil. For a cup of Buffalo sauce, plan to add at least two bulbs of roasted garlic, though three even is better. Parm, the famous Italian restaurant in New York City, uses three bulbs in each cup of its signature Buffalo sauce that it makes for Buffalo cucumbers, so don't worry about going overboard. You can roast a bunch of garlic and experiment with how much you prefer in your own sauce, and you can always save the rest for garlic bread, hummus, or mashed potatoes.
Make the sauce
When the garlic is ready, add it to your Buffalo sauce using a blender or a food processor to combine everything. If you don't have a blender or processor, and you don't mind a bit of a chunky texture, just mash up your roasted garlic and add it to the sauce by stirring. Start with adding a bulb's worth of garlic and taste to see how you like it. You can gradually increase the garlic until you find a happy medium. If you accidentally go too far with the garlic, it's no problem — just add a little more hot sauce.
The roasted garlic helps to emulsify everything (especially if it's blended), so you can skip using butter for your Buffalo sauce and instead sub in a few tablespoons of olive oil. If you still have any oil left from roasting the garlic, use that first, and then add extra from the bottle to get a texture you like. If you're making a vinaigrette, two or three tablespoons should be enough for about a cup of Frank's and three bulbs of garlic.
When your sauce is to your taste, go ahead and toss it over some wings, roasted tofu, poached shrimp, or crunchy raw vegetables — they'll all be delicious. Plus, if you skipped the butter, you can store it in the refrigerator for a couple of days so you can have Buffalo sauce ready anytime.