For a significant period of my life, had you asked me what my favorite food was, I would have said buffalo wings. (Nowadays I cop out and refuse to answer the question altogether, lest I think about it too hard and stare blankly at my interrogator until I’m drooling from an over-saturation of food memories. Besides, I hate playing favorites).
For me, two things are elemental in successful chicken wings. One is the texture, usually achieved by deep-frying the wings to crisp up the skin (though I’ve had success just lightly coating the wings in oil and oven-roasting them). The second is the sauce, for which I think simple and traditional is best – a 2:1 ratio of Frank’s Red Hot sauce and melted butter.
In upgrading one of my favorite foods from apps to tre-tres, I had to address these two elements. To keep the crispy texture of wings in a preparation of boneless, skinless chicken breasts, I turned to panko bread crumbs, which always seem to hold up and give that sought-after crunch to a finished dish. To infuse the dish with buffalo wing sauce flavor, I dipped the chicken in a Frank’s Red Hot-spiked mayo before dredging in the panko, and topped the finished dish with the aforementioned sauce recipe.
The filling of the roulades, a creamy mix of cheeses, minced carrot and scallion, was a good way to keep the dish moist from the inside out, and the dairy and fat played nicely with the vinegary, spicy sauce. Though I didn’t use any this time, I think a little blue cheese might do well in there, to recreate the wings and blue cheese dressing effect.
Buffalo-Style Chicken Roulades
Total Time: 1 hour
Yield: 3 servings
Ingredients
- 1/4 cup shredded Mexican cheese blend
- 3 wedges Laughing Cow garlic and herb cheese
- 1/4 cup scallion, minced
- 1/4 cup carrot, minced
- 1 1/2 pounds boneless, skinless chicken breasts
- 1 1/2 cups panko bread crumbs
- 1 tablespoon mayonnaise
- 6 tablespoons Frank’s Red Hot sauce
- 1 tablespoon lemon juice
- 2 tablespoons butter
- pinch of garlic powder
Method
- Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Mix shredded cheese, laughing cow cheese, green onion, carrot, and couple pinches each of salt and pepper in a dish. In one bowl make a breading station out of corn flake crumbs. In another bowl combine mayonnaise, 2 tablespoons of hot sauce, and lemon juice
- Lay out the chicken breasts and pound with a meat mallet to a 1-inch thickness. Divide the cheese mixture among the chicken breasts and spread evenly, going almost to the edges. Roll each breast into a roulade, so the filling is on the inside. Roll chicken breasts in the mayonnaise mixture, then into the panko, and place seam side down in a baking dish
- Bake 30 minutes. While the chicken cooks, melt butter and mix with the remaining hot sauce and garlic powder. Drizzle buffalo sauce over finished chicken breast and serve
Noodle Therapy 