Tuesday Dinners

Step by Step Directions

Finely dice an onion. This might feel like the most laborious step in the process, but it’s really up to your taste buds and your patience how thin you slice them.

Traditional buffalo sauce is just butter and hot sauce, I’m of the opinion that if you’re cooking with butter than you should add it at the same time as your onions so that you can develop the flavor of the onions. I’m making a triple batch which is why three quarters of a stick of butter is being added. Put it on low and stir the onions occasionally.

While the onions are cooking I typically start chopping the chicken. Because we’re going for a “sloppy joe” consistency you want the chicken to be “bite size” at largest and preferably a little smaller than that if possible. This will also allow us to cook the chicken a little faster.

By the time you’re done chopping the chicken our onions should be fairly close to done. We don’t want them caramelized but we do want to taste butter if we were to pull one out and eat it.

At this time add your chicken and hot sauce to the pan. I typically turn the heat up to medium at this point and continue stirring until the chicken is thoroughly cooked.

If you’re worried about not being able to see if the chicken is cooked all the way through than feel free to hold off on adding your hot sauce until after it’s cooked.

Now we’re going to add our cheese. I prefer mozzarella, provolone or pepper jack for this recipe but whatever you like is more than perfect (even if you’re a blue cheese kind of person, that’s probably alright). You’ll want to add the cheese and then stir until everything is combined and the cheese is melted.

Now it’s time for the consistency game. If you feel that your sauce is too thin than you should add some flour or cornstarch to thicken it up. If it’s too thick and you feel like you’re just doing a cheese pull then you can add some milk/cream/ranch so that the mixture loosens up a little bit.

I like my sloppy Joes to be a little on the “sloppier” side of things so the picture will reflect that but it’s really up to you and your personal preference.

Enjoy.

Variations

• Depending on how Midwest you are you might feel that buffalo sauce needs ranch, so feel free to add a ranch seasoning packet to your onions.
• You can use store bought buffalo sauce instead of the butter and hot sauce if you want.
• If you want other ingredients (ground beef instead of chicken, some green peppers, etc.) feel free to add them.
• If you have popcorn/friend chicken that also would taste good with this recipe.

Unsolicited Feedback

• LI: Why did you add cheese? Couldn’t I have just had some chicken?
• GM: Why not just eat a sloppy joe? Too good for the classics?
• DF: Here’s an idea, why not just skip the bread and scoop it out with a chip or something?