Sunday, August 25, 2013

COOKING AT THE CASA: BUFFALO CHICKEN SALAD

Back when we were in college in Pittsburgh, PA, one of our favorite "nice" restaurants was Max & Erma's. My favorite menu items were the french onion soup and the buffalo chicken sandwich. I can't tell you how many of those sandwiches I consumed over an eight year period. At least 25, I'm sure. Obviously we don't live in Pittsburgh any more, and obviously breaded & deep fried chicken isn't really on our list of things we want to eat, but I do love the flavors in that sandwich. Hoping to make something a bit more healthy, but capturing the essence of that meal, last night I created a buffalo chicken meatball salad. 


The salad is made up of iceberg lettuce, chopped celery, grated carrots, feta cheese (I didn't have as much crumbled blue cheese as I originally thought so this was a substitution), and a red hot vinaigrette made with red hot, a little melted butter (you could also use olive oil), and apple cider vinegar. I cheated and used the garlic fries from Trader Joe's, but if you had time they're not too hard to make from scratch.

The most interesting part of this salad is obviously the chicken meatballs. Since TJ's doesn't sell ground chicken, we bought a package of organic chicken thighs and used our Kitchen-Aid attachment to grind it up ourselves. Included below is the full recipe.

Buffalo Chicken Meatballs
1 pound ground chicken
1 bunch of green onions, chopped
6 garlic cloves, chopped
1 package of blue cheese crumbles*
1/4 cup of Frank's Red Hot
1 tablespoon of ground pepper
1 tablespoon of ground mustard powder

Now comes the really difficult part.

Directions
Preheat oven to 400
Throw ingredients above into a bowl and mix thoroughly
Create meatballs to your size specifications
Bake for 25 - 30 minutes depending on your stove
Top salad with meatballs
Drizzle with more vinaigrette
Eat

Truthfully this should have served four. This was entirely too much food for the two of us, and I was nowhere near finishing by the time I was full.

* I found the blue cheese crumbles from Trader Joe's to be way more salty than I'd have liked. I would recommend substituting that for some gorgonzola that you crumble yourself.