Chicken Recipes: A New Take On Wings
I don’t think I’ve ever met anyone that doesn’t love mac & cheese. It’s an iconic comfort food, all warm and creamy and cheesy. When I ran across this recipe in a magazine (I believe it was Taste of Home) that crossed mac & cheese with the classic flavors of buffalo chicken wings – I knew we had to try it. I’m so glad we did! This was scooped up quick, with just a little taste left for lunch the next day. It can be hard to find new chicken recipes and it’s nice to have a new favorite to add to our rotation.
Buffalo Chicken Mac ‘n Cheese
7 T butter
1 lb. pasta (cavatappi is my favorite, but you can use elbows or any similar pasta)
1 small onion, finely chopped
2 stalks celery, finely chopped
2 chicken breasts, cooked & shredded
2 gloves garlic, minced
3/4 C hot sauce
2 T flour
2 tsp. dry mustard
2 1/2 C half & half
1 lb. yellow sharp cheddar, cut into 1″ cubes
8 oz. shredded Monterey jack cheese
2/3 C sour cream
1 C panko
2 T chopped fresh parsley
- Preheat oven to 350; butter a 9×13″ baking dish. Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil; add pasta and cook for about 7 minutes. Drain.
- Melt 3 tablespoons of butter in a large skillet over medium heat. Add onion and celery and cook until soft, about 5 minutes. Stir in the chicken and garlic and cook 2 more minutes, then add 1/2 cup hot sauce and simmer until slightly thickened, about 1 minute.
- Melt 2 tablespoons butter in saucepan over medium heat. Stir in the flour and mustard with a wooden spoon until smooth. Whisk in the half & half, the add the remaining 1/4 cup of hot sauce and stir until thick, about 2 minutes. Whisk in the cheddar and pepper jack cheeses; whisk in the sour cream until thick, around another 2 minutes.
- Spread 1/2 of the cooked macaroni in the buttered dish; top with chicken and then the rest of the macaroni. Pour the sauce over the entire thing.
- Melt 2 tablespoons of butter in a small skillet and mix in the panko and parsley. Sprinkle over the sauce. Bake until bubbly, 30-40 minutes.
As you can probably tell, this isn’t health food. And while we generally try and eat healthily, I really think that every now and then everyone needs something creamy and cheesy.
About the hot sauce: 3/4 cup sounds like a LOT of hot sauce and I was a little scared. But it really didn’t end up being too much at all (though I do reduce it to about a half cup when I’m making it for the kiddos). You can even use a combination to get different tastes. Recently I had partial bottles of both Texas Pete’s Original Hot Sauce and Garlic Hot Sauce so I used a 1/4 cup of the garlic and 1/2 cup of the regular and it was quite tasty.