Buffalo wings
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Buffalo chicken wings, or Buffalo wings as they are more commonly known, were first prepared at the Anchor Bar on Main Street, near the corner of North Street, in Buffalo, New York on October 3, 1964. Teressa Bellissimo, co-owner of the Anchor Bar with her husband Frank, had the idea of deep frying chicken wings, soaking them in hot sauce, and serving them to their bar patrons with celery sticks and blue cheese salad dressing.
At the time of their creation, chicken wings were a part of the chicken typically thrown away or used for soup. The Buffalo chicken wing began life as a free bar treat to encourage Anchor Bar customers to buy more drinks and has grown into a worldwide appetizer and snack phenomenon.
Buffalo wings are unbreaded chicken wing sections (called flats and drums), deep fried, and coated in a cayenne pepper based sauce with other seasonings. Although many variations on this sauce exist, the original sauce is composed of only five ingredients: cayenne pepper sauce, white vinegar, butter, salt, and garlic. When using a prepared hot sauce of vinegar and cayenne pepper, the recipe is simply a mixture of hot sauce and melted butter.
A "single" order is ten, a "double" is 20, and a "triple" is 30. Buffalo wings can usually be ordered by the "bucket", in quantities of 50 or more. Buffalo wing sauce can be made with a variable amount of heat/spiciness, and the names of these sauces generally correspond to the level of heat (for example, "suicidal," "hot," "medium," or "mild"). For authentic Buffalo wings using original Anchor Bar sauce, "hot," "medium," and "mild" all use the same sauce. Only the duration of time the wings are soaked in the sauce, and the amount of sauce used, affect the "hotness."
In Buffalo, the best-known places for authentic wings are the (still operating) Anchor Bar and a bar and restaurant called Duff's. The Anchor Bar serves more than 36,000 pounds of wings per month. Although they are known as "Buffalo wings" in most of the world, they are simply called "chicken wings" or "wings" in the Buffalo area.
References
- The Story of the Buffalo Wing. Pamphlet. Buffalo/Niagara Convention & Visitor Bureau
External links
- How to Make Hot Wings (http://www.hotsauceblog.com/hotsaucearchives/how-to-make-hot-wings-a-step-by-step-guide/)
- Anchor Bar (http://www.anchorbar.com/)
- Buffalo Wild Wings (http://www.buffalowildwings.com)