I'm not sure I have this recipe exactly where I want it, but it's close, so I'll post it as a bookmark for me. In their simplest incantation Buffalo chicken wings are fried, then tossed with a mixture of Frank's Red Hot sauce and butter. They are only slightly hot from the sauce (which is nowhere close to the heat level many wings are served at). The main characteristics are the crisp texture of the fried chicken skin, which the wings have an abundance of, and the strong "chicken" flavor these produce. To capture this in a sausage I did three things: I added chicken stock to the sausage along with breadcrumbs to modify the texture. I cooked the skins that were on the thighs to the point of crispy and ground them. This added a noticeable boost to the chicken flavor with no effect on the texture, probably because they cooked down to such a small amount. If you don't fancy raw chicken skins ground up in a chicken sausage, try cooking them to render the fat, then adding the crispy bits. Third, I neutralized the acid in Frank's Hot Sauce to a bind friendly pH of 6. Salt, pepper and a bit more cayenne pepper for additional heat rounded out the recipe. More hot sauce and cayenne are possibilities, though I wouldn't want it at the expense of the chicken flavor.
Chicken thigh meat and fat 1750 g
Chicken skin cooked 60 g
(The skin was 250 g from 12 thighs; seasoned with salt, pepper and cayenne then cooked 20 minutes at 350 F on a Silpat, followed by 10 minutes on a rack).
Breadcrumbs 100 g
Chicken stock 200 g concentrated to 100 g
Frank's Red Hot Sauce 100 g
Baking soda 4.58 g
(Stir together in a deep bowl)
Kosher salt 25.3 g
Black pepper 8.4 g
Cayenne pepper 3.25 g
Add and mix into the course ground chicken meat
Not much but big flavor
Link them as they come out if you want cocktail sized sausages (tip from tristar).
Fashionably late will be stylishly hungry.
