The border: when a Buffalo sauce stops being innovative and becomes a category of its own

Can a Buffalo wing be breaded? Can a Buffalo wing be baked? Can a Buffalo wing be sweet? Can a Buffalo wing be served with carrots and ranch dressing?

Here's what dictionary.com has to say:

Buffalo wings: deep-fried chicken wings served in a spicy sauce and usually with celery and a blue cheese dressing.

Under that definition, spicy barbecue sauce is in and ranch dressing, breaded wings and baked wings are out.

Many wing buffs would go a step further and preface 'spicy sauce' with 'cayenne-pepper based', thereby eliminating barbecue wings.

Which would give us: deep-fried chicken wings served in a cayenne-pepper-based spicy sauce and usually with celery and blue cheese dressing.

Some traditionalists would go even further and preface sauce with "cayenne-pepper-and-butter". I find this viewpoint prevalent in Buffalo. 

Where is the line between innovation and bastardization? Linguists have a saying: a language is a dialect with an army. Narrowly-defined foods, like established languages, are generally backed by centuries of tradition and powerful ties to ethnic, national or regional identities.

Neapolitans, for instance, believe there are only two kinds of pizza: marinara (tamato, garlic, oregano and oil) and Margherita (tomato, mozzarella, basil and oil).

And what excellent pizza thay make. But imagine if pizzamakers around the world had walked the Neapolitan's line. No pepperoni pizza. No garlic pizza. No four-cheese pizza with artichokes, garlic, hot peppers and olives (my favorite).

Pizza had to escape Naples to reach its full potential. And so the Buffalo wing -- in my opinion -- can only reach its full potential in the hands of those who do not believe that cayenne-pepper and butter is the end-all of Buffalo sauces.

Because I want to encourage, not stifle, innovation, and because I am the hunt's leader, not its fascist dictator, I am leaving the boundaries loose and the hunters free to explore what constitutes a Buffalo wing for themselves.

Although I personally consider then abominations, I am going to permit ranch dressing, carrots, baked wings and breaded wings into the competition. I believe breaded and baked wings will be at a severe disadvantage. But the hunters will make that call, and breaded and baked wings will live or die on their own merits.

But sauce--surely there must be some limits with regard to sauce. I can compare two wings -- one baked, one fried -- coated with the same sauce. One will be crispier, juicier and richer. Fried wins.

But how to compare Buffalo wings from Nima's pizzeria (around the corner from me) to Wango tango wings at Dinosaur Barbecue?

Impossible. To widen our search to include any spicy wing -- no matter how sweet, no matter what other flavors are included in its sauce, flavors such as honey and mango -- would make our mandate hopelessly large. It would be like searching for the world's best peice of chicken.

But to limit our search to wings served with cayenne-pepper sauce and butter would be narrow-minded and dogmatic.

In my mind, any wing with the tangy, vinegary flavor that is the Buffalo wing's trademark is eligible. But how tangy and how vinegary must it be? And what about sweet?

Below is an essay by wing hunter Ron Wieszczyk on what gives us that tangy Buffalo wing flavor and a suggestion on where to draw the boundary on what constitutes a Buffalo wing sauce:

Time for me to enter the debate concerning what makes an acceptable Buffalo Wing Sauce. I’m just talking about

Buffalo

style wing sauce here. There are many other great varieties of wing sauce but to be considered

Buffalo

style it needs to meet certain criteria. Today’s concern is what kind of peppers should be allowed.

Everyone knows that you can build a good, basic wing sauce recipe with Franks Red Hot and Butter and vary the proportions to suite your taste for heat. Franks sauce is cayenne pepper based and therefore some say that a true buffalo wing sauce must be cayenne based. Well if we take a closer look, there is a much more fundamental ingredient.

Cayenne peppers are just one form of chili pepper. And common to all chili peppers is a chemical called capsaicin. The only exception is the bell pepper which has a recessive gene that eliminates/prevents the capsaicin.  Always knew there was something wrong with those bell peppers. All the rest have capsaicin, that basic ingredient that gives the buffalo style wings the kick.  I say that as long as you are using a chili pepper (capsaicin) based sauce and butter it qualifies as

Buffalo

style. But will it have that

Buffalo

wing taste? That depends on the peppers you choose.  A proper blending of the right variety of chilies will yield a superior sauce with a good heat, and a combination of subtle flavors that play off each other and will remain on the lips long after the last bone hits the plate. A great sauce could be generated without using a single cayenne pepper, although the cayenne will long reign as the favorite to start with, the secret is in the capsaicin. .

What are these other kinds of chili peppers? One internet site lists over 600 different varieties because each variety has many subgroups. The most common are the cayenne, jalapeno, tabasco, habanero and Scotch Bonnet. 

And when it comes to rating the heat of those chilies, scientists use a system that uses something called Scoville Units. The ranking runs from 15,000,000 units for pure Capsaicin, which is rated a toxic substance, to 0 for a bell pepper.

So get busy and “build your own”

Buffalo

style wing sauce  Here is a guide listing the Scoville Units for some peppers and pepper sauces to help you dial in the right heat for your taste.

.

15,000,000–16,000,000 Pure capsaicin

2,000,000–5,300,000 Standard US Grade pepper spray 

350,000–577,000 Red Savina Habanero

100,000–350,000 Habanero Chile 

100,000–350,000 Scotch Bonnet 

100,000–200,000 Jamaican Hot Pepper

50,000–100,000 Thai Pepper, Malagueta Pepper, Chiltepin Pepper 

30,000–50,000 Cayenne Pepper, Tabasco pepper 

10,000–23,000 Serrano Pepper 

7,000–8,000 Tabasco Sauce (Habanero) 

5,000–10,000 Wax Pepper

2,500–8,000 Jalapeño Pepper

2,500–5,000 Tabasco Sauce (Tabasco pepper)

1,000–1,500 Poblano Pepper

600–800 Tabasco Sauce (Green Pepper) 

500–1000 Anaheim pepper 

450 Original Franks Red Hot sauce

100–500 Pimento, Pepperoncini 

0 No heat, Bell pepper

Next time -  What is Capsaicin?

Comments

[Joseph Bayot]

When I want buffalo wings, I want deep-fried chicken wings served in a cayenne-pepper-based spicy sauce and usually with celery and blue cheese dressing.

If I wanted honey and mango, I would ask for honey and mango.

I think that's the problem with many places. People are taking creative licenses with buffalo wings, while keeping the name of buffalo wing.

[Marty]

What a neat coincidence. I did a post on the blog I write with my two Buffalo-born brothers about the Flay vs. Cerza throw-down. The comments box got into a big discussion about what's proper and what's not for Buffalo wings. WE talk about a lot of the same things in the post:

http://mazurland.typepad.com/myweblog/2007/07/buffalo-finally.html

[Marty]

PS: I disagree on where to draw the line. I leave wide leeway for sauces, but definitely consider baked and/or breaded wings beyond the pale. They may be good (usually not), but they're not Buffalo wings.

[Chris]

Making Buffalo wings with something other than Franks (or VERY similar) sauce is like making a Martini with something other than gin.

If you like it the "other" way, fine. But please... call it something else.