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Buffalo Chicken Pizza

Buffalo chicken wings are a favorite food of mine. I love trying to get all the spicy chicken meat off the bone. The heat opens my sinuses and just makes me feel alive! I know that sounds silly, but something about the spice—it just gets the blood flowing and the heart pumping. Whole Foods makes a delicious Buffalo chicken pizza—I have had it a couple of times for lunch. There are nice chunks of chicken drenched in hot sauce. You get a real bite of heat in their pizza. It’s something I have wanted to try at home for awhile- I had just never gotten around to looking for a recipe. Craving the Buffalo chicken meatballs I have made on more than one occasion, I decided it was time to change things up and find a pizza recipe for Buffalo chicken. Here’s the recipe I tried from Rachael Ray: ¾ pound chicken breast cutlets Extra virgin olive oil for drizzling 2 teaspoons grill seasoning 1 pizza dough (I used Pillsbury.) Cornmeal or flour to handle dough 2 tablespoons butter 1 tablespoon Worcestershire sauce 2 to 3 tablespoons hot sauce ½ cup tomato sauce 1 cup shredded Monterey Jack cheese ½ cup blue cheese crumbles 3 scallions, thinly sliced Preheat oven to 425 degrees. Preheat your grill pan on high heat. Place the chicken on a plate and drizzle with olive oil and the season with your grill seasoning. When the grill is hot, add the chicken and cook on each side for about 3 minutes. Stretch out your pizza dough using the flour or cornmeal to help you—you’ll want it to fit your cookie sheet or pizza pan. In a medium skillet over medium heat, melt butter and stir in the Worcestershire sauce, hot sauce and tomato sauce. Remove the chicken from the grill and thinly slice. Add your chicken slices to the sauce and coat. Cover the pizza dough with the Buffalo chicken sauce, cheese and scallions. Bake the pizza for 18 minutes or until crispy. There were a couple of things I did differently when preparing my pizza—I know shocking. I heard Paula Deen say once that you should always make a recipe exactly as it is written the first time and than subsequent times you prepare it- you can throw in your own alterations. I clearly do not subscribe to this idea. At any rate, I did not make big changes but just wanted to prepare the chicken so that it had a concentrated hot sauce flavor. I chose to top my pizza crust with the 1/2 cup of tomato sauce, than I added the shredded mozzarella cheese (I chose part-skim to try and be a little healthy!) on top of that. In a small sauce pan, I heated up a tablespoon of butter with about a cup of Frank’s hot sauce. Frank’s is the only hot sauce I use when talking Buffalo chicken wings. I whisked the two together and than dunked my sliced chicken in the pan until it was completely coated. Next, I scattered the chicken all over the top of my pizza, followed by a little bit more mozzarella cheese, crumbled blue cheese and the scallions. I found my pizza baked in half the time the recipe called for—9 minutes instead of the 18 stated here. I think that may have been due to the fact that I used a thin crust pizza dough. This pizza was divine. It has a wonderful heat to it! My nose was running. After each bite, I would have to sniffle a little from all the sauce coating the chicken. The scallions added a nice crunch and the mozzarella cheese cooled the pizza off, and you couldn’t tell it was part skim. I was thankful I was not so liberal with the blue cheese crumbles- it was a nice compliment but could have quickly overpowered the pizza if there was too much. The pizza crust browned very nicely in the oven and had a great bite to it. This is the first time I have ever used a simple canned tomato sauce on a pizza. I was skeptical because there weren’t really any additional flavors in it, but on the pizza it was a nice canvas for all the other flavors to play. At last- another option for my Buffalo chicken cravings.