Buffalo Chicken Sandwich

I sure hope you like blue cheese!  If so, you're in for a treat!  If not, stop reading now.

This week it was time to further push the envelope by exploring a sandwich I had made a point of avoiding thus far.  Whenever I talk to people about my grilled cheesing, questions usually come up surrounding what actually constitutes a proper "grilled cheese."  The main sticking point in this discussion is usually whether a sandwich that includes meat qualifies as a grilled cheese.  That's why I was so hesitant to drive into the buffalo chicken sandwich-- a sandwich that doesn't even have a cheese's name in the title!  Clearly the central focus here is the chicken... so, is this REALLY a grilled cheese?  Stay tuned for a more thoughtful debate later.  For now, let's get down to cooking.

There were a lot of ingredients for this one, but they were very easy to assemble.

There are three main components to the sandwich:
* The cheese spread: 1/4 cup mayonnaise, 1/4 cup sour cream, 5 ounces creamy blue cheese, 1 diced rib of celery, 2 tablespoons of diced chives and 2 tablespoons of lemon juice.
* The chicken: 2 boneless/skinless chicken breasts (sliced into strips lengthwise) and olive oil (for cooking)
* The buffalo sauce: 1/2 stick butter, 1.5 tablespoons hot sauce and 1.5 teaspoons vinegar

As far as bread goes, GGC recommends focaccia bread, but says you can substitute in soft rolls or sourdough (I chose the latter as Wegman's didn't have regular focaccia bread).

Step one was mixing up the spread.  Apparently this can be done 2 days in advance.  Oh well!  No time like the present. 

I tossed all the ingredients into a bowl and stirred them up (with some slight modifications). 

I think now is the time for me to air my true feelings on blue cheese.  Anytime it's possible for me to point out the fact that there is mold in my food and the logical response is "it's supposed to be there," I view it as a red flag.  I know, I know, technically ALL cheese is moldy... but this is different.  Oddly enough I enjoy Gorgonzola, but blue is just taking it a little too far.  Moral of the story, this was probably the only recipe where I wasn't trying to find excuses to add more cheese just for the heck of it-- quite the opposite, actually.  (Also, for those of you not committing my personal culinary tastes to memory: I don't like celery, so less than a full rib of celery was fine by me).

Next step was to slice the chicken in half lengthwise and pound the strips to 1/4" inch thick.  Not having a mallet (aside from an actual hammer) I opted for an aluminum can-- I think I heard somewhere that can serve as a meat mallet in a pinch (is a meat mallet even an actual thing?  Sounds inappropriate...).  Well, after about a minute of aggravated assault on the chicken I realized that the chicken was none the worse for the wear whereas the aluminum can now had a huge dent in the side. 

Hmm... time for plan B!  Slice the chicken as thinly as I can and move on.

Around this time, sous chef emerged from his nap and, upon spotting the Sriracha bottle, sprung into action to aid in mixing up the buffalo sauce.  We put the butter, hot sauce and vinegar into the saucepan and let it melt/mix together.

Meanwhile, I grilled up the chicken strips in 2 tablespoons of olive oil until they looked cooked through and slightly brown on the outside.

Once these were cool enough to handle we coated each piece in the buffalo sauce (confession, I accidentally added 1.5 tablespoons of vinegar, not teaspoons-- the result was sauce that was much too thin). 

While sous chef worked on this I moved forward with spreading the blue cheese mixture on the un-olive oiled side of six slices of sourdough (six because these pieces were smaller than normal bread). 

I topped these with chicken and then added the second slice of bread so they were ready to grill.

This was another instance where GGC suggests just wiping out the bottom of the skillet between cooking the chicken and cooking the sandwiches, but the coating that was left in the skillet from this approach served as too much of a buffer between the sandwich and the non-stick pan (thus negating the non-stick qualities).  As such, I added some spritzes of my non-stick cooking spray to make sure I got the job done.

Since the blue cheese spread was the cheese for the sandwich and it was already spreadable, it didn't take long for the cheese to "melt" and the bread to toast, so these actually cooked up very quickly.

Taste Review:

You may notice from the photo that there isn't a whole lot of that trademark bright orange buffalo sauce that you usually get with a buffalo chicken sandwich.  That's because the blue cheese is clearly taking center stage here (albeit forcibly).  The first thing you notice is the pungent blue cheese smell-- it's hard to ignore in any context and now that it's melted on top of the sandwich it's virtually impossible.

Once you got past the aroma and took a bite it became clear that the lack of buffalo sauce was working against this sandwich.  I partially blame myself and my incorrect dispensing of the vinegar into the buffalo sauce, but the bulk of the blame lies with the blue cheese.  For once I agreed with Colin-- this one needed to be spicier.  One possible way to combat the lack of sufficient spice would be to use thinner strips of chicken, or even minced chicken, so that more surface area would be exposed to the sauce bath (therefore transferring more of the sauce to the sandwich). 

Colin suggested a modification involving turning this more into a buffalo chicken melt by retaining the buffalo chicken, but adding jack cheese and ranch sauce.  This would provide a flavor contrast to the spicy chicken that isn't in the form of runny blue cheese.  Basically, we found this sandwich boring and think it would be more fun if it was slightly spiced up with some out-of-the-norm ingredients.  This sandwich was trying to make the cheese the main focus, and it succeeded!  It's just too bad it was a cheese we didn't like.  That's why if we tried something with some jack cheese and ranch it might make more of a well-rounded sandwich-like offering; but that brings us back to the eternal question:

What makes a true grilled cheese?

Well, I think we've made some progress towards a quality definition.  Before starting the blog I deemed a grilled cheese any sandwich that is grilled and contains only cheese, but upon scanning GGC for the first time I realized I needed to expand the definition to also include meat.  But what separates that from just being a panini?  Well, let me tell you. 

The cheese must stand alone.

That's right!  The lyrics to "The Farmer in the Dell" finally make sense!  They were talking about grilled cheeses!  OK, probably not, but stay with me.  I've previously established that, when thinking about grilled cheeses with meat on them, the cheese needs to feature prominently.  And while that is still true, I'm finding there's more to it.  There has to be a sort of purity factor where the cheese stands out because it is a star-- you should be able to taste the cheese independent of the other ingredients, even if it's simultaneously complimenting them.  In short, the cheese must be able to stand alone.

But bringing it back to this week's sandwich, the cheese certainly stood alone here!  It just wasn't a cheese we liked.  So, to bring it full circle: I sure hope you like blue cheese, otherwise this is not the sandwich for you.

FINAL RESULTS:

Sandwich:	Buffalo Chicken Sandwich
Gooey-ness:	5 (but it was runny, not gooey)
Aroma:	5
Appearance:	Doesn't look as orangey/red as the "Buffalo" in the name would lead you to believe.
Taste:	C

Gooey Scale	Aroma Scale
1 = still cold/hard	1 = can’t smell a thing
2 = slightly melted but still firm	2 = tender waft
3 = melted evenly	3 = makes your stomach growl
4 = melted and slightly runny (starting to get those cheese strings between your sandwich and your mouth when you take a bite)	4 = strong scent
5 = runny	5 = overpoweringly pungent
6 = sloppy mess!

Next Week: You can rest assure that we won't keep on chugging right through to the next recipe: "Roast Beef with Cheddar and Blue Cheese Butter."  In fact, I might end up skipping that one altogether (I don't eat beef and I don't like blue cheese).  Hmm... it's been awhile since we've had a sweet grilled cheese, maybe we'll bring a new one into the mix.