Pioneer Woman: A Year of Holidays {January Recipe}

Nathan gave me Pioneer Woman's new cookbook for Christmas and I {love} it!

I also got Julia Child's cookbook. After looking through both cookbooks, I decided to do a challenge: make one recipe from each of the cookbooks every month over the next year.
For January, I'm starting with PW's Buffalo Chicken Bites.


First, I made the blue cheese dressing:

1cup mayo
1/2 cup sour cream
4 oz. blue cheese
3 or 4 dashes worcestershire sauce
1/2 cup buttermilk
Whisk together in a bowl. Cover and chill until ready to serve. I also cut a few stalks of celery into sticks to serve with the sauce and chicken. (This makes ALOT....I could have halved the recipe).

For the chicken:
Cut 2 lb. chicken breast into cubes. Set aside. Next, make a batter.

1 cup flour
1 T. cornstarch
salt & pepper to taste
1 bottle beer

Stir together flour, cornstarch, salt, and pepper in a bowl. Slowly add beer, adding enough to make a thin batter (but thick enough to stick to the chicken). Put chicken in batter a few pieces at a time.

*Make sure your oil is hot, then add chicken to oil, a few pieces at a time.
Line a baking sheet with paper towels. Remove chicken from oil when lightly browned and drain on paper towels. Continue cooking batches of chicken.

In the meantime, make sauce. I halved the recipe and it was more than enough. Melt 1 stick butter in a saucepan over low heat. Add 1/2 to 2/3 bottle Louisiana (or Frank's) Hot Sauce, and a few dashes of worcestershire sauce.



After all chicken has been cooked, put chicken in a large bowl and pour sauce over it. Toss to coat and pour back onto baking sheet (remove paper towel) and bake in 350 degree oven for 8-10 minutes.

Serve with blue cheese dressing and celery sticks (you'll need the celery.....this chicken is SPICY!)


My review: This recipe gets an A. It is delicious!! Peter loves hot & spicy foods so he really loved it. I like a milder sauce, so it was a bit hot for me, but it was very good. Neither of us had really tried blue cheese dressing. We thought it was okay, but not worth the trouble of making it from scratch (we'll just buy a jar of pre-made next time). I'm sure if you are a blue cheese dressing fan, you'll love this recipe. We will definitely make this chicken again, but maybe try a bbq or sweet & sour sauce version next time.
I really love this cookbook and how it's layed out. The pictures and stories for each month are really nice. PW did a great job on this cookbook. The January section of the cookbook had some great-looking recipes, and this one is a great football watching treat...perfect Super Bowl food!

Can't wait for February to try my next choice for Valentine's Day!!

*Peter has had a deep-fryer on his wish list for awhile now, and finally bought one after Christmas. Of course, we've tried it out already, today with the chicken, and on Friday he did single fried oysters.

Texas Pete brand cocktail sauce comes very close to homemade -yummy!