This Creamy Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese recipe is super tasty and satisfying, with just the right amount of kick. Easy to make, too!
Once again. Whoops! (I wonder how many of my posts start out like this? LOL!)
Anyway, we’re big fans of Buffalo Chicken ANYTHING - as you may have guessed by now. Across our food blogs, we have recipes for Buffalo Chicken Pizza, Buffalo Chicken Buns, Buffalo Chicken Nachos, Low Carb Buffalo Chicken Meatballs, Buffalo Chicken Salad, Buffalo Chicken Jerky, Campfire Buffalo Chicken Dip ... I even have a Buffalo Chicken Sloppy Joes recipe coming out in a few months!
It’s just such a great flavour profile to apply to ANY comfort food, you know?
You can use a store bought rotisserie chicken, or my super easy method of making pulled chicken - more on that in a bit, though.
I chose to make this with Cellentani pasta, as it’s the most fun... but you can use almost anything you’d like. More texture comes from the use of celery.
Can’t have buffalo wings without celery sticks, IMHO.
Anyway - finally - the creamy cheese sauce is where the buffalo part of the “Buffalo Mac & Cheese” comes in - with a base of beer (optional!), hot sauce, and ranch dressing.
It’s rich, decadent, cheesy, and just the right amount of spicy - perfect for your viewing parties, or just a random weeknight dinner.
Anyway, let’s look at what you’ll need for this Buffalo Chicken Macaroni & Cheese recipe...
Ingredients
Overall, this recipe uses pretty simple ingredients. You shouldn’t have any trouble finding everything you need in pretty much any larger grocery store.
As always, I have some ingredient notes for you:
Pasta
I usually use Cellentani Pasta for this, as it’s the most fun to eat.
Hey, it’s my recipe, I can choose the ingredients according to whatever criteria I want, right? “Most fun to eat” is legit.
Anyway - that said - don’t feel like you HAVE to use that kind of spiral macaroni pasta.
Fusilli, Rigatoni, Shell pasta are great options for a thick, cheesy sauce like this. Of course, elbow macaroni is always a great stand-by for any kind of mac n’cheese recipe.
Shredded Chicken
You’ve got a couple options here.
Personally, I like to throw on a quick batch of my Dutch Oven Pulled Chicken, then run the cooked chicken breasts through with my electric mixers.
Super easy!
If you want an even easier option, you can just buy a rotisserie chicken and chop the meat up. I like vacuum sealing and freezing the leftover carcasses for making soup, later.
Frank’s RedHot Sauce
The thing to note here is that I use the original Cayenne Pepper Sauce, NOT the Franks Buffalo Wings Sauce.
The original Red Hot Sauce is a cayenne based hot sauce, that’s most commonly used as one of the ingredients in making buffalo sauce (along with butter). It’s a thin hot sauce that’s meant to be added on.
The buffalo wing sauce has added oil and butter flavour, to be used as a finished buffalo sauce. It’s thicker and not as concentrated as the Original Red Hot sauce.
We want the concentrated flavour, as it’s being added to other ingredients and is getting the creamy sauce from some of those ingredients - we don’t need it from the bottled sauce!
Cayenne Pepper
So, in addition to the cayenne pepper sauce, I use cayenne powder as well. That may sound a bit weird, but it’s important.
If we used enough hot sauce to get the flavour I wanted for this, it would be EXTREMELY salty and have too much vinegar.
So, we use some hot sauce, then enhance the flavour with additional cayenne powder.
Beer
Beer is optional, but works really nicely in almost any mac and cheese recipe. I recommend using a relatively neutral tasting lager, like Molson Canadian or Labatt Blue.
If you don’t want to use beer, you can use the same amount of chicken broth.
Shredded Cheese
I like Monterey Jack Cheese for this, but feel free to use a mild cheddar or medium cheddar if you prefer. IMHO sharp cheddar / old cheddar would “compete” with the hot sauce a bit too much.
One thing to keep in mind - pre-shredded cheeses are easier (and I tend to use them, as I’m lazy!), but shredding a brick of cheese yourself will make for a smoother cheese sauce.
The pre shredded cheese tends to have cellulose or whatever to prevent it from sticking to itself. This can affect the texture of the sauce, making it a little grainy.
Ranch Dressing
You can use blue cheese dressing if you prefer.
All-Purpose Flour
You can substitute ½ cup of white rice flour or brown rice flour for a gluten free buffalo cheese sauce.
Just note: Gluten free pasta is notoriously fragile, so stir that in last ... and be gentle!
Milk
We don’t tend to keep regular milk on hand, so we use unsweetened almond milk.
2% milk works well, skim milk will give a slightly thinner mouth feel, and whole milk will give you a richer sauce.
Everything Else
Rounding out this recipe, you will need:
Celery
Butter
Ground Black Pepper
Garlic Powder
Salt
In terms of garnish, I like a drizzle of ranch, another drizzle of Frank’s Red Hot Sauce, and some Star Trekked celery.
If Bleu Cheese is your thing, I bet some blue cheese crumbles would also be great!
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How to Make Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese
The full recipe is in the printable recipe card at the bottom of this post, here is the visual walk through:
Cook your pasta to the al dente stage, following the manufacturer’s directions.
As soon as you get the water started for your pasta, start your sauce: Melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat.
Whisk flour into the melted butter until well incorporated. Cook flour mixture - stirring near constantly - until it just starts to take on a little bit of colour.
Slowly and carefully, pour a small amount of the measured beer in to the pot, whisking as you do. Keep streaming liquid in as you whisk it - it’ll clump up at first, and smooth out as you whisk more beer in.
Continue heating - stirring often - until it just starts to bubble, then remove from the heat.
Add a large handful of cheese, stir until melted.
Continue adding rest of cheese – a handful at a time – stirring until it’s melted each time. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.
Once the pasta is ready, drain off excess water. Gently fold the cooked pasta and shredded chicken into the pot of buffalo cheese sauce.
Leftovers
Leftovers can be cooled to almost room temperature, then transferred to an airtight container. Store in the fridge for 3-4 days, reheat before serving.
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Buffalo Chicken Mac & Cheese
Ingredients
- 8 oz Cellentani Pasta
- 2 cups Shredded Chicken
- 2 Celery Ribs Finely Chopped (Optional)
- ¼ cup Butter
- ¼ cup All-Purpose Flour
- ¾ Cup Beer or more milk.
- ¾ cup Milk
- ½ cup Frank’s RedHot Sauce
- ½ cup Ranch Dressing
- 2 teaspoon Cayenne Pepper
- 2 teaspoon Garlic Powder
- ½ teaspoon Salt
- 3 cups Shredded Monterey Jack Cheese
- Salt and Ground Black Pepper
Instructions
- Cook your pasta to the al dente stage, following the manufacturer’s directions. 3 minutes before the recommended time is up, stir the shredded chicken and chopped celery in, to gently heat them up a bit.
- Once the pasta is ready, drain well and set aside.
- While the pasta is cooking, melt butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat.
- Whisk flour into the melted butter until well incorporated. Cook flour mixture - stirring near constantly - until it just starts to take on a little bit of colour.
- Slowly and carefully, pour a small amount of the measured beer in to the pot, whisking as you do. Keep streaming liquid in as you whisk it - it’ll clump up at first, and smooth out as you whisk more beer in.
- Add the milk, hot sauce, ranch dressing, cayenne, garlic powder and salt, whisk until smooth and well combined.
- Continue heating - stirring often - until it just starts to bubble, then remove from the heat.
- Add a large handful of cheese, stir until melted. Continue adding rest of cheese – a handful at a time – stirring until it’s melted each time. Season with salt and pepper, to taste.
- Add the strained pasta and shredded chicken, gently fold it in.
- Serve hot, garnished with more celery slices, ranch dressing, and/or Frank's Red Hot sauce, as desired.
Notes
Nutrition
Thanks for Reading!... and hey, if you love the recipe, please consider leaving a star rating and comment! |
Marie Porter
A fun and flavourful way to dress up mac and cheese. Hope you love this recipe as much as we do!