Football Eats 1: Buffalo Chicken Egg Rolls

Over the last few years - and especially the last two - I have posted things labeled as "Football Eats," whether they be nachos or sliders or quesadillas or what have you, just photos of things I have cooked while watching football. They are almost always hand-held, always unhealthy, and - perhaps because of those reasons - they are always very popular posts. I have yet to write one where I have failed to receive at least one question, either in the comments or via email, asking advice about making a similar dish.

So this year I am going to label each such post as Football Eats and show how I made it. Sound good?

Last night was the first night of college football and there were two games I wanted to watch: UCLA vs. Rice and South Carolina vs. Vanderbilt. I sent Elizabeth a text in the afternoon: "I'm gonna make buffalo chicken egg rolls tonight, cool?"

"Yeah!" was her one-word response.

I bought thin chicken pieces at the market. Normally, when I'm cooking with chicken, I buy high-quality breasts at the butcher shop... but that's because I'm making sandwiches (or something like that) and chicken is the main ingredient. But considering these pieces were going to be diced, mixed with other ingredients and fried, I didn't feel the need to get anything too fancy or expensive.

I roasted the chicken in the oven for twenty minutes then chopped it up into small bits and placed them in a bowl to cool.

Most people like celery with buffalo wings, so I added some diced pieces to the chicken, for extra crunch. Tabasco's buffalo sauce went into the mix, as well as a few drops of Trappey's hot sauce, for spice. 

The obvious cheese to use in this situation would have been blue cheese. I chose not to. Blue cheese is such a strong, often overpowering flavor. I didn't want to include that inside the egg roll, where the flavor would be unavoidable. I decided to use the blue cheese on the side, where we could add as much of it as we wanted. Inside the egg rolls, I just used shredded mozzarella.

The market across the street from me had egg roll wrappers, a pleasant surprise, so I spooned some of the chicken/cheese/celery/hot sauce mix into the middle of several wrappers, wrapped them up, let them chill in the fridge for an hour, and then fried them.

If you don't like football, I can respect that. It's not for everyone. But if you don't like these... man, I don't know what to say. I thought they were fantastic: crispy shells and insides of tasting like gooey cheese and buffalo wings.

On a salad, where dressing is a complement, any variety of blue cheese dressing is fine with me. But when I'm using a blue cheese dressing as a dip, there is only one acceptable kind for me: Brianna's. It's full of pieces of blue cheese and tastes higher quality than any bottled dressing I know of. It was the perfect dip for these egg rolls. 

Have a great holiday weekend.