Buffalo Chicken Bites With Spinach And Blue Cheese

These little cute Buffalo chicken bites are definitely a delicious snack to make, perfect for parties and entertaining to share with your family and friends.

They will disappear in seconds. Last time I made them I took some at work and the guys absolutely loved them. I felt bad I didn’t take a few more but next time I will.

These buffalo chicken bites are pretty easy to prepare and if you want to make the dough from scratch will take a little bit longer but so worth the effort.

It is something about this combination of blue cheese with chicken that I love tremendously, it’s absolutely delicious. There are so many other combinations that you can try to make these, still delicious.

I always recommend to start by making the dough first as this will need couple of hours of proving thus resting time is very important. Give it a go and use any flour you may like, I have used a mix of strong white and wholemeal flours almost in equal parts.

Why strong flour, you may ask, well in this case for puffiness. These chicken bites need to come moist and puffy to be at their best but please do not worry if you do not have or fancy going to buy strong flour, use any all purpose, gluten free, wholemeal, spelt, any you have or like or a blend of them.

A bit more about the flour types....

Well, I am not sure you know this. You might well do, you might not but I feel like talking about the types of flour. Here a little here just to emphasize the difference between the flour types as there is a difference.

There are three types of wheat grains – hard, medium and soft. The flour produced by these types of grains contains gluten which will determine the levels of chewiness.

The wheat grain on the other side has its own three layers or composition too which are

• the protective layers that protect the outer casing which we know as bran;

• the white starchy endosperm;
• thirdly, the actual germ, which is the part that contains the vitamins, the oils, and the protein.

I am unsure about other countries but here in the UK, the all purpose flour is made from soft grains. It a light textured flour best for cakes, pastry and biscuits. The flour that you can buy and it is labelled as strong flour is best for most kind of bread. It contains more gluten to make it more chewy.

I am not always following this as I am trying to cut on the gluten content. Whenever I make a bread that I know I want it to be right I need to add strong flour. It will be all crumbly otherwise.

So pastry, biscuits, cakes will ask for a light textured flour to be used whereas breads need hard textured flour.

I love that now you can even find sauce flour on the market. It is so clever when it comes to avoiding lump formation. Just brilliant!

The experience and the skill of the miller is what determines the quality of the flour.

For me, I have to admit and totally put my hands up. I can no longer use just plain flour or just one type of flour. I always love using a blend of those as I tend to use more the healthier versions and here I am talking about these ones that contain less gluten.

Simply because I have learned that lately gluten is something that can give me quite a bit of trouble/discomfort. For this reason I try whenever possible to make it easier for myself.

Coming back to these little buffalo chicken bites beauties, let’s just get them going and here are a couple of shots to show the process of making those just for ease.

How to roll them...

Here is a shot showing the dough strip with filling spread all along ready to be rolled.

And then to roll it into a rope which will need to be cut into slices to form these beautifully yummy buffalo chicken bites that are ready to bake. Yumm....

We shall start rolling - I do feel hungry now and I am pretty sure you do too!

Variations

want these bites vegetarian?

Simply leave the chicken out - I have made these with just cheese and spinach and they are super delishh. You may use any cheese that is not too creamy but a good melting cheese or a combination.

Want them vegan?

Replace the cows' milk by almond or rice milk for the dough and wash them with any vegan butter. For the filling replace the meat and dairy with any vegan cheese, vegan bacon or vegan chicken.

Here are some more delicious chicken recipes that you may enjoy, like this super light chicken and salad boats or this chicken soup or even this beautiful and so yummy baked stuffed chicken recipe. Simply delicious, enjoy.

Buffalo Chicken Bites with spinach and blue cheese

These chicken bites contain some nice ingredients like spinach, chilli sauce, blue cheese and the outcome is just insane. 

5 from 38 votes

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Course: Snack, Starter

Cuisine: American, Ramona's Cuisine

Prep Time: 20 minutes

Cook Time: 20 minutes

Resting Time: 2 hours

Total Time: 2 hours 40 minutes

Servings: 6 people

Calories: 579kcal

Author: Ramona Sebastian

Cook Mode

Equipment

• ▢
  Rolling Pin
• ▢
  baking tray or sheet
• ▢
  knife

Ingredients

For the filling:

• ▢ 280 g of chicken cooked - shredded
• ▢ 95 g of stilton cheese any blue cheese
• ▢ 25 g of shredded grana padano or Parmesan cheese
• ▢ 1 tbsp of barbecue sauce optional
• ▢ 4 tbsp of hot sauce Sriracha or Franks red hot*
• ▢ 75 g of spinach fresh 70 g cooked weight

For the dough:

• ▢ 340 g flour I used white spelt organic
• ▢ 210 g flour wholemeal I used organic
• ▢ 450-500 ml whole milk organic lukewarm
• ▢ 1 tsp salt
• ▢ 1 tsp pepper freshly ground
• ▢ 25 g fresh yeast
• ▢ 1 tbsp cane sugar
• ▢ 3 tbsp olive oil
• ▢ 1 egg to egg wash the bites

Metric - US Imperial

Instructions

• Start by making the dough and for this, you will need to mix all the flour types into a big bowl together with the salt and the pepper. Give it all a good mix to homogenise these. Make a well in the middle and set aside.
• Into a mug or a little bowl, mix the yeast with the sugar and some of the warm milk or warm water. Mix until the yeast and the sugar have dissolved. Pour this into the well and set aside for a good 10-15 minutes until the yeast starts to bubble. I’ve noticed that when I use water it bubbles quicker than when I use milk.
• While waiting for the yeast to bubble up, shred the chicken into a bowl add the stilton cheese the grated Grana Padano the barbecue and the hot sauce. Mix all well and set aside.
• When the yeast has bubbled up and it’s all ready to work with start kneading the flour, salt, yeast with the milk forming a nice dough. Knead for a good few minutes until the hand is dough clear and then set aside. Add some oil to the dough and form into a ball. Cover with cling film and a kitchen towel. Allow proving for a good 20 min to 1 hour depending on the temperature and the ambient. I always place the dough in a warm/sunny corner of the kitchen.
• Preheat the oven at 190C or 400F, line a larger baking tray or baking sheet with parchment paper and set aside. Make sure the oven rack is somewhere in the middle for best results.
• Take the dough out onto a floured surface and cut it into 4 to 5 equal pieces. Roll and stretch each piece forming a 25–30 cm (12in) long rope-like looking piece of dough.
• With the help of a rolling pin shape the rope looking dough into a rectangular piece. Do one by one. Helping yourself with a little teaspoon and a fork, take a little by little the filling and spread across the whole length of the rectangular strip, more towards one side leaving a gap on the edge.
• Fold the dough rolling and overlapping slightly the edges. Do the same with remaining three ropes/rectangular stips. Cut the ropes into approximately 11-12 pieces (less if you want them larger). See pictures in recipe notes below.
• Transfer all buffalo bites as you cut to the prepared tray/sheet leaving a finger wide space in between. Bake at 180C/375F for about 20 min or until nicely browned on top. (Mine look darker because I’ve used wholemeal flour but also I do like everything I bake well done. I like a bit of colour.
• When ready remove from the oven and feel free to brush them with some melted butter just before serving, Yummmm! *

Notes

Add more spicy sauce or some chilli flakes to make spicier if you wish, these are not spicy but just a touch.

• The blue cheese should not be the creamiest one as it’s nice to get a crumb or two of it but if you would like just the flavour from it you can go for the creamiest one.
• Dough should be left to rest twice for at least 20 min in a warm place.

They did came out quite dark due to the wholemeal flour used but if you use white flour they will come out a lot more pale.

I was mentioning that you could brush them at the end with some melted butter just to get a nice shiny look.

If you rather skip the extra butter, just like I did here in this recipe, I have just egg washed them before transferring them into the oven. They will look glam.

Did you make these delicious little buffalo chicken bites?

 

Please do let me know how you liked the outcome, did you give it any twist and used different ingredients, how did it turn out for you?  If you liked it, made it or got inspired, please leave a comment below or even share a picture on Instagram with the hashtag #ramonascuisine.  I would really want to see so feel no shy to share!

 

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Thank you for stopping by and I do hope you’ll check my blog again to see what’s new, all amazing cooking ideas, super easy and delightful family recipes. 

 

Have a wonderful day! 

 

Enjoy!

 

Nutrition

Calories: 579kcal | Carbohydrates: 80g | Protein: 20g | Fat: 20g | Saturated Fat: 7g | Cholesterol: 53mg | Sodium: 1316mg | Potassium: 474mg | Fiber: 5g | Sugar: 7g | Vitamin A: 1585IU | Vitamin C: 10mg | Calcium: 261mg | Iron: 5.2mg

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