Wingin’ It: Green Bay Packers

As the Buffalo Bills prepare to face a new opponent each week, fans take on the age-old arch-nemesis know as “hunger.” Never fear, Buffalo Rumblings has just the playbook to take down this foe. Each week, we’ll dive into enemy territory to scout their signature moves and put a “Buffalo” spin on it. Translated, each week we’ll share a themed recipe based on who the Bills are playing, including a custom wing sauce to go with each dish. Our opponent this week:

Green Bay Packers

Grilled cheese sandwich: The Wisconsin dairy culture is our focus this week. Cheesy goodness gets a little kick as we pair wing sauce with the iconic grilled cheese sandwich. Western New York has no shortage of dairy farms itself, so there’s plenty of tremendous cheese options at our disposal. With a simple recipe to start from, this week we add a side dish. Cheese and apples make a perfect pair, and wouldn’t you know it’s apple season! To complete the week, we’ll toss in a pie filling recipe that never makes it into the crust.

Grilled Cheese

Serves 1 (but easy to double, triple or even nonuple if needed)
Active Time: 20-25 min
Total Time: 30-40 min

Wing Sauce:

• ¹⁄4 cup hot sauce
• 2-3 Tbsp butter
• ¹⁄₄ cup apple cider (optional, see below*)

Pie filling:

• 1 apple, peeled and chopped
• Cinnamon to taste
• ¹⁄₂ cup apple cider
• 1 Tbsp brown sugar

Grilled cheese:

• 2 slices bread*
• 1 slice American cheese (optional)
• Sharp cheddar cheese, however much you think the sandwich needs
• Shredded Parmesan/Romano cheese

1. Prepare wing sauce: Simmer hot sauce on MED for 1 min; stir in butter and let sit. (*If using the apple cider, simmer hot sauce and cider together on MED for 5-10 minutes, reducing volume to about half.) Let sit**
2. Place chopped apple in sauté pan and sprinkle with cinnamon. Add cider and brown sugar. Simmer on MED-HIGH, stirring frequently until cider is reduced to syrupy consistency, about 10-15 min. Be careful not to let mixture boil over. Reduce heat to a simmer; let stand while you prepare remainder of recipe.
3. Preheat non-stick frying pan on MED-LOW.*** Spread wing sauce over both slices of bread. This is just like a normal grilled cheese, but with the wing sauce instead of butter.
4. Sprinkle the Parmesan/Romano cheese blend over the saucy sides of the bread and pat down gently.
5. Assemble sandwich and pan-fry until outside of bread is crispy. Flip every few minutes to reduce risk of scorching. Due to extra moisture, expect longer cooking times, up to 15-20 minutes.

Wingin’ It Tips:

• *For flavor purposes, I highly recommend potato bread. This will increase cooking time and likely lead to some of the exterior cheese burning slightly. You can either deal with that or simply not add the Parmesan/Romano blend on the outside.
• **This wing sauce variant can be chilled and used like a spread if you’re planning ahead.
• ***If you’re worried about too much moisture from the hot sauce in the bread, you can use this step to pre-toast what will become the “butter” side of the bread.

The Beer: First off Green Bay, your “frozen tundra” has a heater. Second, while your average temperatures are a little cooler than Western New York in Winter, we handily dominate the snowfall department. Heck, I couldn’t even make a sandwich in my kitchen without running into an entire wall of Ice. I even reached Max Ice for a minute there.

Beer products provided by Labatt USA. Please drink responsibly.

Coming soon!

Next week the Buffalo Bills face off against the Tennessee Titans. Besides questionable judgment on the trajectory of thrown objects, Nashville is known for BBQ. Join us next week to get a wing’d up recipe that can be scheduled for halftime, without missing any on-field action.