Bills tailgate food: Kringle Chicken Cheese Crisps for Week 8 vs. Packers

Can you believe it? Season Five of Wingin’ It. Where has the time gone? For any newcomers, here’s the premise. It’s hungry work being a fan of the Buffalo Bills. Every week of the regular and postseason, Buffalo Rumblings brings you a recipe to try out with a “Buffalo” twist.

I mean, of course we’re using cheese for the Green Bay Packers game. And sure, it’s a star in its own right. We crisp it up and curl it a bit to make it capable of holding toppings. Like shredded chicken, and the other star of the show: Kringle sauce. A Kringle is a type of pastry, often cherry or almond flavored. We steer the sauce in that direction to make a simple-looking, one-bite snack, with a complex flavor profile.

Kringle Chicken Cheese Crisps

Makes: 26-32
Active Time: 30 min
Total Time: 40 min

Ingredients

1 brick (8 oz) sharp cheddar cheese
¹⁄₂ cup hot sauce
¹⁄₄ cup cherry-flavored whiskey
¹⁄₂ stick unsalted butter
2 Tbsp water
1 Tbsp all-purpose flour
Garlic and onion powder to taste
1 lb cooked and shredded chicken (finely chopped would likely work well too)

1. Preheat large fry pan on MED/HIGH. Cut cheese into small squares. (See gallery below for rough approximation; you should be able to get 26-32 pieces from an 8 oz brick.)
2. Add cheese to pan, a few pieces at a time, and immediately use circle technique shown below to spread out cheese. Move between pieces quickly and continue to circle until edges of cheese crisp starts to brown, 1-2 min.
3. Flip cheese circles and crisp, about 1 min max.
4. Remove from pan and place on foil, baking sheet, or similar. OPTIONAL: Drape over a cylinder like a clean glass or rolling pin to curve cheese crisps.
5. Repeat steps 1-4 until all cheese is crisped.
6. Add hot sauce and whiskey to a medium sauce pan on LOW.
7. Stir and melt in butter.
8. Mix water and flour in a small container until smooth.
9. Stir flour mixture into hot sauce and whiskey.
10. Add garlic and onion powder; stir periodically about 5 min.
11. Add chicken and prepared hot sauce; continue periodic stirring 5 additional min.
12. Place a small amount of chicken on top of cheese crips; serve immediately.

Wingin’ It Tips and Prep Gallery

Grid View

The first image is clearly the circle technique I promised above. The idea is to set the edge of your cheese circle. Doing this for 5-6 seconds or so helps set the size of the crisp and speeds up the process so you don’t burn the cheese waiting for it to melt. As noted, you’ll need to move quickly to do this with a few chunks of cheese at time.

The next image is right about where you want to flip the cheese. I use a spatula to lift the edge and a fork to pinch it to the spatula. As a heads up, that little piece of cheese that hasn’t melted yet will almost certainly fall back into the pan. No worries, just place the circle you just lifted right on top it it. Give it 30-60 seconds and take it out.

Next up, we have my stainless steel rolling pin featured over foil to catch the fat that will leak out. When hot, the crisps are still flexible, so draping them over something like this allows you to curve them. I have two crisps shown in full. The one on the right didn’t just fall into shape and needed a little help with my fork/spatula combo. With this picture, I also elected to show two of the worst cheese crisps I made. They’re uneven, wrinkled, and not very circular. Even if you’re the guy writing the recipe, things might not go perfectly. That’s okay; even these misfit crisps are amazing.

Last but not least, another angle of the final product. These are the three best crisps I made, because vanity matters with food photography. I’ve found Wingin’ It on sites ranging from sports news aggregators to Pinterest. You bet I’m going to make the cover image look good. You never know who’s peeking. Oh, before I forget—I added tomatoes on top of mine because it’s delicious. Feel free to add other things as garnish.