Buffalo Chicken Salad Puffs

More About This Recipe

• Simple buffalo chicken mix and puff pastry makes a perfectly delicious appetizer.
  
  I never get sick of delicious buffalo chicken flavors, but I sometimes get sick of eating wings. Okay, not much, but occasionally! If you’ve ever craved that flavor but want to class it up a bit, this is the appetizer for you.
  
  Instead of tossing wings in a spicy sauce, this recipe stuffs a simple buffalo chicken mix inside towering, golden brown puff pastry bites. The recipe doesn’t have many ingredients, but there are a few tricks to nailing it.
  
  For starters, let’s talk puff pastry. Just buy the frozen stuff and let it thaw slowly in the fridge before you work with it. It’ll take a few hours (at least) to thaw.
  
  Then you can use a round cookie cutter to cut out some rounds. These will eventually puff up and be our bites!
  
  Of course, we’ll need a hole to fill in the puff pastry bites, so use a smaller cutter to make some holes in each round. Save the lids for a topping on the bites!
  
  To make sure the bites get golden brown and have a nice crunch, I recommend brushing them with a little egg wash (one egg whisked with one tablespoon water).
  
  If you want smaller bites, bake these just like this and fill them. You might think that the filling would fall out the bottom, but it’s thick enough to just kind of sit in the hole.
  
  But if you want a larger bite, you can stack puff pastries! I like this presentation because they're nice and tall and impressive looking. 
  
  Just cut out a second sheet of rounds and use some egg wash to stick two rounds together.
  
  Whether you do a single or double layer, freeze the rounds for 15 minutes before baking them. This will chill down the butter and help the puff pastry rise more in the oven.
  
  Okay. Let’s talk filling. The filling for these bites couldn’t be easier. I recommend just buying a rotisserie chicken from your local deli and shredding it up.
  
  Mix about a cup of the shredded, chopped chicken with some mayo, hot sauce and blue cheese.
  
  If you have a steady hand, you can spoon the filling into the puffs once they’re baked, but I scoop the filling into a piping bag to make it easy to fill each bite.
  
  The bites will need to bake for 20-25 minutes at 375ºF until they’re golden brown and puffed nicely. If you do a double layer puff, you might need a few extra minutes.
  
  Then you can just pipe in the filling and stick the baked lids on each bite.
  
  You can drizzle on a little extra hot sauce also if you want.
  
  These are totally addictive and I find myself eating more of them than I should! The combo of flaky puff pastry and creamy, spicy chicken is pretty much perfect.
  
  Nick thinks everything could go in a foil packet! Check out his blog, Macheesmo, and follow him on his Tablespoon Profile.