The Birthday List :: 22.11 (Part 2) :: Cook More From Recipes - Vegetarian Buffalo "Wings"

There's no time like the last week before my birthday to makeup for lost time during the year. One thing on my birthday list for this year has been to cook more from recipes. I have made a few recipes I likely wouldn't have otherwise made, but definitely not as many as I intended to.

This past Sunday, I had buffalo wings on my mind. While we were Santacon-ing on Saturday, Amie DB ordered some. Even though I only ate the celery and blue cheese dressing that came with them (#VegProblems), they smelled so good! I ended up finding a recipe online for some vegetarian wings and decided to make it my Sunday afternoon project (because this betch loves a good Sunday afternoon project ;p).

As for how they turned out? Forget Red Bull (or chickens) giving you wings... cauliflower totally delivered! They took a bit of time to make, but the recipe was really straightforward, and they were really tasty (watch out Superbowl Party 2015!) Even though I'm not a food blogger, I'll pretend I am and walk you through this recipe...

Recipe (adapted from here)
Ingredients
1 head cauliflower
1 cup water
1 cup flour
3 teaspoons onion powder
2/3 cup Frank's Red Hot Sauce
1/3 cup water
2 tablespoons olive oil
Celery
Blue cheese dressing (I used Marie's but the original recipe above used a homemade vegan one).

Directions

Combine 1 cup of flour + three teaspoons of onion powder with 1 cup of water. 

Cut the head of the cauliflower into bite-sized pieces. (This should probably happen before the step I mentioned before, which goes to show how good I am at following recipes, but it doesn't make a difference.)

Dunk each piece of cauliflower in the flour mixture (I used my hands). Let the excess drip off, and lay out on a greased tray. Once all the cauliflower is battered up, put the tray into an oven preheated to 450 degrees for 20 minutes. 

After 20 minutes, pull the tray of cauliflower out. Combine 2 tablespoons olive oil with 2/3 cup of Frank's Red Hot Sauce and 1/3 cup of water (the original recipe called for 1 cup of Frank's and no water, but Frank's is so salty... like 400% of your daily value of sodium salty(!!!) so I cut back a bit). Cover cauliflower with said mixture and put the tray back in the oven for another 5-10 minutes. 

While the wings are cooking, cut up the celery. When I cut off the stalk it revealed a perfect rosette pattern. Isn't nature pretty?!

After the hot sauce is no longer runny, remove your wings from the oven, let cool for a few minutes, and enjoy with the celery and whichever blue cheese dressing you choose.