I've looked for the buffalo wings recipe, trying to find a way to make it from scratch, and came up with recipes revolving around this sort of ingredients:
3 tablespoons white vinegar
1/2 teaspoon cayenne pepper
1/4 teaspoon garlic powder
1/4 teaspoon paprika
salt to taste
1 cup unsalted butter (2 sticks)
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1 1/3 cup Frank's red hot sauce
1/2 teaspoon Worcestershire sauce
The recipes vary but about all include Frank's red hot sauce. I can't easily obtain it here so I checked its ingredients:
White vinegar
Cayenne Red Peppers
Garlic Powder
Paprika
Salt,
Canola Oil
Natural Butter Type Flavor
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Water
Xanthan Gum
Compare to the list above. Butter substituted with butter-flavored canola oil. Xanthan gum. Water.
Essentially, this looks like the buffalo sauce could be made from ~3 cups of Frank's red hot sauce and half a teaspoon of Worcestershire. Or I could just skip the bought hot sauce and double the rest of ingredients, except Worcestershire. Maybe add a bit of xanthan gum to make the sauce stick to the wings better.
Is that it? The recipe first duplicating the sauce, then adding more of the sauce on top of it for no good reason? Or did I miss something?
Best Answer
The Frank's sauce is thickened (the xanthan gum) so your sauce might be runnier. That's easy to fix with a thickener of your choice. I'd probably use arrowroot or cornflour (corn starch to Americans) because I've got them in the cupboard. Arrowroot gives a clearer sauce but you don't want to boil it or the thickening properies will be reduced.
The bought sauce is also likely to be cooked for longer, allowing the flavours to mix, while at least one of your links only heats the final sauce briefly. That's also easy to fix by cooking a little longer.
Looking at the proportions, it seems like a slightly thinned Frank's sauce with extra butter rather than a sauce flavoured with Frank's. That doesn't affect the conclusion that it's possible to make your own.