---
title: 'Why China hates Buffalo Wings (and how to fix it)'
source: 'https://youtube.com/watch?v=-Tz4dZKPJjk'
video_id: '-Tz4dZKPJjk'
date: 2026-06-30
duration_sec: 1063
---

# Why China hates Buffalo Wings (and how to fix it)

> Source: [Why China hates Buffalo Wings (and how to fix it)](https://youtube.com/watch?v=-Tz4dZKPJjk)

## Summary



## Transcript

Now, I don't want to say that every single 
Chinese person hates buffalo wings. I mean, sixth  
of humanity. I'm sure you could find somebody 
somewhere. But in a decade and a half of living  
here in China, every single Chinese friend that 
I tried to introduce them to… hasn't been a fan.  
Now, that's of course just my personal experience, 
but maybe a little bit more objectively,  
you can definitely get Western food here in 
China. I mean, burgers, hot dogs, fried chicken,  
French fries, pizza, even bagels… kind of. But 
buffalo wings, outside of an expat haunch or two…  
nada. Which, like, I don't know, kind of sucks, 
right? Like, I don't know about you, but when I  
was in high school, college, my absolute favorite 
food in the world was buffalo wings. They were for  
me a little like what Niuza - Cantonese street 
beef shops - were for Steph. Coming from a very  
white bread American home cooking background and 
a white… rice? Cantonese home cooking background,  
those two respective dishes were our first 
introduction to, well, flavor. Like for me,  
back when I was 17, me and my buddies, we would 
kind of get together for these makeshift wing  
eating contests. Your mouth on fire, your hands 
are sloppy… but the blue cheese, the butter,  
it's just… I don't know. Good memories. So, 
naturally over the years, I've tried to introduce  
my Chinese friends to the same experience. 
And try as I might, basically to a man, none  
of them have ever actually been into it. And if 
I try to grill them down a little bit as to why,  
also basically to a man, the response is that it's 
just too sour. And so, I've thought about this  
problem a lot over the years, maybe a little bit 
too much. And after all this time, I think I might  
have been able to finally figure it out. Now, 
it's pained me to admit it, but I think if you  
look inside yourself, you'll find it to be true, 
too. And that is the very base of a buffalo sauce.  
The canonical hot sauce for an authentically 
correct buffalo, Frank's Red Hot, is completely  
fucking garbage. Now, if you're anything like me, 
you're going to want to resist this information,  
but I want you to take a bottle of Frank’s. I 
want you to open it. I want you to take a sniff  
and compare it against a Crystal or a Valentina 
or even Tabasco. Like, this shit here is vinegar.  
It tastes like vinegar essence. The fragrance 
is basically non-existent. It doesn't have a  
good chili flavor, and it's not even spicy. This 
here is basically some white vinegar that somebody  
lightly whispered the words “chili pepper” 
over and called in the rest of the day. Now,  
maybe Frank's used to be better. Maybe this is 
another one of those cases of the MBA crowd taking  
an American food product, running it straight into 
the ground, and hoping that nobody noticed. But in  
this specific case, I don't think that there's 
any conspiracy needed. I've got a different  
hypothesis. So, cut back to me back when I was 
17. Back then, white person crunchy taco night was  
my idea of some wild flavors. So, predictably, 
my spice tolerance, it was really quite low.  
And so, I think if you're the type of person 
that if you just had a teaspoon of this straight,  
your predominant feeling is “that is a spicy 
meatball”. Buffalo is going to taste balanced  
to you… because the vinegar, it cuts the 
heat. The garlic cuts the heat. The blue  
cheese dressing will definitely cut the heat, but 
especially, especially the butter cuts the heat.  
The end result is a product that - in Buffalo's 
defense - is actually one of the perfect gateway  
spicy foods. But now I want you to picture the 
average Chinese spicy food enthusiast. Like  
this here functionally is your local bar. When 
you're at the Shaokao, you're definitely going  
to be ordering a fistful of the beef chili bombs. 
When you have some white rice, you're dumping Lao  
Gan Ma on, not because it's actually spicy, 
just so that you can actually feel something.  
If your mouth has already adjusted to 
Sichuan hot pot te-ma te-la levels of spicy,  
you're going to taste Frank’s and it's going to 
taste like vinegar. It doesn't matter how much  
extra cayenne pepper your foreigner friend 
added. Even compared to a simple malatang  
buffalo wings, they're not going to be spicy 
and so they're not going to taste balanced.  
So in this video, what I decided to do 
was try to rebuild a new better buffalo  
wing from first principles. So just to make 
sure that we are all on the same page here,  
I think a buffalo sauce, it should be spicy just 
to the point of challenging, maybe getting past  
challenging at around wing four or so. The sauce 
itself, it should be definitely quite buttery.  
It should have a slight tang and a mild hit 
of garlic to it. I also don't want any weird  
ingredients in the sauce like ketchup or god 
forbid blue cheese - that belongs in the dip.  
But also at the same time, for the purpose 
of this exercise, I don't want to cheat and  
use anything that tastes overly “Chinese” either. 
So that's the goal. I want an authentic tasting  
but better buffalo wing that can 
finally appeal to the Chinese palette.  
So, right, basics. Now, Franks is, of course, 
an American-style fermented hot sauce.  
Now, before I could easily get Frank's here, I 
still remember in my love of everything Buffalo,  
frantically searching for recipes online 
on how to ferment chilis for hot sauce  
so that I could recreate it here in China, which 
was a project that I never ended up doing because…  
lazy. But a little bit ago, I was at the 
market and I was realizing that 20s me was  
really being pretty stupid. Because here in China, 
we can get some fantastic quality lacto-fermented  
chili peppers, some of which can really get quite 
spicy - definitely spicier than Frank's. So, if  
you are in the market of following along at home, 
this here is a variety of pickled chili that's  
actually pretty available at Chinese supermarkets 
in the West as well. They're called millet chilis,  
xiaomila. And if you ate one of these straight, 
it would be really quite uncomfortable,  
which is what we want because remember, the 
remainder of our buffalo sauce is going to be a  
conspiracy to balance that heat. So, what we'll do 
is we'll blend 85g of those together with a clove  
or two of garlic together with a 1/3 of a cup 
of water. Then, we'll pass that through a fine  
mesh sieve. And then with that, this is going 
to be our hot sauce base. No franks required.  
But that brings me to pain point number two, which 
is the fundamental technique of how buffalo sauce  
is made. Now, for the unaware, you make a buffalo 
sauce by taking hot sauce and then using a French  
technique called mounting with butter. It's kind 
of the same idea as something like a beurre blanc.  
You take your sauce and then you whisk cubes of 
cold butter in the thick butter. it blends in and  
then you're left with a thick, rich sauce. But I 
think for hot wings, there's a couple of problems  
with this approach. The first one is that this 
here, this is not that stable of a concoction.  
Like I want to toss wings in a sauce while 
they're still piping hot from deep frying. And  
when I do that with this kind of butter-mounted 
sauce, it's at a high risk of breaking on me.  
Now, from what I can tell, the OG Buffalo sauce, 
it actually used margarine instead of butter.  
And these days at sports bars and the like, 
often times people work off of this product.  
Both of which have stabilizers to thicken. Which 
then… brings me to the pain point number two.  
I want a thick sauce that actually really coats 
to my wings. I don't really like those thin  
hot sauces. Like, at that point, I'd rather 
just dip the thing and keep the crispiness.  
But to get to the thickness that I want by 
mounting it with butter, I usually end up  
needing to go half-half, which *is* one of 
the canonical ratios for a buffalo sauce.  
But by that point, the sauce, it ends up losing 
much of the spiciness that we've worked so hard  
for. And importantly, also for the Chinese 
palette, is also really really rich. Like  
I don't know if you've ever actually let homemade 
buffalo sauce sit out and get cold for a while?  
The stuff it ends up almost gross. Like, you 
could take it and literally spread it on toast.  
So I was thinking about this problem for a while 
and… I couldn't think of anything overly elegant.  
So in the end, I'm going to do what I know 
how to do which is stir frying up a sauce.  
Now I'll be adding a bunch of butter, of course, 
these are buffalo wings - fear not the butter.  
But I'm also going to be thickening with starch, 
specifically a potato starch in the Chinese style,  
so that the final product can actually hold. So, 
buffalo flavors, saucy Chinese stir fry technique.  
So, here we've got 15 wings. And of course, the 
authentic move for an American-style hot wing  
is definitely to fry them naked. No marinade, 
no coating, no nothing. But for me, I'm uh  
I'm not going to do that. I'm going to be taking 
a little bit of inspiration from an old school  
Yunan dish called Sheng Zha Ji or ‘directly fried 
chicken’, which is marinated and does have a light  
crispy coating. I know you might be skeptical. 
Just stay with me. I promise that it does work.  
So then to marinate to my wings, I'll just 
toss in a teaspoon of salt, half teaspoon  
chicken bouillon powder, half tablespoon of a 
red fragrant chili powder, a spicy chili powder,  
soy sauce, bourbon, and Tabasco together with a 
1/4 teaspoon each white pepper and garlic powder.  
Mix that well and then let that marinate in 
the fridge for at least a couple of hours.  
Then, right before deep frying, we'll whisk one 
egg white and then mix that in with a slurry of  
just 10 grams each of water and cornstarch. And 
then mix that super super well with the wings.  
Then we'll get a wok of oil up to about 120 
Celsius. Drop in the wings, quick jostle,  
and let the coating form for about 1 minute. Then 
remove that. Get your oil up to about 175 and then  
drop the wings in again. Fry those for about 
4 minutes or so or until everything's totally  
cooked and the wings are good and crispy… and 
then take those out to drain. Now for our sauce.  
Together with our makeshift hot sauce from before, 
we'll toss in enough chicken stock or water (or  
combination) to get to one cup worth of liquid. 
And also toss in a half tablespoon each milk  
powder and Tabasco, a teaspoon each sugar and rice 
vinegar, a 1/4 teaspoon each white pepper and MSG,  
a half teaspoon chicken bouillon powder, and an 
1/8 teaspoon of garlic powder. Mix that well,  
and then we're ready to fry. But one last final 
thing before we stir fry. Everything up to now,  
it was all pretty tasty. I liked it. Steph liked 
it. But I still did want it a little bit spicier.  
So what I decided to do - and this is 
completely optional - is amp things up with  
a little bit of the spiciest chili pepper 
that the nation state of China has to offer.  
And that is a little bit of Yunnan’s very 
own Shuan Shuan La. So this thing here,  
uh, what it is is it's a ghost pepper. It comes 
from Dehong near the Myanmar border. Apocryphally,  
one of the most traditional uses for the thing was 
to keep elephants away from your vegetable fields?  
But the culinary use there is also really quite 
interesting. So it's called Shuan Shuan La  
because it's used for dips. The character Shuan in 
Chinese, it means ‘dip’ or uh ‘swish’ maybe? And  
so this thing, it's literally called swish swish 
spicy because what you do is you'll take your dip,  
you'll take your ghost pepper, and you'll just 
swish swish. And then that's already enough for  
spicy. So we'll just toss a half a ghost pepper in 
here just for as long as it takes for everything  
to get started with the stir fry. Then we're going 
to take it out because I'm not a masochist...  
but if you have a higher spice tolerance 
than I do, definitely you can leave it in.  
So to our wok, we'll first toss in 2 tbsp of 
butter and then let that foam over a low flame.  
Then go in with one finely minced clove of garlic. 
And then once that's fragrant, we'll toss in  
three more pickled spicy chilies for the sake of 
good-looking and half teaspoon of a spicy chili  
powder. Now up the flame to high. Give it all a 
quick mix, then pour a tablespoon of bourbon over  
the spatula and around the side of the walk. Quick 
mix, sauce in. And once that's at a light boil,  
swap the flame down to low and drizzle in a slurry 
of about 2 tsp of starch mixed with an equal  
amount of water. Once that's thickened to about 
this kind of consistency, we'll then shut off  
the heat and mount things with cold cold butter 
bit by bit to get to our desired buttery-ness,  
which was for us 2.5 more tablespoons. Then piping 
hot deep fried wings in. Give that all a really  
good mix… then transfer the saucy wings over to 
a plate and the excess buffalo over to a bowl.  
And… ‘excess buffalo’ because looking at 
this dish during testing, for some reason,  
a little mote of my brain kept on 
thinking of… Singaporean chili crab.  
Now, I'm really not sure why, the dishes really 
don't have much in common with each other. But  
I did decide to serve this alongside some 
deep fried mantous just like in Singapore,  
which honestly is a fantastic combination - might 
actually be the best idea of this entire exercise.  
But besides that, of course, we'll also have the 
mandatory side of celery, albeit peeled to get  
it stringless in the Cantonese style. And also 
a side that I personally like, which are some  
fresh mild chilies. Then we'll serve that all 
with some blue cheese dressing, of course. And  
you should definitely buy yours, but here in Yuxi, 
I can't go to the supermarket and buy some. So,  
I just whipped together a bog standard 35 grams 
of blue cheese, one cube of white fermented tofu,  
75g of plain yogurt, 20 grams of a non-Asian 
mayonnaise, a teaspoon of sugar, and 1/4 teaspoon  
each salt, MSG, and rice vinegar. Sprinkle 
of minced celery leaf… and with that, these  
are my American-style buffalo wings, remixified 
for the Chinese market. Steph, do you want to uh  
give these a go? Hang on. Let's uh you're not 
short. I'm just so tall. Everybody, let's see.
Now, this buffalo wings tastes pretty good to me 
now. Uh better than our local farang bars in both  
Bangkok and Shenzhen. But important thing is where 
does it rank among all of our 4-1 concoctions…  
from Taco Bell Jianbing to Henry Kissingers Moo 
Goo Gai Pan? Well, first I think our all-time  
best is our chili chip Laziji, the Sichuan style 
chili chicken where you can eat the chili chips.  
It's so good that it should really be a thing. As 
for this buffalo wing, I think it ranks slightly  
above the deep fried pineapple pizza bao? Anyway, 
again all of our 4-1 recipes are real recipesl,  
tested, and if you're ever curious of any one 
of them I do really recommend you give it a try.  
They are quite fun and tasty. Anyway, real normal 
Chinese recipe coming out next week…ish? Uh,  
in the meantime, thank you for 
everyone that's supporting us  
on Patreon and subscribe for 
more Chinese Remixified videos.
You don't want that. You want ghost pepper dude? 
Would you be afraid of the vegetable fields?