The honeymoon was great, and we were on vacation from the world as well as eating well. The time of reckoning is upon us. We both have decided we desperately need to get back on track, me more than my wife. I’ve been an eating power house the last couple of months and I’ve put on about 20+ pounds starting just before the wedding. Well, that’s enough of that. That means it’s time to get back on track. What better way than with paleo. Beth had great success with paleo and I’ve been an unhealthy distraction from eating well. Worst still is football Sundays. Chicken wings, pizza, nachos, and so many other awesomely bad foods appear on game day. This Sunday was paleo football Sunday and today I made up an instant household classic. Normally I would look up a recipe to see what others created but I put on the dusty chef hat (I used to be a chef) and set out to put something together myself. I wanted to make this as fool proof as possible, something super easy.

Normally I would make a buffalo cream sauce with the following: red’s hot sauce, a brick of cream cheese or heavy cream and roux, and mild cheddar. This generally results in a creamy and rich buffalo sauce or dip depending on how thick I want it. I brewed on it a second and wondered what could I substitute everything with. For the paleo vet it’s probably an easy question but for me it took some processing time. One thing I’ve learned is that apparently coconuts are used in virtually everything paleo. So the heavy cream was substituted with whole coconut milk, the roux was subbed out for cashew nut butter, and red hot sauce is paleo on it’s own (yay!).

For those like my wife that rely on the measuring during a recipe to ensure things turn out correctly the first time, I’m probably not going to make you very happy but I’m going to try very hard for you. I’m a toss and tweak chef. I love whipping things together and never keep track of how much I put in so these are going to be estimates. The good news is there are limited ingredients so that makes tweaking to taste on this one very easy. Below is the recipe that will yield a mild wing sauce:

1 can of coconut milk
1/4 cup of red hot (Beth suggests a little more if you like things spicy! Jason suggests a dash of Cayenne to add heat.)
3 tsp of cashew butter (unsweetened sunflower seed butter would be the only substitute I would recommend)

Put your can of coconut milk into a small sauce pan and bring to a boil. I would recommend treating this just like you would heavy cream, keep stirring as it reduces down. I would say you want it reduced down by 1/3, after which you can add in your red hot and cashew butter. If you want to make a dip and not a sauce, add in another tsp of nut butter. Once you get the “right” consistency reduce heat and let it settle. The oils in the nut butter will rise, that’s fine, just give it a good whisking before pouring over your chicken.

I ended up baking it with the sauce on with some in reserve to add on top again after I pulled it out. I baked the chicken at 350 until the temp was 160 degrees. You could grill it and then dunk the chicken in the sauce after, that would be pretty awesome too.

I broke the cardinal rule of blogging, I didn’t take a picture of the finished product. Frankly it looked and smelled so good we had to start eating it right away!

Beth’s Review: This Paleo sauce really was awesome. One problem I like heat. So when we do it again I’ll be following behind Jason and adding more hot sauce when he’s not looking. Additionally, next time I think we will cook it in less sauce and save more for dipping. It didn’t really soak into the chicken when cooking. Our grill is out of service at the moment. Which is unfortunate because I think it would have been even better on the grill. Our next post -my awesome Paleo Plum BBQ Sauce!