Today we'll show how to prepare homemade vegan buffalo sauce with simple pantry ingredients. It's bold, spicy, and glossy—perfect for dipping and glazing your favourite foods. And it's ready in only a few minutes!
The traditional buffalo sauce consists of a mix of melted butter, sugar, vinegar, and hot sauce made with cayenne peppers, paprika, and garlic. It's rich and spicy, with a distinctive vinegary kick. However, as buffalo sauce is made with butter, it's unsuitable for those on a plant-based diet or with a dairy allergy.
But worry not, we turned this sauce vegan with two simple tweaks! First, we swapped melted butter with vegetable oil; secondly, we heated the sauce with a bit of starch to bring back that glossy look and thickness lost from the butter. Easy!
Most buffalo sauce recipes, vegan or not, use "Frank's Red Hot" as a base sauce, which contains cayenne red peppers, distilled vinegar, and garlic. But making it yourself from scratch is so easy and cheap that we believe it's well worth a try. Plus, you'll have complete control ingredients like salt and sugars, meaning you can make it healthier too. We'll show you how to do it in the steps below.
In our recipe, we also replaced white sugar with a dash of maple syrup, which, weight by weight, contains 40% fewer sugars. So our delicious buffalo sauce is not only vegan but also sugar-free and gluten-free, safe for everyone to enjoy.
Prepare a big batch of this fiery sauce and keep it sealed in a jar in the fridge. It will stay fresh for months thanks to the preserving action of the vinegar. All is left to do is to enjoy this healthy buffalo sauce! Try it with our tempeh "wings", use it to marinate tofu or drizzle it over roasted vegetables. We also love it with our plant-based burgers and as a dressing in wraps and salads.
Ingredients
| Ground Cayenne Pepper | 11/2 tbsp |
| Smoked Paprika | 2 tsp |
| Garlic Powder | 1 tsp |
| Vinegar (white or apple cider vinegar) | 80 mL |
| Canola Oil | 2 tbsp |
| Maple Syrup | 1/2 tsp |
| Starch (corn, potato, or arrowroot) | 1 tsp |
| Water | 60 mL |
Step 1
In a small bowl, mix ground cayenne pepper with smoked paprika, garlic powder, and a pinch of salt.
Then, tip in the vinegar, vegetable oil, and maple syrup.
Step 2
Next, whisk the starch with the given water in a cup until it's dissolved.
Step 3
Transfer the cayenne pepper mixture into a pot and pour in the prepared starch slurry.
Mix all until well combined, and then turn on the heat.
Warm up the sauce while stirring, and as soon as you see tiny bubbles appearing, remove the pot from the hob.
Now, keep stirring the sauce for a minute until it's thick and glossy.
Step 4
Finally, pour the buffalo sauce into a pot and put it in the fridge; it will thicken even more as it cools down.
Enjoy this vegan buffalo sauce with crunchy crudités or try our delicious tempeh "wings". You can also add it to a lunch salad and roasted vegetables for a spicy kick.
Tips
If you use white vinegar like in the classic recipe, the sauce will have a more sour, vinegary finish. If you use apple cider vinegar instead, the sauce will be milder, and you'll feel more of the spiciness from the cayenne pepper. So it's up to your personal preferences.