Grilled Buffalo Chicken Tenders

After our wonderful weekend in Portland, Bret and I made it home to Beacon Hill on Sunday in record time.  We were both pretty happy about this since we both wanted to unpack and squeeze in a gym session before the Pats game.  After the gym, Bret picked up some ingredients for us to make a healthier version of buffalo wings - grilled buffalo chicken tenders!

Originally I offered to make the grilled buffalo chicken tenders for halftime, which was just around dinner time.  But as the first half started to wind down, Bret got frustrated with the game and offered to help me out while keeping the TV on in the adjoining room.  We had two special ingredients to help us add lots of flavor to the grilled chicken tenders - Butter Extra Virgin Olive Oil (that we picked up at LeRoux Kitchen over the weekend) and Bella's Spicy Garlic Wing Sauce. 

While Bret trimmed and sliced the boneless chicken breasts down, I warmed up a sauce pan with a few pats of butter and about half the bottle of wing sauce.  I whisked the melted butter and wing sauce together and then let the sauce simmer on the stove. 

Meanwhile, Bret warmed up the grill pan and drizzled some of the butter extra virgin olive oil on the pan.  The olive oil is infused with butter extract, which gives the oil a nice buttery flavor.  This olive oil helps keep things lighter while still having that rich buttery flavor.  As the pan warmed up, Bret simply seasoned the chicken tenders with salt and pepper.  Once the pan was ready, the chicken tenders were easily grilled on the pan.

Once the chicken was grilled, Bret put the tenders in the saucepan with the buffalo sauce.  I let the chicken tenders soak up the buffalo flavor and tossed them gently in the buffalo sauce.

The grilled buffalo chicken tenders were pretty awesome.  While it is definitely not the same as frying up some wings and tossing it in buffalo sauce, I think pan-grilling some lean chicken tenders were a smart and healthier alternative for a game-day snack.

I also sliced up some celery to help us cool our mouths down.  But knowing us, I also poured some of the remaining buffalo sauce to pour over the chicken tenders if we wanted to add a little more heat!

I cut my chicken tenders down and added it to a bowl of iceberg lettuce (leftover from the spicy pork lettuce wraps) and some blue cheese dressing.  Bret also had a bowl of salad with dressing but he opted for his chicken tenders in a more traditional manner - with blue cheese, celery and hot sauce!

Unfortunately, as we watched the game, the grilled buffalo chicken tenders were probably the highlight of our Sunday evening.  Fortunately there were plenty of leftovers to help Bret ease the pain of the loss the next day on his day off while I sadly spent the day in the office.

If you watch football, what did you make for Sunday's games?