You'll never guess the ingredient in the winning hot wing recipe

Food festivals are thriving all over America, and in this new video series from Yahoo called "Blue Ribbon Hunter" our host is in pursuit of the winning recipes and secret ingredients that turn ordinary people into culinary folk heroes.

In this first episode we traveled to Buffalo, New York for the Buffalo Hot Wing Festival. Over 20,000 people attended and literally tons of hot wings were served to a very enthusiastic crowd. Our host, Allison Fishman got to face off against the winner of the amateur hot wing category, Adam Fries, and although we didn't beat him in a head to head competition, we did manage to convince him to share his winning recipe!

In Adam's own winning words:

The base of my wing sauce is comprised of the following ingredients:
-Frank's Red Hot Sauce
-Salted Butter
-Lemon Pepper Salt
-Cajun Seasoning

First, pour 12oz of Frank's Hot Sauce into a pot on low temperature. Then, add about 1/2 stick of butter (more or less depending on how hot or mild you like your sauce), a sprinkle of lemon pepper salt, and cajon seasoning. Stir until blended.

There is a secret ingredient that I've concocted, which this year was coined, "Smurf's Blood" (for it's blue color). Although, I am not will not tell you what the secret is, I can tell you that it is comprised of a Riesling, distilled vinegar, blue dye, and a few other ingredients.

For those of you who want to make an award winning sauce, I'd highly recommend starting with everything I told you, and just experiment! You'll find something that works, and maybe you'll be competing next year!

Thanks, Adam and we'll be back next year for a re-match! If you have a food festival in your home town, come to our Facebook page and tell us about it.