Buffalo Chicken Sliders {Easy Hawaiian Roll Sliders Recipe}

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A delicious and budget-friendly recipe for a crowd, these buffalo chicken sliders are perfect party food! They’re a must for your game day menu!

Sliders made with Hawaiian rolls are probably one of the best party foods. Pull apart rolls are one of the easiest ways to make sandwiches for a crowd, and they’re perfect as part of a spread.

Besides, you just have to love how easy the recipe comes together! Easy assembly, simple ingredients, a guaranteed delicious result? I’m in!

Buffalo Chicken Sliders – Ingredients:

The ingredient list is simple, and you probably have most of the ingredients on hand already.

You’ll need:

• Dinner rolls – The pull-apart kind that come in a sheet work really well. I usually use Hawaiian rolls, but there are a few other types on the market that work just as well.
• Cheese! – I use two kinds of cheese in this recipe. First, crumbled blue cheese to really amp up the “buffalo chicken” flavor. Second, a melty shredded cheese to help hold the sliders together and make them extra decadent and delicious. Just look at those drips of melted cheese!!! So satisfying to look at and eat.
• Chicken – Naturally we need chicken since it’s in the recipe title. This is a great recipe to use leftover cooked chicken. If you don’t have leftover cooked chicken, buy a rotisserie chicken to cut up, or use canned chicken. Either option works well in this recipe because it’s really about the sauce here.
• Sauces – Again, we use two kinds of sauces here. You’ll need to get buffalo hot sauce and prepared ranch dressing.
• Butter and garlic powder – for topping the rolls before baking

How to assemble sliders

This might seem a little silly if you’ve made sliders before. But since I was an adult the first time I saw someone make sliders like this, I feel like at least one other person reading might be new too.

Before then the only kind of party sandwiches I’d seen were pre-made deli trays, or long sandwiches like a Cuban sandwich, cut for serving.

You can use any kind of dinner roll or slider bun to make these. But as I mentioned before, I like to use the pull-apart buns like Hawaiian rolls. The reason being that you assemble all the sandwiches at once.

How? Because you use a bread knife or serrated blade to cut the rolls in half horizontally. Remove the top half of the bread, pile on your fillings, replace the bread, cover, and bake!

You want to cover during baking to keep the bread soft. The covered baking sheet acts like a mini steamer so that the rolls don’t overbake before the cheese has a chance to melt. Remove the foil in the last few minutes of baking for a nice brown topping and lightly crispy edges. So good!

What can I make in advance?

So what I really love about these Hawaiian roll sliders is that you can assemble them in no time. This is especially true if you’re using canned chicken or already diced/shredded leftover chicken. You just mix, layer, and bake!

It’s about 30 minutes start to finish.

BUT, life is funny and sometimes shaving off even 5 minutes can feel like a big deal. So let’s talk about shortcuts.

The only real shortcut here is to make your chicken mixture in advance. You can combine the chicken, hot sauce, ranch, and blue cheese up to a day or so before assembling your sliders.

You don’t want to actually assemble the sliders more than maybe 2 hours before baking so the bottom of the bread doesn’t get soggy. It’s not going to be “tomatoes on bread” dramatic, but I err on the side of caution here. Leave the melted butter and garlic powder until just before baking.

Final Buffalo Chicken Sliders recipe notes…

So when I started the “buffalo chicken everything” stage that resulted in this recipe, one of my big concerns was heat level. I *love* spicy food, as does the Godfather, but our kids are a maybe and hard-pass, respectively.

These sliders, using classic Frank’s buffalo hot sauce have a little kick, but aren’t too spicy. They’re mild enough that my elementary-school child ate one.

If you’re particularly sensitive to spice, grab the mild version of Franks, or stretch whatever buffalo sauce you have on hand with extra butter to cut the heat. These are a treat recipe, after all!

And if you’re a garlic lover like we are, don’t skip the garlic powder in the butter. I made these once without garlic powder, and never again. The garlic amps up the satisfaction level so much.

Of course, the satisfaction of biting into a warm sandwich loaded with cheese and a meaty buffalo chicken filling is already pretty up there. And I’d better leave you with the recipe now before I start checking the cabinets to whip up another batch!

Enjoy, darlings!