Happy Fourth of July! I hope all of you are celebrating this great country, we were blessed to live in, with family and friends today. As with most holidays in the great US of A, you have to have delicious food! Most of the time Independence Day brings memories of fired up grills with burgers and hotdogs. I’ve made a couple burger recipes recently and I’m still working on the hot dog recipe, so I decided on something a little different for this 4th. I made BBQ and Buffalo Gator Bites!
Nothing screams patriotic and ‘Merica more than deep frying some gator your husband shot off the Gulf of Texas. While I have made gator nuggets before, those were Asian and not at all the style I was looking for. I really wanted a tasty BBQ sauce and honestly anything even reminiscent of chicken bites requires Buffalo sauce too. I paired them with a nice homemade ranch dip, and they did not disappoint. Keep the nuggets small to give yourself the best meat to sauce ratio and don’t skrimp on the BBQ sauce because it is delicious! Bring these to your next social gathering and be the life of the party. Also remember to run away after you light those fireworks, blowing off your arm will really hurt you in the kitchen lol!

BBQ and Buffalo Gator Bites
Equipment
Ingredients
Gator Nugget Ingredients
- 2 lbs ground gator 80:20 gator:pork
- vegetable oil enough for frying
- 2 eggs beaten
- 1 tsp salt
- 1/2 tsp black pepper
- 1/2 C corn starch
- 1/4 C flour
- 1 tsp garlic powder
Buffalo Gator Nugget Sauce
- 1 C Frank's Red Hot
- 2 T honey
- 1/4 C salted butter melted
BBQ Gator Nugget Sauce
- 1/2 C favorite BBQ sauce I use Kansas City
- 2 T honey
- 1 T ketchup I used sugar-free
Ranch Dipping Sauce
- 1 C Duke's mayo
- 1/2 C sour cream
- 2 tsp fresh chives chopped
- 3/4 tsp dill weed dried
- 1/2 tsp parsley dried
- 1 garlic clove minced
- 1/2 tsp onion powder
- 1/2 tsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp garlic powder
Instructions
Ranch Dipping Sauce
- Combine all the ingredients, mixing well.
- Chill in the refrigerator while you complete the recipe.
Nuggets
- In a fryer or frying pan, heat an inch of oil to 360° F.
- Combine egg, salt, and pepper in a shallow dish.
- In a separate shallow dish, combine flour, corn starch, and garlic powder.
- Form small bite sized nuggets with the gator meat.
- Cover 4-6 (however many will fit in your frying pan) gator bites in egg wash mixture and then dredge in flour mixture.
- When oil is the right temperature, fry nuggets for approximately 3 minutes, turning them, and frying for another 2 minutes or until fully cooked and light brown.
- Set fried nuggets on a paper towel lined plate and repeat the egg wash, flour, and frying process for the remaining nuggets.
Sauces
- Mix together Buffalo Sauce ingredients. Set aside.
- Mix together BBQ sauce ingredients. Set aside.
Prepare Nuggets
- Preheat oven to 400° F.
- Line a cookie sheet with foil. I take and extra sheet of foil and crumple it into a line to divide the sheet in half to keep BBQ and buffalo nuggets separate.
- Dunk the nuggets (or brush) in either the BBQ sauce or Buffalo sauce and set them on the cookie sheet. Repeat until all nuggets are well coated.
- Cook the nuggets for 5 minutes.
- Remove and brush the nuggets again with their respective sauce.
- Cook again for 3 minutes. This gets the sauce nice and caramelized on the nuggets.
- Serve with the chilled ranch dipping sauce, carrots, and celery. Enjoy!