NFL Offseason Menu: Buffalo Chicken Dip

I can’t wait to dig into this in front of a football game.

A little backstory first…My friend Ryan told me he had some buffalo chicken dip at a friend’s house and he quickly declared it, “two of the most delicious things in one.” Whoa. He got the recipe from his friend and I did some digging around and found there are a bunch of versions of the dip and a couple of different techniques but they all seemed to be derived from the same basic, easy recipe.

Preheat your oven to 350. Start with a couple of cooked chicken breasts. I grilled mine. Then shred them and spread them into the bottom of your oven pan of choice. I used an 8 x 6 pyrex thing.

Take an 8-ounce package of cream cheese and spread it over the top.

If I owned a microwave, I might have melted it a bit first to make this step easier.

Pour and spread half a cup of ranch dressing over the cream cheese.

Pour and spread a half a cup of buffalo sauce over all this. I like the Texas Pete buffalo wing sauce.

Then  sprinkle some cheddar cheese evenly over all this. We had a bunch of shredded cheese already of the three-cheese-Mexican-like-sort of variety. So I just used that.

Put it in the oven for about 25 minutes. As you can see from the top picture, this cheese didn’t really melt all that great. I think the cheddar would have worked better. There are a few other things I’m thinking of changing. I read one recipe where the guy found some much lower fat cream cheese substitute and claimed there was no difference in taste so I’m considering that. I’m also thinking of either putting the cream cheese as the bottom layer or mixing the chicken and the cream cheese together and then spreading that across the bottom of the pan. I think this would keep the layered effect but also make it a bit easier to eat. I broke a lot of chips trying to dig up the chicken from the bottom.

Speaking of layering, a lot of the recipes directed to mix everything together and then heat in the oven. From the pictures I saw, all the dips came out this weird orange/fake-looking-cheese color and I like having the layered feeling to the dip.

But all in all, it was freaking awesome. We ate it with chips and celery sticks. I’m definitely sticking with that combo again next time. It’s hard to go wrong with something this simple. The only thing that can take it to antoher level is a good football game and a cold beer. There’s no game on these days, but as far as the beer goes, don’t mind if I do…

Tags: Buffalo Chicken Dip, Buffalo Wings