Blue Cheese Buffalo Chicken Dip

Hot buffalo chicken dip with homemade ranch seasoning. One skillet, a few simple ingredients, and TONS of flavor. This gets gobbled up every time we make it! Very delicious with crunchy veggies and pizza dough focaccia for dunking, just throwing that out there.

Look at all the vegetables we're eating this season with our butter and cheese! Balance, you know. 

Now that it's December, I'm all about snacky foods, parties, and salads in between to keep things under control. I love all things Buffalo and, while maybe not the fanciest type of food, everyone else usually does too. 

Plus also football all the time that never ends, you know. Buffalo + Football = Math.

The method here is so simple. In an ovenproof skillet (I have this little Le Creuset number that I got on clearance), you'll sear some chicken, then shred it, throw it back in the skillet with a ton of stuff to make it buffalo-ish. The whole mess bakes with blue cheese and grated mozzarella, and then we use our "veggies" (pita and bread and crackers, please) for dunking and happiness.

Now, I intentionally didn't make this super duper creamy with cream cheese or other things like that. This is mainly hot sauce, chicken and cheese with ranch dressing flavors added for HELL YES WE DID THAT. There are buffalo chicken dips that use ranch as the base, and I wanted a grown up essence of that without actually using ranch dressing.

Ingredients

First, gather up the seasoning ingredients - hot sauce and butter for the buffalo flavors, onion powder, garlic powder, dried parsley, and dried dill that taste like homemade ranch dressing. Have this ready to throw in the hot skillet after the chicken cooks. 

Step By Step Instructions

We start by searing our chicken in lots of the seasonings for extra flavor. I do this right in the dish I'm going to bake the buffalo chicken dip in to save a dish!

Pro Tip: To save time, leftover grilled or baked chicken works really well in this recipe!

This is actually a seasoning blend I use on chicken all the time, and while it's super simple it's also something we get complemented on a lot. So use it in other dinners!

Cook the chicken for about 7 minutes on each side, less if they're thin pieces, until the chicken is cooked through. 

Leave the skillet on when you take the chicken out of the skillet, place it on a plate to cool. 

Right away, add all of the buffalo sauce ingredients to the hot skillet. Turn the heat OFF the skillet and stir to melt the butter and incorporate the spices, scraping up any chicken bits as you go. 

When the chicken is cooled enough to handle, shred it into little bits, grate some cheese, and gather everything together. 

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Stir the chicken and mozzarella into the sauce in the skillet, and scatter the blue cheese on top of the mixture. This is kind of the make-ahead threshold; you can make the dip up to this point and bake it anytime you'd like, even keeping it in the fridge for a few days. 

When you'd like to eat the dip, preheat the oven to 350F and bake the dip uncovered for 20-30 minutes until hot all the way through and bubbly. Serve immediately with anything you'd like. 

Variations and Ingredient Notes

• This is GREAT for a use-up of other chicken. Grilled, rotisserie, baked, seriously any random chicken you have that's already cooked will save some time with this recipe!
• Hot Sauce: I like Frank's and Texas Pete hot sauces almost equally. Tabasco is nice, or anything labeled cayenne pepper sauce. Don't buy buffalo wing sauce, as that usually has butter already in it. If you already have buffalo wing sauce, use it and skip the butter.
• Cheese: Any white melty cheese you like is great here! Provolone, Monterrey jack, or anything like that will work great. If you don't like blue cheese, feel free to skip it.

I love this for holidays and weekend gatherings because it can be made ahead and heated up right at serving time. Since there isn't a processed creamy component the dip may separate just slightly, but the spicy flavor is just perfect and as long as you eat it right away, and you will, there will be no issues. 

Grown up blue cheese buffalo chicken dip, look at you you fancy pants! Get after it.

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