Chicken Dip, Not from Buffalo

I was actually going to call this dip “Chicken Chicken Dip“, the first “chicken” standing for the cowardly human variety, because it doesn’t have hot sauce in it. Due to sensitive tummies in my household, I never buy any because it would sit around in our fridge until it went bad (does it ever go bad?). Henceforth and therefore, we have never had Buffalo Chicken Dip, because, as you no doubt know, it has hot sauce. And we don’t eat hot sauce.

Instead, we have Non-Buffalo Chicken Dip, more specifically BBQ Chicken Dip, seeing as it’s made with BBQ sauce instead of hot sauce. It’s a milder-tasting, almost lightly sweet, version of the famous party dip, that goes just as perfectly with chunks of hearty bread, crudites, and tortilla chips. Hey, it even makes celery taste good!

I really think you should add this dip to your Super Bowl menu right now because your friends are gonna love it! If you want to be really cool, you can make a bread bowl shaped like a football. (I don’t know why I didn’t do that - I guess because I didn’t think of it until right this minute!)

One note: I wanted to try this recipe with yogurt cheese, since I’m embarking on my journey of make-your-own-dairy, but I ran out of milk and time, two essential qualities for that particular delicacy. So I bought a last-minute bar of cream cheese instead. I still want to try it with the yogurt cheese to see how it turns out; if you do, let me know! I really feel like cream cheese is just too over-processed for my taste, and would prefer the healthier version.

I did use my own homemade Ranch dressing and BBQ sauce for this recipe, which is easier if you already have some on hand, but not a huge problem if you don’t. They’re both easy to whip up in a jiffy! I’ve included the Ranch dressing in the recipe because I don’t have it anywhere else on the blog, but you can find my two favorite BBQ sauce recipes here: Quick BBQ Sauce, and Cooked BBQ Sauce.

I served mine in a bread bowl(alas, not a football-shaped one). Of course, I used my artisan bread dough recipe, and I just baked it in a round shape in a small cast iron pan. I used up the last of my dough, so it ended up being kind of flat because I didn’t have enough - next time I will definitely use more, probably about a pound or pound and a half.

Since I made it with real ingredients (mostly, anyway), it was not quite as QUICK perhaps as regular Buffalo Chicken Dip. But I mixed up the dressings while the cream cheese was melting, so that didn’t really add much time. Still about half an hour or so from start to finish.

It’s very EASY, too. Again, the added steps of making the dressings, but nothing too overwhelming.

Cream cheese ain’t CHEAP, another reason why I wanted to use homemade yogurt cheese. Otherwise, it’s made with affordable, common ingredients that anyone can afford.

I like my HEALTHY-er version quite a bit! I love that I know each and every ingredient in this recipe - no packaged or bottled goods (with the exception of the cream cheese, which I hope to change in the future).

Linking with Tastetastic Thursday, Katherine Martinelli, and…