Buffalo chicken dip crunchwraps are the gooey, spicy flavor explosion you never knew you needed

The crossover event of 2021 has arrived.

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Sometimes, a bolt of inspiration will strike you when you least expect it. Maybe it’s a great idea for a personal project or business, or maybe you’re like me, and it will be for an extremely unhealthy snack.

I had seen a couple friends make homemade crunchwraps in the last week or two. I made them myself last year, and remember them fondly. So when I was wondering about what to make for dinner on Sunday, they were at the front of my mind. I also wanted to make something thematically appropriate for the Buffalo Bills’ first trip to the AFC Championship game since 1993, and that’s when it hit me: Buffalo chicken crunchwraps.

My original idea was to just toss chicken with blue cheese and hot sauce, but thought it might be lacking the thick, saucy, cheesiness of the original crunchwrap. And that’s when I had a moment of true inspiration: put Buffalo chicken dip inside those bad boys.

I used a half-batch of Sarah Sprague’s famous Buffalo chicken dip recipe, and that was enough to get five good sized crunchwraps out of it. The one modification I made was searing and chopping up the chicken rather than poaching and shredding it. Searing the chicken gives you much more flavor, and helped it stand up to the incredible amount of dairy in the rest of the dip.

I then bootstrapped it onto this recipe for copycat crunchwraps from Vice, and modified it to fit the theme. You don’t really need a queso sauce when the chicken is mixed with cream cheese and blue cheese dressing. The biggest question I had was what to put in the vegetable side. Standard crunchwraps come with shredded lettuce and diced tomatoes on the other side of the tostada layer, but my first impulse was to swap them out for diced celery. I wasn’t sure whether raw or cooked celery would go better, so I made one of each, as well as another with just shredded lettuce.

All three were good, but the best by far was the cooked celery. The raw celery was also quite good and gave you a more pronounced textural difference, but the bright flavor of the raw celery was not as nice as the more mellow cooked version. The lettuce was fine, but it was very much overwhelmed by the dip and didn’t even provide much in terms of texture. I recommend using cooked celery, but if you prefer the flavor of it raw, then go right ahead.

Sure, the Bills lost. Sure, I wish they didn’t kick so many field goals when the game dictated that they needed touchdowns. But the Bills gave us the most fun football season of my adult life when we needed it most, and also I got to eat these beautiful monstrosities. So all in all, it wasn’t a total loss.

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Buffalo chicken dip crunchwraps

Serves: 5
Cook time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

1 lb chicken thigh cutlets
8 oz cream cheese, softened
1/2 cup blue cheese
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
1/4 cup Frank's Red Hot
Handful blue cheese crumbles (optional)

For assembly:
1/2 cup shredded cheddar cheese
1/2 cup shredded mozzarella cheese
4 stalks celery, cut to fine dice
5 10 inch flour tortillas
5 6 inch flour tortillas
1 bag tortilla chips

Instructions

1. Heat 1 tbsp vegetable oil in a large skillet over medium high heat. Season chicken on both sides with salt and black pepper and cook until seared on both sides and cooked through, about 15 minutes. Set aside to cool before cutting into 1/2 inch chunks.

2. Clean out the pan with a paper towel, and add another tablespoon of oil. Add diced celery and cook until softened, about 2-3 minutes. Set aside in a bowl.

3. In a large bowl, combine cream cheese, blue cheese dressing, shredded mozzarella, hot sauce, and chicken, stirring until combined and there are no large pockets of cream cheese remaining. Set aside until you're ready to assemble, or you can cover and refrigerate until you're ready.

4. To assemble, scoop out enough chicken dip to make a roughly 6" circle in the middle of a 10" tortilla. Top with a layer of tortilla chips. Add a thin layer of blue cheese dressing on top of the chips, and then add the celery. Sprinkle a small handful of shredded cheddar and mozzarella, then cover with a 6" tortilla. Tightly fold the edges of the large tortilla over the small one, making pleats as you go in a circle around the crunchwrap. Flip it over to hold it shut.

5. Spray a large skillet with cooking spray and heat over medium-high heat. Add the crunchwrap, pleated side down, and cook for about 3 minutes on each side. The tortillas should be golden browned but not burned. Enjoy!