It has heat, meat, and plenty of melty cheese – buffalo chicken pasta bake has everything! It takes just an hour and is perfect for weeknights, gamedays, and every day in between.
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Combining buffalo chicken dip and pasta, you just know it’s going to be good! You get that thick, rich, spicy sauce smothered all over springy, chewy noodles.
This buffalo chicken pasta recipe can be easily doubled, but it’s best to use multiple dishes to make sure all of the cheese melts and the pasta cooks evenly.
It keeps for up to 3 days, so there’s no harm in making plenty to enjoy leftovers throughout the week!
I make this recipe with my homemade buffalo sauce. Note that this recipe makes more than enough for this buffalo chicken pasta recipe – luckily there are plenty of ways to use the leftovers!
Dress up a regular chicken sandwich or make everyday mac and cheese extraordinary.
How to Make Buffalo Chicken Pasta Bake
A full printable version of this recipe with ingredient measurements is available at the bottom of this post.
STEP ONE: Preheat the oven to 400F and lightly grease your 9×13” baking dish.
STEP TWO: Prepare the ziti in a pot of boiling, salted water until al dente. Save ½ cup of the cooking water, then drain the pasta.
STEP THREE: Warm the olive oil in a pot over medium-high heat. Season the chicken with salt, pepper, and ranch seasoning. Add it to the pot and sear for a couple of minutes per side until browned – it’s okay if it isn’t cooked through. Remove from the heat and set aside.
STEP FOUR: Add butter to the pan. Once melted, add the flour and whisk. A roux will form after a few minutes of continuous whisking.
STEP FIVE: Add the milk and buffalo sauce. Continue whisking until all lumps are worked through. Bring to a simmer and cook until thick enough to coat your spoon.
STEP SIX: Bring the heat down to low and add 1 ½ cups of cheddar cheese and 1⁄2 cup of Pepper Jack. Whisk until the cheese melts.
STEP SEVEN: Take the pot off the heat and add the pasta. Follow with the chicken, onions, and blue cheese. Stir until combined. If the sauce is too thin to coat, pour some of the retained cooking water and stir until thickened.
STEP EIGHT: Spoon the coated pasta into the prepared dish, top it with the remaining cheeses, and bake for 15 to 18 minutes until the cheese is melted and bubbling. Give the buffalo chicken pasta bake a few minutes to cool and garnish with extra cheese and onions if desired.
Adjust the Spice of Your Buffalo Chicken Casserole
This buffalo pasta chicken bake has a medium spice level as-is – not at all overwhelming.
However, if you find you’d like less heat, simply reduce the amount of buffalo sauce to just ¼ cup. It can also be left out of the buffalo chicken bake altogether, although it isn’t really buffalo chicken pasta at that point!
Spice lovers can amp things up by adding just a pinch of cayenne or red pepper flakes to the cheese sauce as it melts.
Buffalo Pasta Chicken Bake Recipe Variations
We use blue cheese. It gives that chicken wing flavor but is certainly an acquired taste. A tangy feta or some cream cheese does a great job of adding extra dimension too!
Any short pasta is suitable for our buffalo chicken pasta recipe. Macaroni is another popular choice, for example, as well as rotini.
While this buffalo chicken bake is made with breast meat, you could use thighs or tenders. You could even use shredded rotisserie chicken to really save some time!
Ranch is a staple of any buffalo chicken dip pasta (or just the dip on its own), but the ranch seasoning can be left out if desired.
The onions aren’t necessary, but the sharp earthiness they bring helps to keep each bite interesting! If you’re looking for substitutes, I recommend fresh parsley.
Can This Buffalo Chicken Pasta Bake Recipe Be Made Ahead of Time?
Buffalo chicken casserole keeps well in the refrigerator for up to three days.
It’s important to keep it chilled and properly covered so the cheese does not harden or turn in the meantime.
You could also put the whole thing together and then bake it for just an hour or so before serving. Give it 30 minutes or so for it to come to temperature before putting it in the oven.
Then, you can bake it as you normally would.
In this case, make sure the chicken is cooked all the way through before adding it to pasta.
Why Is My Buffalo Chicken Pasta Bake So Dry?
This usually happens because you have more pasta than you have sauce.
Another common culprit is undercooked pasta – it can be hard to get it al dente without following the instructions on the box, so be sure to follow them just right.
Finally, be sure to cook the sauce until it’s properly thick, ooey, creamy, and cheesy.
Other Casserole Recipes You’ll Love:
More Buffalo Chicken Recipes
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 40 minutes
Total Time 55 minutes
Ingredients
1 box (16 ounces) uncooked ziti
2 tablespoons olive oil
1 pound boneless skinless chicken breast, cut into ½” cubes
2 teaspoons ranch seasoning
1 teaspoon kosher salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
2 tablespoons butter
2 tablespoons all purpose flour
3 cups milk
½ cup homemade buffalo sauce (see notes)
2 ½ cups freshly shredded cheddar cheese
1 ½ cups freshly shredded pepper jack
¼ cup sliced green onion, plus more for garnish
¼ cup blue cheese crumbles, plus more for garnish
Instructions
Preheat the oven to 400F and grease a 9×13” pan with nonstick cooking spray.
Bring a large pot of salted water to a boil. Cook the ziti to al dente according to the package directions (about 8 minutes). Reserve ½ cup of starchy cooking water and then drain the pasta and set it aside.
In a large pot or dutch oven, add the olive oil and warm it over medium-high heat.
Sprinkle the cubed chicken with kosher salt, ranch seasoning, and black pepper. Toss to evenly coat the chicken with the seasoning.
Add the chicken to the pan and sear for 1-2 minutes per side, or just until the chicken is lightly browned– it won’t be fully cooked in the middle. That’s okay! Remove the chicken to a plate and set it aside.
Add the butter to the pan (still over medium-high heat) and allow it to melt. Next, add the flour and whisk until a roux forms. Cook the roux, whisking constantly, for 1 minute.
Next, add the milk and buffalo sauce. Whisk until no lumps of roux remain. Bring the sauce to a simmer and cook until it has thickened just slightly and barely coats the back of a spoon.
Reduce the heat to low and add 1 ½ cups of cheddar cheese and ½ cup of pepper jack cheese. Stir until the cheese has melted.
Remove the pan from the heat and add the cooked pasta, cooked chicken, green onion, and blue cheese crumbles. Stir to combine. If the sauce becomes too thin, add a splash of the reserved pasta water and continue to stir– we want a really gooey, creamy sauce.
Transfer the pasta mixture to the greased pan and top with the remaining cheddar and pepper jack cheese.
Bake for 15-18 minutes or until the cheese is melty and bubbling. Garnish with additional crumbled blue cheese and sliced green onion, and enjoy.
This nutrition information is based on the exact products I used in this recipe. Brands and sizes of products could alter exact nutrition and should always be calculated independently.
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A couple months ago, I threw a solution ingredient into my typical chocolate chip cookie dough and then ever-so-marginally undercooked the cookie. When I took them out of the oven, I failed to love how they appeared, but at the time they cooled a little bit and I took a bite — I was blown away. These were being the best cookies I’d created in several years and I was super fired up to share them.
What is this elusive, secret ingredient, you inquire? Miso!
Again in the day, Christina Tosi’s Milk Bar sold a miso-butterscotch chai, which I always believed was one of the most outrageously mouth watering sounding beverages to at any time exist. Ever given that, I’ve grow to be a accurate miso adherent — as evidenced by the fact that lots of of my recipes include white miso.
I adore miso’s flexibility, savoriness, umami notes and depth of taste. It is a great dessert component, by the way — do not be spooked into pondering that it only belongs in savory food stuff.
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I added miso to my cookie dough after striving a miso-sesame cookie from a regional (legitimately stellar) temaki restaurant. I didn’t really like the crunch of the sesame seeds, which extra a distinctive taste element, but I was definitely fond of the flavor that the miso additional.
And while that component does a large amount of the heavy lifting, but the brown butter, the cinnamon and the shorter cook-time aids these cookies turn into one thing exclusive and entirely distinctive.
Preheat oven to 350 levels Fahrenheit. Line 2 huge cookie sheets with silpat, parchment or spray with cooking spray.
Over medium-low warmth, brown your butter. Take away from warmth when specially aromatic and bronzed, swirl or stir a number of occasions to incorporate browned bits and permit awesome marginally.
Transfer cooled brown butter to stand mixer or bowl. Combine in sugars and beat very well, about 2-3 minutes, until eventually somewhat lightened and fluffy.
Increase eggs, a single at a time and mix properly.
Include miso and extracts and blend until just blended.
Include flour, baking soda and powder, salt, cinnamon and oats, if applying. Combine right up until mixed and there are no dry pockets of flour remaining.
Increase chocolate and stir in by hand.
Part into cookie balls with a compact ice cream scoop. Location on geared up cookie sheet with a excellent inch of so between cookies (they will distribute a bit). Go on until all dough has been portioned.
Transfer to oven and cook for 9-10 minutes or until finally the cookie has unfold, its edges are slightly starting to darken and they are a bit puffy.
Remove from oven, sprinkle with flaky salt, permit interesting 5 minutes, then transfer to wire rack to awesome more.
Try not to melt away your mouth on scorching chocolate when you dive in prior to they are thoroughly cooled. Love!
Cook’s Notes
– I’ve in no way been into the full “enable your cookie dough rest in the fridge for a couple of hours or right away” matter, so I am skipping that entirely (it’s these kinds of a lengthy move for not considerably improve in taste or regularity, at minimum in my check out).
– If miso isn’t your favourite, try tahini as a substitute.
-I detest a tricky, around-cooked cookie a slightly undercooked cookie is very virtually normally preferable. On top of that, the cookie will deflate a bit as it cools and cook dinner a little much more (in particular if you happen to be allowing it rest on the continue to-scorching cookie sheet), so I usually err on the facet of undercooking a little bit
-I really like heaps of vanilla extract or paste some recipes call for these kinds of a teeny tiny sum and I think that that is foolish
-I like the depth and flavor that brown butter adds, which in this case, pairs perfectly with the umami notes of the miso. I haven’t manufactured a cookie with un-browned butter in a long time, but it is really certainly an optional action! Sense to skip if you want to get all those cookies in the oven just a bit sooner.
-I am a brown sugar dude, by means of and by way of. I enjoy veering to a ratio of substantially far more brown sugar than white sugar in my recipes. Mild or dim equally function.
– I am a silpat person, but parchment also often operates. If you’re foregoing and just inserting straight on the cookie sheet, just be mindful that it may possibly be a bit difficult tor get rid of following cooking. Cooking spray doesn’t harm, either.
– A small ice cream scoop (with a release lever) is so useful for all issues cookie dough.
– I use a stand mixer before mixing in the chocolate by hand, but this complete system could quickly be accomplished manually.
– I prefer chocolate chunks or bars about chips, any day of the 7 days. I also like hand-chopped baking chocolate. I’ve also designed the error of including an enormous total of chocolate to cookies in the earlier, which isn’t going to ever do the job out that wonderful. I like a cookie with lots of “cookie” and not all chocolate. I favor semisweet, but I’m not versus any certain type. Use whatever you like most effective (or whatever you have on hand).
-I like to toss in oats often. You can even pulverize them if you do not like the chew, but enjoy the flavor.
Salon Meals writes about stuff we believe you can expect to like. Whilst our editorial crew independently picked these products, Salon has affiliate partnerships, so creating a buy by way of our links may earn us a fee.
The best way to end a meal is with a dreamy dessert that satiates your craving for something sweet, which is why these chocolate dessert recipes will be such a big hit at your next get-together. From simple, no-bake treats that take only a few minutes to throw together to more involved, impressive cakes, cookies and brownies, these recipes make for the perfect after-dinner (or afternoon) snack.
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Classic chocolate brownies are delicious enough on their own, but they’re truly at their best with a drizzle of salted caramel on top. The chopped walnuts in these brownies offer an interesting textural element to the recipe, but feel free to leave them out if you don’t like nuts.
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This article was originally published on TODAY.com
