Canned Chicken Is The Simple Shortcut To Blazing Baked Buffalo Dip

A baked buffalo chicken dip makes for one show stopping appetizer — served with chips, crackers, and colorful veggies, this dip is as fun to look at as it is to eat. While pulled or diced chicken is one of the key ingredients, you don't have to spend the time prepping and cooking it from scratch. In fact, canned chicken will work just as well — and make the prepping so much faster. (Plus, it's more affordable than buying fresh chicken.)

Roasting your own whole chicken requires time and energy — even a simple oven-baked chicken breast recipe takes about 30 minutes. Meanwhile, you could buy a premade whole rotisserie chicken from the market, but you'll have to spend time pulling the chicken from the bones and getting it ready for the dip. Whereas, canned chicken requires no prep time and it's a pantry item, so you can have keep it on hand for whenever the craving strikes for quick and delicious buffalo dip.

You may have some reservations about using canned chicken since it doesn't exactly pack a lot of flavor on its own. But, in this case, the overall flavor of the dip comes from the combination of all the delicious ingredients together — such as blue cheese, cheddar cheese, and buffalo sauce — so the chicken itself doesn't need to be the star. 

Plus, some canned chicken brands are better than others, so choose accordingly. In our ranking of the best store-bought canned chicken, we chose Swanson White & Dark Premium Chunk Chicken as the top choice. Swanson's canned chicken earned the top spot thanks to the fact that it uses premium antibiotic-free chicken, has a great texture, and is packed in a flavorful broth. So it is possible to source a higher quality canned chicken and be ready to throw together a blazing buffalo dip at any time, just drain and used the canned chicken in replace of the shredded chicken the recipe may call for.