Snacks · Dips & spreads

Buffalo chicken dip

Name: Buffalo chicken dip
Prep time: 10 min
Cook time: 25 min
Total time: 35 min
Yield: 8 servings
Ingredients: 400 g roasted chicken breast, cooked and shredded; 200 g cream cheese, softened; 1/3 cup whole-milk Greek yogurt; 1/2 cup hot sauce; 1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded; 3 stalks green onion, sliced; 4 stalks celery, in sticks

The party dip that is actually mostly chicken: shredded breast, hot sauce and just enough cream cheese to hold it together, baked until it bubbles. Protein-forward for the category, and the cream cheese is the visible lever.

Time: 35 min (10 prep + 25 cook)
Servings: 8
Per serving: 238 kcal
Protein: 21 g

Both directions are legitimate — the score measures fullness per calorie, not virtue. Every version is the same dish, rebalanced.

Ingredients

400 g roasted chicken breast, cooked and shredded400 g
200 g cream cheese, softened200 g
1/3 cup whole-milk Greek yogurt100 g
1/2 cup hot sauce120 g
1 cup cheddar cheese, shredded100 g

To serve

3 stalks green onion, sliced30 g
4 stalks celery, in sticks200 g

Every ingredient links to its food page — same data, same score, same formula.

Steps

Heat the oven to 190°C (375°F). Beat the softened cream cheese with the yogurt and hot sauce until completely smooth — lumps of cold cream cheese never melt out.
Fold in the shredded chicken and half the cheddar.
Spread into a baking dish, top with the rest of the cheddar and bake 20–25 minutes until bubbling at the edges.
Scatter the green onion over and serve hot with the celery sticks.

Celery rather than chips?

It's the traditional pairing and it changes the arithmetic more than the dip itself does — what you scoop with is usually a bigger share of the calories than what you're scooping.

Why this score

solidly filling

No single route carries this one — a moderate amount of protein, volume and fiber.

Three routes to fullness — one is enough

36% of kcal

70% water

2 g/Mcal

What pulls it down

Nothing here converges the way engineered food does — no sugar, no savoury and no alcohol penalty.

How scores work

Computed on the finished dish, not an average of the parts: 1905 kcal goes into the pot, 1150 g of ingredients comes out as ~1080 g of food → 176 kcal per 100 g. Cooking moves water, and energy density is the score's biggest lever — so we show the math. Full formula here.

Per

Calories: 176
Protein: (36%); 16 g
Fat: (58%); 11 g
Carbohydrates: (6%); 2 g
of which sugar: 1 g
Fiber: <1 g
Sodium: 248 mg

Percentages are the share of calories from each macronutrient.

Computed from the ingredients' USDA data — nothing typed by hand. Every number is traceable, every score recomputable.

More snacks

Photo: AI-generated. Nutrition and score are computed from the ingredients with the published formula — this recipe hasn't been kitchen-tested by us yet.