Buffalo Chicken Dip

Use rotisserie chicken for the easiest prep. Frank's RedHot is the traditional choice - other sauces may vary in heat and flavor. The cream cheese base should be completely smooth before adding other ingredients. For extra heat, add a diced jalapeño. Serve with sturdy chips that won't break.

Buffalo chicken dip is a direct descendant of one of America's most celebrated culinary inventions: the Buffalo wing, created at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, New York in 1964 by co-owner Teressa Bellissimo, who tossed chicken wings in a cayenne-and-butter hot sauce and served them with blue cheese dressing and celery. The Anchor Bar's wing night became a local institution, and by the 1980s Buffalo wings had spread to bars and restaurants nationwide, becoming one of the defining foods of American sports-watching culture. Buffalo chicken dip emerged in the 1990s and early 2000s as a natural evolution: a way to capture all the flavors of wings — the spicy hot sauce, the cooling blue cheese or ranch, the creamy richness — in a scoopable format that served a crowd without the mess of bones. The use of cream cheese as the base gives the dip stability and a richness that carries the hot sauce without overwhelming it. By the late 2000s Buffalo chicken dip had achieved near-universal presence on American game-day tables and become one of the most searched appetizer recipes online. Kraft's Philadelphia Cream Cheese and Frank's RedHot both claim versions of the recipe on their packaging — a sign of how thoroughly the dip entered mainstream American culinary culture. The dip format made buffalo flavors accessible at parties where messiness would be unwelcome.