🌶️🍗🥔 Twice Baked Buffalo Chicken Baked Potatoes are chock full of shredded buffalo chicken, cheddar and mozzarella cheese, cream cheese, and sour cream. If you love the tang and heat of buffalo chicken wings, you’re going to LOVE these potatoes. I promise these are a comfort food delight! Whether you make them as a main dish for a weeknight dinner, as a party appetizer, or as a game day snack, everyone LOVES them!
Easy Buffalo Chicken Baked Potatoes Recipe
When you’re looking for the perfect comfort food chicken and potato recipe, this is the ticket!
- These potatoes offer all the heat and tang of hot wings tucked into a hot, cheesy potato. Shredded rotisserie chicken is mixed with cream cheese and sour cream before being stuffed inside hollowed-out baked potatoes. When I say comfort food, I mean it!
- These easy buffalo chicken stuffed potatoes are the real deal for game days, tailgate parties, or as a snack or appetizer. Your hungry sports fans will appreciate you. Or make them on busy evenings after work or school as the main dish and serve them with a salad or roasted veggies.
If you want the twice-baked experience without the potato skin shell, then have a look at my recipe for Loaded Twice Baked Potato Casserole. It’s a great one to serve at family dinners or holiday meals.
And for twice baked sweet potato fans, these Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes with Marshmallows (holiday favorite) and Mexican Cheese and Black Bean Stuffed Sweet Potatoes (longtime circa 2014 reader favorite) are both excellent!
Ingredients and Notes
Just a handful of very common and easy-to-find fridge and pantry ingredients are needed to make these double-baked buffalo chicken potatoes, including the following:
- Baking Potatoes – Russet potatoes are the recommended go-to. Be sure to choose uniform sizes of potatoes so that they are all finished baking at the same time
- Olive Oil
- Sea Salt
- Cheese – Cheddar cheese and mozzarella Cheese
- Cream Cheese – Use brick-style cream cheese for the best results, and let it come to room temp for easy mixing
- Sour Cream
- Shredded Chicken – To save time, use shredded rotisserie chicken from the chicken breasts, poached chicken, or leftover perfect baked chicken
- Buffalo Hot Sauce – I use Frank’s Original Hot Sauce, but you can use your favorite brand and level of heat intensity. Adjust the amount of hot sauce to your liking. If you’re a heat-seeker, go wild! And if you prefer things more on the mild side, dial it back a bit. If you’re not a fan of buffalo sauce but like the overall concept of the recipe, you could try substituting ranch dressing, blue cheese dressing, or possibly even salsa
- Green Onions, for garnishing
Choose full-fat dairy
As always, I recommend full-fat cream cheese, sour cream, and shredded cheeses. Cream cheese in particular, that’s lite, is more water than fat, and that doesn’t bode well for this recipe because the filling will be watery. Reduced-fat cheese doesn’t melt well, so again, go with full-fat cheese.
Note: Scroll down to the recipe card section of the post for the ingredients with amounts included and for more complete directions.
How to Make Twice Baked Potatoes Stuffed with Buffalo Chicken
Follow these easy steps to make these irresistible potatoes. Note that cook time is about 1 hour 20 minutes of total time, with the first bake time being 1 hour, and the second bake time is 20 minutes.
Step 1: Clean the potatoes and pat them dry, then rub them with olive oil and sprinkle them with sea salt.
Step 2: Poke holes all over the potatoes and bake them for 1 hour. Remove the potatoes and cut each one in half.
Step 3: Scoop out some of the flesh from each and place the scooped out flesh in a medium or large bowl. Be careful not to scoop too deep, or the potatoes will fall apart!
Step 4: Mash (a potato masher really helps here) and stir the potato flesh with both cheeses (with some cheddar reserved for sprinkling), cream cheese, sour cream, chicken, and buffalo hot sauce.
Step 5: Spoon the potato mixture back into the shells, sprinkle with reserved cheddar cheese, and bake for 20 minutes. Garnish with green onions, extra sour cream, or ranch dressing, blue cheese dressing, or blue cheese crumbles. Serve warm!
Create a crispy topping!
Give your potatoes a very quick broil (2-3 minutes) at the end of baking to give them a golden browned cheesy top. However, if you’re not a broiler pro and you don’t know how to use it, it’s better to just skip broiling on this one since it’s not essential and you don’t want to accidentally burn your precious taters!
What to Serve with Buffalo Chicken Twice Baked Potatoes
What To Do With Leftover Buffalo Chicken Potatoes
I doubt you’re going to have a big problem with “leftovers on your hands”, but if you do, you won’t let these stuffed buffalo chicken potatoes go to waste.
Here are some creative and mouthwatering ways to give them a second lease on life:
- Stuffed Potato Hash: Sauté the leftover potato stuffing with some bell peppers, onions, and a touch of olive oil. Once everything is nicely browned, crack a few eggs into the mix and let them cook to your desired level of doneness. Top with a sprinkle of cheese and green onions.
- Potato-Stuffed Quesadillas: Spread a layer of your buffalo chicken potato mixture onto a tortilla, sprinkle with extra cheese, and fold it in half. Cook it on a griddle or in a skillet until the tortilla is crispy and the cheese is melted. Serve with salsa, guacamole, or sour cream for a quick and satisfying meal.
- Potato Stuffed Bell Peppers: Get creative and stuff bell peppers with your leftover buffalo chicken potato mixture. Cut the tops off the peppers, remove the seeds and membranes, and stuff them generously with the leftover buffalo chicken potato filling. Bake them in the oven until the peppers are tender and the filling is heated through.
- Buffalo Chicken Potato Pizza: Spread some pizza dough with a layer of buffalo sauce, then spread on your buffalo chicken potato mixture. Top with shredded mozzarella cheese and any other pizza toppings you love. Bake until the crust is golden and the cheese is melted.
Recipe FAQs
Yes you can and they are the exception to my recommendation to only use Russet or baking potatoes. You can use sweet potatoes and make buffalo chicken stuffed sweet potatoes.
I have two stuffed potato recipes including these Twice Baked Sweet Potatoes with Marshmallows and Mexican Cheese and Black Bean Stuffed Sweet Potatoes and you could use the buffalo chicken and cheese filling with sweet potatoes if desired.
I highly recommend oven baking from start to finish for the perfect fluffy interior, and it only takes about 1 hour (for the first bake).
But if you’re short on time, you can prick the potatoes with a fork a few extra times (so they don’t explode) and microwave them for about 10 minutes before baking and it will cut down on at least that much oven time.
I do not because they skins don’t get as crispy so I just allow them to bake as-is.
What’s the best way to scoop out the inside of the potatoes?
Once the potatoes are baked, let them cool slightly to avoid burning your fingers.
Tip: Hot mitts to remove them from the oven is a must. But then a pair of heavy duty rubber gloves like you may use for washing dishes work great here so that you can still ‘feel’ what you’re doing and have some dexterity, but without burning your fingers.
Then use a small spoon and the flesh should come out easily, leaving a nice potato shell, or potato skin, for your filling.
There are two ways to go to make these stuffed potatoes plant based:
1. Simply omit the chicken. If you do so, you’ll less buffalo sauce, sour cream, and cream cheese, so play around with a filling ratio that looks good to you.
2. You can replace the shredded chicken with your favorite plant-based protein, like cooked and crumbled tempeh or even marinated and grilled tofu. The buffalo flavor will work just as well.
It is if you’re sneaky! I would use roasted cauliflower that you dice very small so that it’s a color match. Bonus that that recipe also uses smoked paprika so it further will camouflage with the buffalo sauce.
I love to save time in the kitchen and there are some recipe which are easier than others to prep in advance based on how the final taste and texture of the recipe will turn out.
This is one of those recipes that I do encourage you to make through from start to finish at one time, and serve right when they’re ready. Hot and fresh wins with this potato skins-inspired recipe.
However, if you absolutely need to prep them in advance for some reason, here are my suggestions:
1. Potato Shells: Clean, drizzle with oil, and salt the potatoes, then bake until they’re cooked but not overly browned. Allow them to cool, and store them in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
2. Prep the Filling: After mashing the potato middles and mixing in the cheeses, shredded chicken, buffalo hot sauce, and sour cream store the mixture in an airtight container in the refrigerator.
3. Assembling and Baking: When you’re ready to serve, take the potato shells and the buffalo chicken mixture out of the refrigerator. Fill the potato shells with the prepared mixture and sprinkle with cheese. Bake in the oven until heated through and the cheese is melted and bubbly.
You sure can. Double all ingredients and make sure you have a big enough baking sheet to hold 16 potato halves.
Baking time may increase when you are baking 8 potatoes rather than 4, but not by more than 10 minutes or so. And for the second bake, maybe an extra couple of minutes but that’s about it.
Buffalo Chicken Stuffed Potatoes
Equipment
- 1 Medium Bowl
Ingredients
- 4 large Russet potatoes or baking potatoes
- 2 tablespoons olive oil, divided or as needed
- 1 to 2 tablespoons kosher salt or sea salt, divided or as needed
- 1 ½ cups cheddar cheese, divided
- 1 ½ cups mozzarella cheese
- 4 ounces cream cheese, softened to room temp
- ½ cup sour cream, at room temp
- 2 cups shredded chicken
- ½ cup Frank’s RedHot Original Sauce, or similar buffalo sauce
- 1 tablespoon green onions, thinly sliced; optional for garnishing
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 350F (if you have convection, this is the time to use it), line a baking sheet with foil, scrub the potatoes well, pat dry, and poke holes in about a half dozen places evenly spaced around each of the potatoes to prevent them from exploding in the oven. Tips – Make sure to use Russet potatoes or starchy potatoes intended for baking and not waxier potatoes such as Yukon Golds or Red Potatoes. Make sure they're all uniform in size so they cook at a uniform rate.
- Drizzle each potato with olive oil, rub a bit of salt evenly all over each potato, and place on the prepared baking sheet.
- Bake for about 1 hour, or until a fork pierces easily through the center. You can flip the potatoes over once midway through the cooking time, but it's not completely necessary.
- Remove the potatoes from the oven using hot mitts, and set the on a cutting board for about 5 minutes to cool slightly.
- Slice the potatoes vertically down the center.
- Using a small spoon, scoop out some flesh from each of the potato halves. Be mindful not to go too deep and leave a small perimeter around the edge of each potato skin for stability so the potato doesn't collapse.
- Place the scooped out flesh from all 8 halves into a medium bowl; set the skins aside momentarily.
- To the potato flesh, add 1 cup cheddar cheese, all the mozzarella, cream cheese (tip – make sure it's softened to room temp so it mixes easily, take it out when you first begin baking the potatoes), sour cream (tip– also take it out when you start baking the potatoes). and mash and stir to combine and incorporate the ingredients. Tip – Use a potato masher or a large fork to help mash. Do not put this mixture through your food processor, blender, or any other appliance; it doesn't have to be perfectly smooth, nor should it be, so do it by hand.
- Add the chicken, evenly pour over the Frank's RedHot Sauce or similar buffalo sauce, and stir to combine.
- Evenly divide the chicken and potato mixer among the 8 potato skins, using a small spoon to place the filling mixture into each skin and place them on the baking sheet.
- Evenly sprinkle the potatoes with the remaining 1/2 cup cheddar cheese (you can use a bit more if you want them cheesier) and bake for about 20 minutes, or until the cheese has melted and is as lightly golden browned and set as desired.
- Optionally, garnish with green onions to taste. If desired, serve wtih additional sour cream, Ranch dressing, or blue cheese dressing.
- Potatoes are best warm and fresh but leftovers will keep airtight for up to 5 days; I don't recommend freezing this recipe. I also don't recommend making the recipe in advance (the texture of baked, chilled, and re-baked potatoes is never quite the same) but if you absolutely need to, read the FAQ section of the blog post for my thoughts on how to make ahead.
Nutrition
Nutrition information is automatically calculated, so should only be used as an approximation.
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