Buffalo Chicken Bowls Recipe | Little Spice Jar

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Buffalo Chicken Bowls are the weeknight dinner you need! A quick and easy marinade for the chicken, a healthy ranch dressing slaw, and crispy sweet potato fries topped with blue cheese! It’s got protein, veggies, and healthy carbs – an easy meal prep recipe!

buffalo chicken bowl with blue cheese on top

Flavor explosion 💥

Buffalo chicken bowls are the weeknight dinner recipe that you crave. It’s a bowl of mostly easy to assemble ingredients. If you can toss a few things in a bowl, you can make this recipe.

Which, might I add, is the kind of recipe I encourage my husband to cook for us when he cooks. Because it’s really just making the chicken in the air fryer or on the stove top and then basically assembling a bowl with a few ingredients. We’ll start by marinating the chicken and letting it hang out. This recipe is perfect to make in the air fryer because we’re already kicking it on for the sweet potatoes. But it’s equally delicious made in a skillet when you really want the exterior of the chicken tog et a nice brown sear.

The best part is, we’re making this recipe even quicker by taking a few short cuts. Start with cauliflower rice or cooked brown rice, top it with freshly sliced cucumbers, store-bought sweet potato fries that you just toss in the air fryer. And of course, you can skip these, but please don’t. And then use pre shredded cabbage and drizzle that jalapeño ranch dressing on top.

It’s buffalo sauce and ranch dressing, it’s buffalo chicken sliders, minus the bun, it’s buffalo chicken rice bowls and they are the perfect weeknight dinner!

close up of chicken topped with sauce and blue cheese

Ingredients for buffalo chicken bowls
Instructions for making Buffalo Chicken Rice Bowls
Delicious Buffalo Chicken Bowls with Sweet Potato Fries Recipe

Ingredients for buffalo chicken bowls

Chicken: You can use boneless skinless chicken breasts, chicken thighs, or even tenders for this recipe. Just be sure to cut the chicken into small, bite-sized pieces so that they all cook up evenly in the same amount of time. If you’re in a huge time crunch, you can even use shredded rotisserie chicken – just toss it in melted butter and buffalo sauce before adding it to the prepared bowls.
Seasonings: you’ll really be flexing your seasonings for this recipe. I like to use smoked paprika, cornstarch, cayenne pepper, garlic powder, onion powder, kosher salt and black pepper. These ingredients will all help to provide the chicken with plenty of flavor before you even toss it in buffalo sauce. You’ll also need some dried dill and chopped chives for the ranch seasoning. Feel free to use dried chives (about 1 tbsp) if you don’t have fresh on hand.
Buffalo Sauce: Primal Kitchen Buffalo Sauce is my hot sauce of choice these days because I’m trying to use sauces with cleaner ingredients and the nutrition facts are great. It’s made with avocado oil, which is higher in monounsaturated fat and lower in polyunsaturated fat. It’s also gluten-free and dairy-free if that’s important to you. But I’ve also used this one in the past and it works beautifully.
Butter: we’ll use juts a tablespoon to cook the chicken in. This gives it that true buffalo sauce flavor. Feel free to swap this for avocado oil if you’re making it on the stove top.
Greek yogurt: I like to use greek yogurt to make the ranch dressing. It keeps the macros balanced and
Milk: just a splash to help thin out the dressing.
Jalapeno: I like to make jalapeño ranch, so I add a minced up jalapeño pepper to my dressing. Feel free to omit the pepper if you want to keep keep the ranch spice-free.
Garlic: a grated clove of garlic for the ranch dressing.
Ranch seasoning: I like to add a dash of ranch seasoning mix to give it that authentic flavor, without all the calories! If you’re short on time and want to swap homemade ranch dressing for store-bought, that does work!
Apple cider vinegar: adds that acid punch that you need for a good slaw.
Veggies: I like to add some cilantro to my slaw. You’ll also need a bag of cabbage slaw mix. You can use freshly shredded cabbage if you’d like but it does increase the prep time significantly. You can also use a power slaw mix (with broccoli stems) You’ll also need some minced celery… because bleu cheese and ranch dressing demand it. Feel free to make the slaw your own, you can add cucumber and green onion or other veggies like additional shredded carrots or even some bell peppers. And I like some fresh color and crunch with cucumbers on top of my bowl.
Rice: use brown rice or white rice or even cauliflower rice if you want to make things low-carb! Anything you typically like for your bowl works here.
Sweet Potatoes: I like to grab a bag of naked sweet potato fries in bulk and keep it on hand for easy meals like this throughout the week. Toss them in the air fryer or oven according to package directions to make this easy. Sweet potatoes are a good source of complex carbohydrates. They’re rich in fiber and contain plenty of vitamins and minerals.
Blue Cheese Crumbles: because what would a buffalo ranch bowl be without blue cheese? If you aren’t a fan of bleu cheese, you can opt for feta cheese instead.

Instructions for making Buffalo Chicken Rice Bowls

Start with the slaw dressing. In a bowl, whisk together the greek yogurt, milk, chives, dill, jalapeno, garlic, sugar, apple ciderviengar, and ranch seasoning with a ¼ tsp salt. Taste and feel free to adjust your liking.
Season the chicken. In a bowl, add the chicken pieces, and season with the dry spices. Let the chicken hang out while you’re prepping the rice, making the sweet potato fries, and the veggies for the slaw.
Cook the chicken. Heat a large skillet over medium-high heat. Add the butter and let it melt. You can also use olive oil or avocado if you prefer. Thenadd the chicken in a single layer and cook it until it reaches 165ºF. You can also pop it in the air fryer if you wish!Then toss with the buffalo sauce.
Make the slaw. add the cabbage mix, celery, and cilantro to a bowl. Pour the prepared dressing over the veggies and give it a good toss. Taste the slaw, and then season with salt as needed.
Assemble the dish. Start by adding a scoop of rice to each bowl. Top with the sweet potato fries, cucumbers, prepared slaw, chicken pieces, and sprinkle with the crumbled blue cheese. Drizzle more buffalo sauce if you’d like and serve!

cooked chicken in pan with sauce and spoon

Time saving swaps for this recipe

Use rotisserie chicken instead of prepping your own chicken
Use Ranch dressing instead of making it from scratch
Opt for blue cheese dressing and skip the cheese
Use frozen rice or make some in your rice cooker while you marinate the chicken.
Skip the sweet potato fries if you’re meal prepping this for the week.

chicken buffalo rice bowls with sweet potato fries, slaw, and cucumbers

FAQs about this recipe

How do you store leftovers?

Keep them in an airtight container in the fridge.

Can I opt for beans instead of rice?

Yes, black beans or even pinto beans would be a good option if you want to bulk the fiber and protein in this recipe.

Can I use different veggies?

you can! Use a romaine lettuce base instead of the cabbage, swap the cucumbers for cherry tomatoes. You can even turn this into a buffalo chicken salad by using more slaw and lettuce instead of a big scoop of rice. This recipe is very versatile to what you’ve got in the refrigerator. I like to swap the sweet potatoes for air fryer broccoli sometimes as well!