Saturday, July 2, 2011

Chicken Cream Cheese Dip

3 (12.5 oz.) cans chunk chicken (drained)
3 (8 oz.) packages cream cheese
1 (10 oz.) can condensed cream of chicken soup
1 small can jalapenos (drained)

Heat in crock pot. Serve with tortilla chips or crackers.

Please, dear God, please drain your chunk chicken cans. Lord knows we don't want all that bland chicken water messing up the dip and making it all soupy. It's okay to put in bland, watered down chicken, no problem there - especially since actually seasoning and cooking a fresh chicken breast or thigh is just WAY too much work for us modern, busy people - but we have to make sure it stays thick and creamy.

Oh, and towards that end, let's add 24 oz. of cream cheese. You know, because you can never have enough cream cheese. And 3 packages cream cheese to 3 cans chunk chicken just seems like the proper proportion, right? Of course, I mean, you have to have some condensed cream of chicken soup. It adds so much flavor! And really highlights the luxurious creaminess of this dish. The recipe just isn't right without it. And, really, if you feel like you need a little more flavor, you could bump that up to 3 cans too. Mm mm good! But wait! For that extra little zing, to just catapult your dip into the stratospheric echelons of dipdom let's add a small can (drained) of jalapeno's. Just a small can will do. 2 oz. 3 oz. Whatever the store has is fine. And you definitely don't want to add fresh jalapenos. That's a little over the top. You really want some of that flavor to leach out into the brining liquid. Sometimes less is more.

Now it gets kind of confusing. Normally, it would say something like, "Combine ingredients in crockpot and heat until warm." Nice and specific, easy to follow. But no. All we get is the rather terse, "Heat in crockpot." I'm envisioning just dumping the whole thing in, drained cans and cream cheese wrappers and all, and heating them all together. We all need a little extra...um...aluminum in our diets, right?

At last, the coup de grace! The most delicious (not to mention normal and healthy) part of the dish - the tortilla chips and crackers. Or as we say here in the upper midwest - tortihlla chips (to rhyme with flotilla). We're just crackers like that!