Healthy Buffalo Ranch Baked Chicken Strips

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Healthy baked chicken strips with no breading with a buffalo ranch coating packed with flavor. These are paleo, gluten free, low carb and keto approved in these juicy, flavor packed chicken tender recipe. Kid approved so your family will love you for making this healthy dinner recipe!

Recipe Highlights

• How they taste: Healthy baked chicken strips do and can taste delicious with simple ingredients and the right ingredients. These baked chicken strips have the flavor of ranch and buffalo sauce. They are little buffalo chicken strips at their finest in flavor. The flavor profile is super simple but it works. You’ll get chicken strips that aren’t fried and and have really good flavor.
• Skill level: These chicken ingredients have 3 ingredients including the chicken. They were made to be simple so that when you’re craving something more unhealthy you can make these faster than the delivery can arrive.
• Storage: These healthy baked chicken strips are great for meal prep weeks. They store well in the fridge and they can easily be frozen if needed.

Ingredient tips

• Chicken: You’re going to want chicken tenderloins or slice up some chicken breast, both will work. Also, boneless chicken thighs will be another option for these with a little added fat.
• Ranch seasoning: Hidden Vally ranch seasoning is what was used and you see in the photos. You can use store-bought ranch from a shake but you’ll very likely lose some flavor. Plenty of people tried that and that’s where they fail. Hidden Vally has thickeners and those will make the seasoning and the buffalo sauce stick to the chicken and give it a really nice flavor.
• Buffalo sauce: My go-to buffalo sauce is Primal Kitchen avocado oil. I stay by it till this day after almost 10 years. It’s delicious, not too spicy, good acidity and I truly haven’t found anything better.

Chef’s tips

• Baking sheet plain or with a steel rack included? You can make this recipe with either. Due to no breading, using a rack will not produce a crispy chicken strip. I like the caramelization the baking sheet causes personally.
• Brush the chicken after it’s out of the oven. That’s how I achieve that look you see in the photos. Take about 1/4 cup of buffalo sauce and mix a little ranch seasoning in just to make the sauce thicker then brush that across the freshly baked chicken tenders.

How To Make Healthy Baked Chicken Strips

1. Preheat oven to 400°F
2. Mix together ranch seasoning and buffalo sauce to create a marinade
3. Toss chicken in marinade and coat evenly. Cover and place in refrigerator for at least and hour or overnight
4. Remove from marinade, no need to drain any excess sauce off. Place on oven rack or baking sheet without crowding the chicken
5. Bake for 20 minutes. Remove and top off with additional sauce (not the sauce from marinade) by giving each tender a brushing from a sauce that you made aside, see tips above.

Dipping options

• Hot honey
• Ranch
• Green Goddess Dip
• Velveeta Cheese Sauce
• Blue Cheese Dressing
• Avocado Lime Ranch (copycat)
• Pistachio Pesto

Storage

I make baked chicken strips like this for meal prepping. If I’m cutting I’ll choose a lighter dipping sauce like the green goddess dip or avocado ranch. They keep well in the fridge and they reheat very good too. If you need to freeze them, you can toss them into a bag or container and store them for weeks to months if need be.

Chicken Recipes to try next…

• Ground Chicken Meatloaf
• Garlic Chicken And Spinach
• Parmesan Sheet Pan Chicken
• Chicken & Coconut Lime Rice
• White Chicken Chili Casserole
• Dorito Chicken Bake Casserole
• Crunchy Baked Hot Honey Chicken Tenders
• Lemon Pepper Baked Chicken Thighs

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