The Best BBQ Bacon Cheesy Chicken Tater Tot Casserole

This is the PERFECT tailgate/potluck/office lunch/brunch/because-it’s-Wednesday casserole you’ll ever make!  Folks will be begging for the recipe!

This post is written by me on behalf of Tyson Foods, Inc. All opinions are entirely my own. This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc. and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #GameTimeHero #CollectiveBias

Okay, people we need to get real here for a bit.  So right now we’re into the 5th week of Football season which means it’s time to put on the big girl panties, buckle down, and get into the zone.  Growing up in Pittsburgh it’s all about sports.  We’re the City of Champions – we live and breathe football, hockey, and baseball.  And for the mass majority of us who don’t play the actual game for billions of dollars, we can still be the MVP of the game; that is MVP of the food game!

What’s served during the game is about as big as the actual game itself.  We take huge pride in our tailgating skills, our backyard cookouts, or our home man caves.  This BBQ Crack Chicken Casserole is the dish of all dishes that will make you the MVP of the entire season!

This is one of those recipes that seriously anyone can make.  I mean I’d even let Mr. Fantabulous in the kitchen to cook just to make this!  You see the star of this dish is the BBQ Boneless Wings.  For this post, I’m partnering up again with my friends from Walmart and talking about their awesome Hot Deli! In my Super Walmart, Market entrance, the Hot Deli is right inside to the right.  You can’t miss it.  Just head up to the deli counter, grab a number, and when your number is called make sure you order the 20 wings for a $10 special! My Walmart offered me a variety oselectionson plus bone-in or boneless. Since I wanted this recipe to be super easy I opted for boneless.

After I grabbed the wings, I picked up a few more ingredients for this recipe – potato tots, bacon (heck you can even cheat and get the pre-cooked stuff), cheese, ran,ch and a few other things. Now I do have a confession.  Once I paid for the wings and got out to my car I did ‘sneak’ one of these babies to snack on.  I was starving and they smelled SOOOOOOOOO GOOD!!!  OMG seriously, you want to talk about juicy, meaty chicken!  WOW!  I could have sat there, trunk open eating this chicken in the parking lot but I didn’t.  but I was tempted…

So you really only have to actually “cook” 2 things – the bacon and the tots.  When you make this crack casserole, the ingredients are fully cooked. You’re just assembling and heating until the cheese melts.  See that’s one of the 9 million reasons why this dish rocks! You can assemble at home, take to a party/tailgate/man cave or what not and just heat it up there. If you’re not near an oven, make sure you use a grill-safe pan.  Heck you can use one of those disposable aluminum foil pans.

Now I do have to be honest.  There is a part of this dish that is EXTREMELY difficult to any chef. It’s going to try you for all your worth but if you stick it out, it’ll be worth it in the end.  Hardest part… don’t snack on the tots/bacon/chicken while you’re prepping the dish!  LOL how do I know this?  I um…er…um kinda had to make more tots in the middle of making this recipe cause I kinda-sorta-ate-most-of-them. LOL

Looking at the pic below it’s pretty straight forward. It’s all about layers. Tots, ranch powder, cheese, bacon (God I love bacon), chicken (seriously it’s insane!), more cheese and bacon then yes, more cheese!

This took to assemble to all of ehhhhhhhhhh 5-6 minutes to assemble.  Again this is assuming you’re not like me and eat half of the tots while you’re the making the recipe. Wha?  Don’t judge me! LOL

As I discussed above you’re just heating this until the cheese melts.  So before I go any further I need to dish about the bbq ranch sauce on this dish.  Now you can make your own bbq sauce and ranch dressing (which I always encourage) and mix it with sour cream however if you can’t just use a bbq sauce that’s on the wings (Ask the Walmart deli folks what the sauce is) and bottled bbq sauce.  The secret to this sauce is the addition of sour cream.  It’s that ingredient that bridges the tangy bbq sauce and the zesty ranch sauce.

What I would advise if when you serve this, just put the sauce in a squirt bottle, drizzle just a little bit in, garnish with some green onions, and then set a bowl of the sauce on the side.  Trust me, folks will definitely want more as it’s that good! And you’re going to want like a vat of this in your fridge at all time!

This dish is one that I’ve been making for gosh, 10-15 years easy but I always went with my own chicken. But let’s be real, some times we don’t have time to prep/bread/fry our own chicken.  That’s why I love this chicken from Walmart.  It’s REAL chicken and it’s really good!  I mean Mr. Fantabulous loves their chicken! The convenience of the being able to grab this chicken is huge but then to be able to get that special of 20 for $10!  HUGE!

Confession time…. so I made this dish for this shoot and when it was done I was ridiculously excited.  No, that’s not the confession.  You see I wasn’t so much excited by how it turned out visually or how gorgeous the shots were.  Oh no.  I was friggen excited that I got to eat this!  LOL  No you don’t understand people!  Unless you’ve been at my house or I’ve made this for you, you are missing out!  This dish is INSANE!  Like we’re talking FULL ON LEGIT!

It’s bacony

It’s cheeeeesy!

We’re riding the train to Crispy Totville!

And OMG that CHICKEN!  Dear Lord sweet mercy, THANK YOU WALMART!

Now I’d like to tell you how Mr. Fantabulous felt about this dish but….sigh, I have another confession…

I *may or may not* have, after I finished the shoot, packaged this up into individual portions for lunch for me for the week. *hangs her head and bites her lip*  Is that wrong of me to not want to share?  I mean it was in plain sight in the fridge…behind the milk….under the pot roast and mashed potatoes.

Wha??? C’mon, tell me you’ve never hidden that last cookie, last pint of ice cream, or last candy bar from someone you love. Yeah, I thought not! LOL

I could seriously ramble on for hours about how amazing this dish is but honestly this is one of those dishes where, when you make it, you’re going to just go nuts over it!  This will seriously be on every football food table, every Halloween party, every game night, every tailgate cook out and hey, even if none of those are applicable – make up your own reason.  It’s Wednesday, you put pants on, you took pants off, you subscribed to my blog (wink).

*puts on her game face, coach’s hat and whistle*

“Many foods will step up to the table.  They will try to psych you out with their big this or super hot that.  But you got this. You’re the champ.  This is your time. Own it!  Now go out there and get’ em tiger!  Be the MVP of the food table!”

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