Drive-Thru Chicken Quesadilla w Tangy Sauce

About

Are you missing out on your favorite drive-thru taco place while on the Keto diet? No worries because Carb Manager has your back! You can make this mock-drive-thru Keto chicken quesadilla with just a fraction of the carbohydrates. Juicy chicken is seasoned and grilled before chopped into little bits. The chicken is mixed with a tangy sauce that is a copycat version of what you usually see in your quesadilla. Instead of adding melted cheese to a tortilla, your Keto tortilla is actually made from cheese, which is how you cut down on all those carbs. This is a fantastic recipe to use for meal prepping. Follow Steps 1-2 and store your prepared chicken in your refrigerator for up to 3 days. When you’re ready to make a quesadilla, just make the cheese tortilla and add your filling from the refrigerator! You can also make the full recipe and store the completed quesadilla in an airtight container in your refrigerator for up to 3 days.

Other Keto Tortilla Options

Making a tortilla out of cheese is an awesome way to enjoy a handheld lunch, like a quesadilla, while on the Keto diet. If you don’t want the crunchy texture, there are other tortilla substitutions you can make. To maintain the macros of this recipe, you can use large lettuce leaves or a sheet of roasted nori seaweed to wrap up your chicken and tangy sauce. For another low-carb option with a soft tortilla, try the Carb Manager Low Carb Spinach Tortilla recipe, which has only about 5g of carbs per tortilla.

Why You Must Use A Non-Stick Pan

Using a non-stick pan for this recipe is crucial to successfully make the quesadilla. A non-stick pan will allow the cheese to naturally release after it has cooked to a crisp, and it’s easier to transfer the finished quesadilla to your serving plate. Avoid using a regular pan with pan spray. The cheese will only stick and burn on the pan, and the pan spray only delays and interferes with the cooking process. Avoid cast-iron pans as well because they will become too hot for cooking cheese.

Ingredients

4 oz chicken breast boneless skinless raw
⅛ teaspoon salt
⅛ teaspoon black pepper
⅛ teaspoon cumin, ground
⅛ teaspoon onion powder
⅛ teaspoon garlic powder
1 teaspoon olive or extra virgin olive oil
1 tablespoon mayonnaise
1 teaspoon sour cream
⅛ teaspoon chili powder
⅛ teaspoon cumin, ground
⅛ teaspoon black pepper
⅛ teaspoon onion powder
⅛ teaspoon paprika
¾ cup, shredded colby jack cheese

Instructions

Make the chicken first by patting a thin-sliced breast dry with a paper towel. Season the chicken with salt, pepper, cumin, onion powder, and garlic powder. Heat the olive oil on medium-high heat in a pan. Once the oil is hot, place the chicken in and cook it until it’s golden-brown on both sides. It should take about 8 minutes to cook the chicken. You may cook it at a higher temperature to blacken the spices if you prefer, but this mock-drive-thru quesadilla usually has juicy pieces of chicken.
Set the chicken aside to cool on a cutting board. When it’s cooled, chop the chicken into small pieces. The finer you can chop the chicken, the less likely you’ll have pieces that fall out of the quesadilla later. Leave the chopped chicken aside as you mix together the tangy drive-thru sauce. Stir together in a large bowl mayonnaise, sour cream, and just a pinch each of chili powder, cumin, black pepper, onion powder, and paprika until you have a tangy sauce. Fold the chopped chicken into the sauce and set the bowl aside.
It’s time to make the quesadilla! Arrange the shredded cheese in the base of a non-stick 8” or 10” pan. Spread the cheese out so it’s all in a thin, even-layered circle filling the bottom of the pan. Place the pan over medium heat on the stove, and cook the cheese undisturbed until it melts. Once the cheese is melted, place the chicken with tangy sauce filling on one half of the cheese “tortilla”.
Again, leave the cheese undisturbed as it continues to cook past melting to bubbling and then hardening to a dark orange disc. When you can slide a spatula between the cheese tortilla and the pan, gently lift and slide the quesadilla from the pan onto your serving dish. Use your spatula to fold the cheese tortilla over the chicken filling and hold it in place for a few seconds as the cheese continues to harden in its final form. When the cheese has hardened and cooled, cut the quesadilla in half for serving.