The chicken chipotle melt Taco Bell serves will keep you a regular customer. These snacks are a fan favorite, and now you can make them yourself.
Delicious and Quick!
The franchise’s beloved menu item is something you can make at home anytime you want. Taco Bell chicken chipotle melts use a unique blend of ingredients that help it stand above competing recipes.
These melts are light and flavorful. Each melt is nearly identical to the ones they serve at Taco Bell, both in taste and presentation. But before you begin cooking Taco Bell chicken chipotle melts, you will need certain ingredients.
Ingredients
There are only four main Taco Bell chicken chipotle melt ingredients: tortillas, cheese, chicken, and chipotle sauce. The full list of wet and dry ingredients includes the following:
- 4 flour tortillas
- 2 deboned skinless chicken breasts
- 2 cups of shredded cheddar cheese
For the marinade
- ¼ cup minced cilantro
- 2 minced garlic cloves
- 2 tbsp of apple cider vinegar
- 1 tbsp of Worcestershire sauce
- 1 tbsp of chili powder
- 1 tsp of cumin
- 1 tsp of black pepper
- 1 tsp of salt
- ¼ cup of lime juice
- A dash of olive oil
The chipotle sauce has a few magic ingredients of its own. To make the chipotle sauce, include the following items in your recipe:
- 2 tbsp of Adobo chipotle sauce
- ½ tsp of chili powder
- ⅓ tsp of salt
- ⅓ tsp of sugar
- ⅓ tsp of paprika
- ¼ tsp of cumin
- ¼ tsp of reduced fat sour cream
- ¼ tsp of onion powder
When acquiring your ingredients, stick with the kind that Taco Bell uses. For instance, get reduced fat sour cream when preparing the chipotle sauce. This type is the sour cream Taco Bell restaurants typically use.
If you prefer something with a bit more spice, feel free to use alternative seasonings. Throw in red pepper flakes or jalapeños if you are feeling daring. The company also provides its commercial seasonings, which are available online and ship to your door.
Serving Size
This recipe will yield four chicken chipotle melts. You can share these with your friends or keep them all to yourself!
If you want more melts, divide the total measurements of these ingredients by four. Add this new weight for every additional tortilla you make. For instance, if you want 8 chicken chipotle melts, double the weight of your salt, onion powder, sour cream, etc.
How To Make Taco Bell Chicken Chipotle Melts
Making chicken chipotle melts is as easy as cake. Actually, it is much easier than cake! Just follow the following instructions.
Step 1: Prepare Your Chipotle Sauce
The chipotle sauce is one of the staples of the Taco Bell menu. Everybody is familiar with its zesty, smoky, and spicy taste. Getting the sauce right is pretty important, and fortunately quite easy.
Just mix your chipotle sauce ingredients in a bowl and let it sit for an hour. It is important to do this step first. Otherwise, you will be sitting there in front of four hot and ready melts waiting for your sauce to finish.
Step 2: Prepare Your Chicken Marinade
Place your marinade ingredients in a ziplock bag. The majority of your wet ingredients will be inside of it, including your lime juice, Worcestershire sauce, apple cider vinegar, and olive oil.
Likewise, include your minced garlic, cilantro, tbsp of chili powder, tsp of salt, tsp of black pepper, and tsp of cumin into the bag.
When your ingredients are ready, simply mix the bag. The ingredients should come together in a marinade blend that you will soak your chicken in.
Step 3: Marinade Your Chicken
Acquire two boneless, skinless chicken breasts and place them in the marinade bag after you have shaken it. Submerge the chicken in the juice and zip the bag closed. It should not take long to marinate, at most a few minutes.
Once your chicken is resting in the bag, shake it thoroughly. Doing this will marinate your chicken and give it a zesty kick. The seasoning and lime juice mix quite nicely here.
Be careful not to spill any of the ingredients. We highly recommend getting a Ziplock bag for this process.
Step 4: Grill Your Chicken
Once your chicken breasts have had time to marinate, place them whole onto a grill. We recommend using outdoor grills for this step.
Grill each breast for around 8 minutes on each side. Flip the breast when the bottom starts to become brown. Do not forget to cook each side thoroughly. Once you finish grilling, allow your chicken time to cool down.
Step 5: Cut Your Chicken
Once your chicken cools down, take each breast and chop them into strips. These strips should be thick, not stringy or thin.
Make sure the center of the chicken meat has had enough time to cook. If it feels too cool or looks pink, it may need more time.
Step 6: Cook Your Tortillas
Next, it is time to cook your tortillas over a stove, skillet, or grill. Make sure they are large flour tortillas. If you prefer smaller tortillas, that will work as well, but you will have some ingredients left over.
Make sure each side has had time to heat up without burning any of the tortillas. Place each tortilla near the center of the flame to prevent yourself from cooking them unevenly.
Step 7: Throw In Your Shredded Cheese And Chicken
You should have two cups of shredded cheddar cheese. Allocate these two cups into even measurements depending on how many tortillas you want. This means ¼ of a cup if you made four tortillas.
Once both sides of the tortillas are cooked and you no longer need to flip them, drizzle your shredded cheese over one side of each tortilla. The heat should melt the cheese within a minute or so.
While you are doing this, throw in your cooked chicken. The chicken is going to mix excellently with the melted cheese. Make sure your ingredients are not too crowded, otherwise it can be hard to roll the melts.
Step 8: Add Your Chipotle Sauce
Now it is time for the moment you have all been waiting for. It is time to drizzle in some of your delicious chipotle sauce.
Try out your chipotle sauce first of all Give it a taste and see if it holds up to Taco Bell standards. A good chipotle sauce is not too thick. It should be smooth and rich, not chunky. Likewise, the best chipotle sauce has had time to sit. It should look pale and pinkish, similar to the sauce they serve in your menu items.
If it tastes delicious, coat each tortilla in a top layer of Chipotle sauce. Do not add too much sauce, or you could kill the smokiness of the chicken.
Step 9: Roll Your Chicken Chipotle Melts
Finally, it is time to roll up your melts. Line up your ingredients along the center of the tortillas and scoot them away from the edges. They should form a solid line down the middle.
A good rule of thumb to remember is that if your food is touching the edges of your tortilla, you have added too much and must remove some. Otherwise, you will have trouble rolling the melt, and food may spill out of the sides or rip the tortilla.
Once the tortilla is cool and you have let the cheese melt, take the end of it and crease it upwards towards the opposite end. It should form a small fold.
Next, take an adjacent edge and gently roll down towards the edge opposite of it. Keep going until you finish rolling it. Repeat this step with each melt.
Step 10: Enjoy
After you have gone through these directions, feel free to chow down on your delicious meal.
We recommend a variety of sides that go perfectly with this meal, like fries, seasoned rice, and even nachos.
Sauces And Sides for Taco Bell Chicken Chipotle Melts
There are a variety of potential side items for making your own Taco Bell chicken chipotle melts.
These are our suggestions but feel free to try to make your personalized sides. You might be surprised with what you come up with.
Nachos and Nacho Cheese
Taco Bell chicken chipotle melts with nachos and nacho cheese are a killer combo. You can make the nacho cheese yourself or buy it at a store. Taco Bell uses golden nacho cheese that you can mimic at home personally in under 15 minutes.
Tortilla Chips and Salsa
If you like spicy food, serve your chipotle melts with some tortilla chips and habanero salsa instead. You can make this salsa using habaneros, jalapeños, tomatoes, onions, water, and garlic cloves.
Seasoned French Fries
You can also serve your Taco Bell chicken chipotle melts with seasoned fries and potato chips. Simply deskin and cut some yellow or russet potatoes into fries and set them in a pan with cooking oil. Cook them on each side, flipping them repeatedly. This process should take about 30 minutes.
Potato Skins
If you are a fan of potato skins, you can do something with the skins you have remaining. You can cook them up into fried potato skins with black pepper and cheese, or even make your own homemade salted potato crisps. Either make an excellent side for this snack.
Taco Bell Chicken Chipotle Melts for Parties and Groups
Everybody loves Taco Bell. Taco Bell chicken chipotle melts are the ultimate party food.
When you come out of the kitchen with a fresh tray of homemade Taco Bell chicken chipotle melts, you can fool your friends into thinking they are store-bought. They will be more than impressed when they find out you cooked them yourself.
For large groups, we recommend serving two chipotle melts per person. When you use large tortillas, two servings should be enough to satisfy your hungry guests.
Be sure to have plenty of sides and drinks as well. Taco Bell restaurants serve their chipotle melts with soft drinks like Pepsi, Coca-Cola, and Dr. Pepper.
How Long Does It Take To Make Taco Bell Chicken Chipotle Melts?
After making your chipotle sauce, the entire process takes about 30 to 45 minutes. In this amount of time, you can cook upwards of 4 to 10 chicken chipotle melts. This recipe is a quick and very reliable one.
Just remember to get your chipotle sauce done ahead of time. It should sit for an hour, no longer, no shorter than that. This step will be the longest in the entire process.
It is not a particularly long recipe to make at all. What is so convenient about these chipotle melts is that you can cook enough of them within an hour to feed a small party of people.
What Does a Taco Bell Chicken Chipotle Melt Taste Like?
Taco Bell Chicken Chipotle melts taste tangy, zesty, and creamy. They perfectly blend the crispiness of the chicken and tortilla with the smoothness of the chipotle sauce.
The white meat chicken breast is quite soft and tender. The cheese is gooey and fresh, meaning your teeth will have a nice time tearing away at your chipotle melt.
The most notorious aspect of the dish is the chipotle sauce, which is very sharp. This sauce has a tricky taste to describe. It has a peppery, smokey sensation that exaggerates the sharpness of the cheddar.
Savor Your Food
These melts are best when you eat them slowly. If you can not resist temptation, you can always make more melts in less than half an hour. These melts are delectable, easy to make, and inexpensive.
We hope you enjoy your melts!