Quarantine Recipe: Mighty Taco’s Chicken Fajita Quesadillas

March 24, 2020 Jamey Alea 0 Comments

As more of us are getting quarantined, sheltered in place, locked down and generally stuck inside, I’ve seen people taking on “quarantine projects.” I have a few of my own! In addition to my job hunt in the time of cholera, I’ve been painting D&D miniatures, cleaning my house, and perfecting my Animal Crossing island. But at least one of my quarantine projects has been a huge success. I was determined to reverse engineer and perfectly recreate my favorite fast food item: Mighty Taco’s chicken fajita quesadillas. With buffito sauce. And since it’s been such a huge success, I want to share it with everyone.

I undertook this project originally because I didn’t feel safe about eating fast food or takeout in a pandemic. After reading this helpful article, I have decided that it’s probably okay to eat takeout after all. So as long as Mighty stays open, I guess you can get the real thing. But if you’re legitimately quarantined, or afraid of going out, or just want to try making your own (spoiler: they’re honestly a little better than the real thing), here’s my recipe and notes!

What You’ll Need:

• Flour tortillas. The biggest ones you can find. I got x-large and wished they were bigger when I was folding the quesadillas.
• Chicken, cooked and shredded
• Frank’s hot sauce
• Butter (optional)
• Shredded cheese. I used mexican blend with excellent results.
• Banana peppers
• A panini press

I didn’t include amounts for the ingredients; use as much in each quesadilla as you can fit, make as much as you need depending on how many you want to make. I don’t normally write recipes, sorry.

After my chicken breast was cooked up and shredded, I covered it in sauce by throwing the shredded chicken and the sauce in a big ziploc bag and shaking it up. If you are trying to make a Mighty Taco quesadilla, you are probably from Buffalo, so I am not going to go on at length about making wing sauce, because you’re going to make it how you normally make it regardless. I will say that I made my normal version of wing sauce with the normal amount of butter I usually like, and it was slightly too buttery, so I’m going to use a little less than normal next time.

(If you prefer the fajita beef quesadillas to the chicken ones, you could probably just substitute beef here, although I haven’t tried it. If you prefer the regular hot/med/mild taco flavor to the buffito sauce, you’re completely on your own because I’ve never had them that way!)

Spread out your quesadilla and throw some chicken, shredded cheese and banana peppers in the middle. (If you like it with jalepeños, you could definitely just do that substitute no problem.) The first time I did it, it came out a little too watery because the banana peppers were too juicy, you might want to press them or whatever so they’re not super juicy. You can add a little extra sauce if you want. (But if the sauce gets on the grill, it’s gonna be smoky.)

Then you fold it up like an envelope. (First the long way, then the ends. If that doesn’t make sense, there’s a picture below where you can see how it’s folded.) Ideally it would be closed on both sides, like the real thing, but we found that a little hard even with the x-large quesadillas, so if you have this problem, leaving one end open might be better than having it burst.

Then throw that sucker on the panini press. Honestly, the panini press is CLUTCH. I’m sorry if you don’t have one. I’m sure it would still taste super good if you made it in a pan, but what really makes it feel like the real thing is those grill lines. And it really makes the quesadilla the right consistency too. Just keep an eye on it, it took maybe 6 minutes to cook I want to say.

They were amazing, and honestly, tasted way closer to the real thing than I expected for a first try. It was pretty close! Honestly the biggest difference is that the quality of chicken I used was higher, and I put more chicken in it, so it was pretty much like a Mighty Taco quesadilla except slightly better. And it’s pretty easy to make too! Highly recommended comfort quarantine food!!!