Oven-Baked Chicken and Cheese Quesadillas

Quartered chicken and cheese quesadillas sit on a brown plate. a light pink colored sauce sits to the side.

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Oven-Baked Chicken and Cheese Quesadillas

These chicken and cheese quesadillas are baked in the oven for the ultimate easy button spin on the classic recipe. With endless possibilities for customizing, you're going to find yourself coming back to this recipe for both an easy dinner or lunch again and again!

Prep Time10

Cook Time8

Total Time18

Course: Dinner, Lunch

Cuisine: American, Tex Mex

Diet: Gluten Free

Servings: Quesadillas

Author: Cassy Joy Garcia

Ingredients

Avocado oil spray
12 flour tortillas
2 cups shredded chicken
2 tablespoons taco seasoning, store-bought or homemade taco seasoning
3 cups shredded cheese, Monterey Jack or Colby Jack work best!
½ cup salsa, for the dipping sauce, optional
½ cup sour cream, for the dipping sauce, optional

Instructions

Spray a sheet pan with avocado oil spray, and preheat the oven to 300°F. Lay 6 tortillas out on the sheet pan (you will either need to work in batches or use more than one sheet pan).
Add the shredded chicken to a large mixing bowl and sprinkle the taco seasoning over top. Toss until the seasoning is evenly distributed.
Place a ¼ cup of shredded cheese on each tortilla that's laying on the sheet pan. Then, top the cheese with a ⅓ cup of the seasoned chicken, followed by another ¼ cup of cheese.
Place a tortilla on top of each open quesadilla, spray the top tortilla with avocado oil spray, and then bake for 5 minutes.
While the quesadillas are in the oven, whisk together the sour cream and salsa in a bowl.
After 5 minutes in the oven, flip the quesadillas over, and bake them for 3 more minutes. Let the quesadillas cool for a couple of minutes, then cut them and serve alongside the dipping sauce!

Notes

Recipe Modifications:

Add caramelized onions - caramelized onions make EVERYTHING better. They're rich, slightly sweet, totally delicious, and would make for a great quesadilla add. Simply layer them on top of the chicken (before the last cheese layer).
Add green chiles - if you like a little spice, try mixing a can of chopped green chiles in with the shredded chicken and taco seasoning!
Top with pickled onions - pickled onions are another personal favorite and would make for a delicious quesadilla garnish.
Change up the dipping sauce - we made a creamy salsa dipping sauce for this recipe, but there are a lot of dipping sauces that would be delicious. A spicy jalapeno ranch or salsa verde would both be dynamite.
Use a different protein - feel free to swap the shredded chicken for shredded beef, shredded pork, or shredded turkey. This is a great way to use up any leftovers you have in the fridge!
Make it dairy-free - though dairy-free cheeses don't typically melt as well as regular cheese, you could absolutely use a bag of dairy-free shredded cheese to make this recipe dairy-free. You'll also want to use either a dairy-free sour cream or switch up the sauce entirely.
Make it grain-free - Siete makes delicious grain-free tortillas (the almond flour and cassava variations are our favorites) that you can use in place of the flour to make the recipe grain-free.
Make it gluten-free - we used gluten-free flour tortillas for this recipe, so if you can find them at your local grocery store, that's a great option. If you can't, you can use Siete grain-free tortillas or corn tortillas in their place!

Recipe Tips:

Stuff as you'd like - use the measurements we gave for both the cheese and chicken as a guide! If you like a cheesier quesadilla, don't be afraid to up the cheese (and the same goes for the chicken). The baking temperature and time will stay the same.
Make them extra gooey - who doesn't love a gooey cheese-pull when you slice (or bite into) a quesadilla? Grabbing a block of cheese and shredding it yourself is always going to result in a gooier end product (the anti-caking agents in pre-shredded, bagged cheese usually prevent that classic pull), and if you're trying to decide which cheese to buy, we recommend either Colby Jack or Monterey Jack for the gooiest quesadilla.

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