Skip to main content

Ranch Chicken Tacos

"A great change from regular Mexican style tacos. A cool summer dinner, made quick with leftover rotisserie chicken. Naturally you can use any type of chicken cooked the way you like; just be sure to shred it for real tacos."

Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Ranch and chicken work together. They rank in the top 11% of all ingredient pairs, and 154 recipes mention both. Both carry 1-octen-3-ol, which smells mushroom, earthy. The science ↓

The recipe

8 tacos
Prep20 min
Cook5 min

Ingredients

Contains: milk, wheat (auto-detected from the ingredients and method; we can miss things, so check labels)

Also mentioned in the method: tortillas

Directions

Method written by CompKitchen from the ingredient list. Not the original author's method, not kitchen-tested.

  1. Mix the ranch dressing, sour cream, half of the taco seasoning packet and the salsa in a bowl. Refrigerate until serving.

  2. Heat the shredded rotisserie chicken in a skillet over medium heat with the other half of the taco seasoning and a splash of water, stirring, for about 3 minutes until steaming hot throughout.

  3. Warm the corn tortillas in a dry skillet over medium heat, about 20 seconds per side, or wrap them in a damp paper towel and microwave for 30 seconds.

  4. Divide the chicken among the tortillas. Top each with shredded lettuce, chopped tomato, sliced green onions, sliced black olives and shredded Colby-Monterey Jack cheese.

  5. If using, add diced avocado to each taco. Spoon the chilled ranch mixture over the top and serve right away.

By allrecipes. Recipe from Open Recipes.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much aroma chemistry they share, and how many recipes mention both.

  1. Ranch + chickentop 11% of all pairs
    Aroma overlaplow
    Mentioned together154 recipes

    Shared aroma: 1-octen-3-ol (mushroom, earthy).

  2. Tomato + olivetop 1% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together14,164 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  3. Corn + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together2,098 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-nonenal (fatty, green).

  4. Chicken + tomatotop 3% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapstrong
    Mentioned together6,027 recipes

    Shared aroma: 3-hexenal (apple, fruity).

  5. Chicken + oniontop 4% of all pairs
    Aroma overlapmoderate
    Mentioned together17,808 recipes

    Shared aroma: gamma-nonanolactone (coconut, sweet).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

Flavor stand-ins for the lettuce

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (ranch, cream, chicken, corn, tomato, onion, olive):

  1. Potatobetter flavor fit
  2. Capsicumbetter flavor fit
  3. Carrotabout as good a flavor fit
  4. Lettucethe original

Fit is the average pairing score against ranch, cream, chicken, corn, tomato, onion, olive. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes. This compares flavor only: it does not check the job the ingredient does in the dish (bulk, moisture, acidity, structure).