Watch how it’s made
Every step in 1:13 — from the ingredients to the finished dish.
This is the lowest-carbohydrate recipe on the site at 8 grams a serving, and almost all of that comes from the avocado itself. There is no bread, no wrap and no base. The avocado is the container.
It also solves a specific problem: buffalo chicken is normally delivered on a bun, on fries, or in a wrap, and the chicken was never the issue.
Buffalo sauce has almost no carbohydrate
Classic buffalo sauce is cayenne pepper sauce and butter. That is it. Two tablespoons of hot sauce carries under a gram of carbohydrate, and the butter carries none.
What you have to read is the label on the bottle. Some commercial buffalo and wing sauces add sugar, honey or corn syrup, and a few carry 5 grams or more per serving. Plain cayenne pepper sauce is the one to look for; the ingredient list should be short.
Yogurt instead of ranch
The blue cheese or ranch that normally comes with buffalo chicken is where most of the calories and saturated fat live. Greek yogurt with a little garlic powder and vinegar gives you the same cooling contrast, adds protein instead of fat, and lets the heat come through rather than smothering it.
A small amount of crumbled blue cheese on top still works if you want it. An ounce adds about 6 grams of protein and 100 calories, and a little goes a long way.
Choosing and scooping the avocado
It needs to yield to gentle pressure at the stem end and no more. A soft avocado collapses when you scoop it and you end up with mush rather than a bowl.
Scoop out a tablespoon or two extra from each half to make room for the filling, and mash that into the yogurt sauce rather than wasting it.
The fat is the point, not a compromise
Half an avocado carries around 15 grams of fat, mostly monounsaturated. In a meal with 8 grams of carbohydrate, that fat and the 30 grams of protein are what make it a lunch rather than a snack.
People sometimes worry about avocado on a weight-conscious diet. In practice a meal this low in carbohydrate and this high in protein and fat tends to keep people satisfied for a long time, which matters more than the calorie count of any single ingredient.
Making it work as a packed lunch
The chicken mixture keeps three days refrigerated and is arguably better on the second day once the sauce has soaked in.
Cut the avocado fresh. There is no reliable way to keep a cut avocado from browning for eight hours, and this takes two minutes to assemble.