Easy "Elote" Chicken Quesadilla Recipe with Corn + Cotija Cheese (2024)

I’ve had a long love affair with Elote—the charred Mexican street corn that’s coated in a glorious heart attack mixture of sour cream, Cotija cheese and mayonnaise. Since I enjoyany excuse to use the latter (mayo is my happy place of condiments) I thought I’d get really crazy and create a slightly lighter, deconstructed version to stuff inside a corn tortilla. And in the process of creating this “elote-style” easy chicken quesadilla recipe, I got to break out my grill pan for the first time in my new apartment, and discover if it was somehow immune to the inevitable cyclone of smoke that usually envelops all my belongings.

The answer? No, sir. It was not.

There are certain foods that make it impossible to not have my sheets, curtains and couch reek at the end of the workday. (I’m looking at you, salmon).But I used to think this was just a consequence of living in a studio apartment, where I could simultaneously have one foot in the kitchen and the other in the living room—and where my bedroom was a sleeping loft that inevitably trapped any kitchen scents as they rose.

My last living situation, where Charlie and I cohabitated for a small stretch last fall, did not leave muchwiggle room for either of us to be acceptable roommates. That we managed not to kill each other, is truly a testament to my patient other half, and the fact that he travels for work half the month. Nonetheless, I’m sure Charliecould fill a full legal pad with grievances. But more so than the dirty tissues I left around the apartment, or the clothes chair that housed wayward dresses from severalseasons, it was the smells I inflicted on all areas of the apartment that he most had to muscle through in our first shared space.

When we moved into our new loft, with its high ceilings and floor-to-ceiling windows and bedroom with a door, I assumed that going to sleep with the unwelcome perfume of masala or fish tacos on our pillows would be one of those annoyances that could be crossed off the list. But it turns out hell hath no fury like my cast iron grill pan.

Two corn cobs and one chicken thigh into my first grilling expedition and the floor-to-ceiling windows were already fogged with thick, charcoal air. Fortunately, the draft made it’s way outside before it could suffocate my sheets in the other room. And more thankfully, the happiness these elote corn and grilled chicken quesadillas brought my stomach were well worth what my lungs suffered through in the process.

If you have an outdoor grill, you’ll find that this recipe is even easier and requires almost no cleanup. I’m always hesitant to bring corn that needs shucking into my home, no matter how many roomsordoors. So if you have a deck, where my mother and I usually relegate my father for shucking duty during summers away, all the better. After the corn and chicken thighs each get their own turn charring over the flame, they get tossed with a lightened up elote sauce. Yes, there’s still lots of mayo involved. But I nixed the sour cream and add a modest amount of cheese.

If you wanted to get rid of the dairy altogether, the corn-chicken filling, thanks to my best friend (mayo!), might be enough to glue the tortillas together and prevent them from opening up on the grill. But in my eyes, a quesadilla isn’t really complete without a little cheddar, and since this recipe falls further on the hedonism side of the healthy-hedonist spectrum, I decided to go for it. Cotija isn’t a great melting cheese, so it’s more there for flavor and as an homage to the inspiration (elote). If you don’t want to buy two types of cheese, you can always omit it.

As I was waiting for the quesadillas to crisp up on the grill, and helping myself to the filling, I realized how good the charred corn-chicken mixturewas on its own. So if anelote chicken salad ismore your jam, you can omit the cheese and eat it paleo-style scooped on top of a bed of romaine, or healthy hedonist-style on toasted gluten-free sandwich bread.

Even if you don’t own an outdoor grill, and live in a small doorless apartment, this easy chicken quesadilla recipe with Mexican street corn is so good, it won’t matter that you’ll be smelling it for days. Because you will be thinking about it anyway.

Corn season is almost upon us friends, so happy cooking!

From one healthy hedonist, to another,Phoebe