Chicken Tinga Recipe- Spicy Mexican-Style Stewed Chicken in Chipotle Sauce

[Music] hello this is chef john from food wishes.com with chicken tinga that's right this is one of the most versatile and delicious chicken recipes i know and while extremely easy it does take some time to make and involves about half a dozen steps but the incredible burritos tostadas and tacos it produces more than make the effort worthwhile and that is a guarantee otherwise your dinero back so with that let's go ahead and get started with the first step and that's going to be to poach a whole bunch of chicken thighs and we'll be using the boneless skinless variety so i'm going to go ahead and transfer three pounds into this pot and then to that we will add three whole peeled garlic cloves as well as one onion that we've cut in half we will also toss in some kosher salt as well as a nice big pinch of dry oregano and then we will finish this off with a quart of homemade chicken stock that i've transferred into a carton to make it easier to pour so we'll go ahead and pour in four cups of chicken stock or broth and then because i like to decide things i also decide to add a cup of water and then what we'll want to do is crank up our heat and bring this up to a simmer on high and i should mention if you want you could use all water here but by cooking our chicken in a stock or broth we're going to get a little more delicious and savory flavor and then what we'll do one simmering is back our heat down to medium low and simmer this for 30 minutes and other than maybe giving it a stir or two there's really nothing to do we'll just hang out letting that simmer for about 30 minutes at which point it should look something like this our onion halves will have softened up and our chicken will be fully cooked through and then what we'll do at this point besides turn off the heat is use a strainer to remove our onions into a bowl and definitely save those we're going to use those for the sauce and then we'll do the exact same thing with our chicken thighs removing those to a bowl and by the way people are always asking for product recommendation videos which to be honest i really don't have that much interest in doing unless the money's right but this type of strainer is definitely one product i do recommend and in the business we call that a spider which is short for spider web but anyway we're going to go ahead and remove our onion and chicken which we will allow to cool before we tear it up and then what we'll do next is go ahead and strain our stock because in the next step we're going to reduce that by about half and you may notice as i remove this strainer how some fat is rising to the top if you were smart you would use that for this next step which is to saute one onion over medium heat in the same pot and because i'm not smart or at least didn't think of it i did mine in some olive oil which will work it's just not as good as chicken fat and the chicken fat was free but either way we're going to saute one onion with a big pinch of salt and we will cook those onions for about four or five minutes or so or until they sort of soften up and start to get a little color on them which is what i have right about here and once that's been accomplished we'll go ahead and pour that strained liquid back in and then crank our heat back up to high because as i mentioned we do want to reduce this down by about half and no we're not going to measure but what we can do is sort of use our wooden spoon as a guide and we can sort of see the level we start at and we'll continue boiling that on high until we have about this much left which i'm going to say is about half or maybe a little less so that is looking pretty good and at this point we can go ahead and add our sauce mixture which by the way you should be making while this is reducing okay we're not just going to stand there watching a pop oil while fascinating it's just not good time management so while that liquid is reducing here's what you're going to want to do we're going to want to buy and open one can of chipotle peppers which come packed in this amazing adobo sauce and if you're not familiar these are fully ripened red jalapeno that are smoked over a fire and then packed in this thick chili sauce and to prepare the sauce we will add those to our boiled onions in a blender and because that adobo sauce it comes in is so delicious we don't want to waste any so we'll rinse out our can with a little bit of stock or water and pour that in and then we're also going to want to add about three cups or so of tomato product personally i'm going to use a can of san marzano tomatoes because they're amazing but if they're in season peeled in freshly chopped vine ripened tomatoes would also be amazing and yes that is a little bit of basil you see that was packed with the tomatoes and no that's not going to be a problem it might even help and then what we'll do is go ahead and pop on the lid and blend this nice and smooth and as you know we like to start off slow so i'll pulse on and off using the on off button cleverly avoiding the pulse button that's actually provided on the left side but anyway once that gets going we'll crank it up a little and blend this until smooth at which point we'll go ahead and transfer that into our pot and by the way a little tip to avoid splashes if you pour that against your spoon like this instead of straight in you generally don't have to worry about any hot liquid splashing up and yes if you're keeping score at home that is one of the official 99 problems and yes of course off camera i'm going to grab a spatula and clean that blender out into the pot and then what we'll do once our sauce mixture has been stirred in is crank our heat up to medium high because we want to bring this up to a simmer and cook it for about 50 minutes or so and as usual when we do recipes like this if you want to skim some of that foam and fat from the top that is certainly you're right that's just you cooking and i did a little bit but either way like i said we'll let this cook for about 15 minutes or so and i say or so because you may want to cook it longer if you want to reduce a little and thicken up even more okay some people like a thin tinga and some people like a thick tinga and right here is what mine looked like when i thought it had simmered long enough so i don't want mine thin or thick i want it perfect which in my opinion is what this is and then what we'll do at this point is reduce our heat to medium low and we can go ahead and add our chicken that we were tearing up into bite-sized pieces while our sauce was cooking and i should mention you can do this at any point once your thighs are cool enough to handle and then you can just pop that in the fridge until needed but anyway at some point we will tear up the chicken as shown and once we're happy with our sauce we'll go ahead and stir it in and finally our chicken ting is done in about 10 or 15 minutes okay we definitely want to give that chicken enough time to heat through and absorb all these amazing flavors and speaking of amazing flavors i do highly recommend using the boneless skinless thigh here but if you're one of these lunatics that doesn't like chicken thigh this exact same recipe will work with chicken breast you just can't poach it as long so that's going to be up to you okay you guys are the bosses of making sure your guests give your tingas lots of bazingas but anyway like i said we'll cook that for about 10 or 15 minutes at which point we'll grab a fork and give it a taste and check this evening and depending on how salty your broth was you may or may not have to add some salt but mine was perfect so i went ahead and served it up in something a little more attractive and finished it up with some mexican cotija cheese as well as some freshly chopped cilantro and that's it my chicken ting is done and ready to enjoy in so many incredible ways burritos quesadillas flattas and of course tacos but if you happen to know how to make your own crispy baked tortilla bowls like i might show you how to do very soon you could make what i call a tostada or what the wildlings might call a taco salad and for me that is just about the best way to enjoy this incredible chicken recipe so let me grab a fork and dig in and above and beyond the absolutely gorgeous color that my friends is just a truly truly delicious butter chicken to me this just had the perfect balance of spice and a deep rich savoriness that other stewed chicken dishes just don't have and there's just something about eating out of an edible bowl that makes everything more fun whether you're breaking off pieces and scooping it up or crumbling it in crouton style as my mexican friends in england would say it really goes down a treat in fact it was really hard to stop eating this okay that's enough actually i think i have time for one more bite but anyway that's it how i chicken tinga sure it takes a while and there's a bunch of steps but the results are absolutely spectacular so i really do hope you give this a try soon head over to foodwishes.com for all the ingredient amounts and more info as usual and is always enjoy [Music]

Channel: Food Wishes

Views: 1,139,120

Keywords: Chicken, Tinga, Mexican, Spicy, Stewed, Chipotle, Sauce, braised, chef, john, foodwishes, cooking, food, recipes, taco, salad, filling, vitamix

Id: uRWkUiGI-T4

Length: 8min 54sec (534 seconds)

Published: Tue Sep 12 2017

Reddit Comments

[u/AlbertBevia]

Chef John is the best, this stew looks so good and loaded with flavor