Green Chicken Chili - Food Wishes - Chili Recipe
hello this is chef john from food wishescomm with green chicken chili that's
right don't let that drab green color orquestionable plating fool you
this chicken and white bean chili wasincredibly delicious and surprisingly
easy to make and that this came out sogood is no surprise since it's based on
one of my favorite all-time foods chiliverde which is basically chunks of pork
stewed with tomatillos so that's whatinspired this and by the way just so
everybody's clear this is a green chilimade with chicken and not a chili made
with green chicken so with that let's goahead and get started with the
aforementioned non green chicken andwhat I have here is about three pounds
of boneless skinless chicken thighswhich generally comes with little bits
of fat attached here and there and youcould if you want to trim that off but
we're not going to and I'll explain whyin a second but what we are gonna do
this season both sides generously withkosher salt even though I'm only going
to show you one side the other sidelooked remarkably similar to this and
then what we'll do once our chickenthighs are seasoned it's head over to
the stove where I have a dry non-stickskillet so over high heat and we'll go
ahead and place in our chicken thighsand the reason we're going with a dry
pan here is because as this chickencomes up the temperature that fat we
were talking about earlier is gonnastart to melt and that's actually gonna
prove enough fat to brown this chickenin and I use the term loosely since we
really don't have any skin here to getnice and brown and crisp but you'll see
after about four minutes on high weshould get some decent golden color and
I should mention I did this in twobatches since as you know when we brown
things we generally don't like yourcrowd the pan but anyway we'll go ahead
and brown those thighs off about 4minutes per side and once done we'll
transfer those into a bowl to cool andonce those do cool down to room temp
we'll go ahead and chop them up intowhatever size pieces we want and sure if
you want you could cut up the chickenraw and brown it that way but I think
the texture and appearance is better ifyou do it this way
Plus cutting up cooked chicken thighs issignificantly more enjoyable than
cutting up raw chicken thighs so we'llgo ahead and wait for that chicken to
cool down and while we do we'll move onto make our sauce featuring the star of
the show and massive time saver a jar ofwhat's sold as salsa verde and this
stuff goes by many names but what we'relooking for is a tomatillo bay salsa and
how you know is you're gonna check theingredients and the first ingredient
must be twomattias followed by probably onions and
chilies or if has a bunch of weird stuffin there don't use it and I'll give more
info about this on the blog so we'll goahead and add 1 24 ounce jar that
followed by some kind of fire roastedgreen chilies which could be jarred or
canned or in my case I had a package offrozen hatch chilies which I thought
about that very popular can variety atthe market will work and we'll go ahead
and add that to the blender along with afew cloves of peeled garlic as well as
one sliced up jalapeno pepper that Iremove most but not all of the seeds and
membranes and we'll go ahead and finishup with a nice big handful of freshly
pick cilantro stems and leaves by theway the stems tastes exactly the same
and believe it or not that's it once allthat's in there we'll head over and
blend this up and as usual we'll startoff on low and finish on high until the
mixture is very smooth and extremelygreen and that's it our sauce is prepped
we will simply set that aside and moveon to cutting up our chicken which by
now should be cool enough to handle andwhat I'll do using a cleaver and some
tongs so I don't have to wash my handsbefore I move the camera is cut this
chicken up into some bite-sized piecesand for me I shoot for about one inch
cubes but literally any size will workfrom finely diced to not cutting them at
all so you're gonna have to decide whatsize to make yours
I mean you are after all the uncle Billyof your chili but one thing to keep in
mind the smaller you cut it the fasterit's gonna cook but anyway I'm gonna go
ahead and cut up mine as shown and thegreat thing about using a cleaver is it
actually doubles as a bench scraper itmakes it really easy to transfer this
back into the bowl and then once thatsaid we can head to the stove and finish
this chili off so we will transfer ourcut chicken into this saucepan along
with any and all accumulated juiceswhich there should be a lot of and
speaking of rich delicious gelatinousjuices that's exactly why I use chicken
thighs instead of chicken breasts forthis but yes if you have two breasts
will work and under protest I will tellyou how to do that in the blog post but
anyway we'll add our chicken as well asour sauce which is one of the most
beautiful green colors you'll ever wantto see and oh how I wish it would stay
like that but as you'll see it doesn'twhich is still ok and besides our sauce
base will also have to season this upwith a whole bunch of ground
i'm also gonna toss in a spoon atchipotle pepper because i'm tired of
using cayenne + this has some nicesmokiness to it and yes of course I'm
kidding about the Cayenne but not aboutadding some freshly ground black pepper
and then 2 ingredients so secret I hadto blur the screen actually I think the
autofocus on my lens is broken that wasreally some dried oregano and salt but
anyway we'll go ahead and season that upas well as rinse out our blender with a
splash of water and add that and we'llgo ahead and stir all this together as
well as set our heat to medium-high andthen from there we will use our standard
stewing technique which means once itstarts to bubble we will back our heat
down to medium-low and we'll go aheadand simmer this relatively gently
stirring occasionally for about an houror so or until our chicken is tender as
of course determined by you and againthat's going to depend on how big you
cut it and as I've already warned you asthis simmers that beautiful bright green
color is going to sort of turn into amore drab olive green but while we'll
lose a little that vibrant color thegood news is all those vibrant a stay
intact so I let mine simmer for about anhour until my chicken was nice and
tender and I didn't guess I tested itwith a fork and then once we determined
our chickens ready we will go ahead andadd the last major ingredients a couple
cans of white beans that have beendrained and rinsed and we'll go ahead
and stir those in and basically as soonas those he through you can technically
serve but I generally like to let thatsimmer for at least 15 minutes or so
since those starches from the beans tendto thicken up the chili a little more so
that's what I did and about 15 to 20minutes later I decided that was enough
it was time to eat but before thathappens of course we have to check our
seasoning and we're mostly checking forsalt but maybe you wanted a little
hotter who knows so check it out andthen assuming we're happy with the
seasonings we'll go ahead and grab aladle and serve some of this up into a
warm bowl and right here you can get agreat look at that final texture and
what I think is the perfect thicknessand by the way if you want yours a
little thinner throw in some chickenstock that's just you cooking but anyway
we'll go ahead and ladle that up andthen we will add a big old dollop of
sour cream and then because we werefeeling a little insecure about the
colorwe'll try to hide that with a few slices
of avocado which ironically just madethat Chili's color look less green but
anyway I continued on by sprinkling oversome pumpkin seeds because they're green
and also a common ingredient in Mexicancooking except after I did and finished
off with a sprig of cilantro and tooksome pictures I decided I didn't like
the seeds since they looked likesomething somebody accidentally dropped
on top so I flicked those off andcontinued down and felt a little better
and then I grabbed a spoon and dug inand felt a lot better because this
really is one of the most deliciousChile's you'll ever want to taste I mean
I really do love red and white Chili'sbut there's just something so
deliciously different about this greensauce and how well it works with those
tender chunks of chicken and of coursewhite beans and while this stuff really
is amazing enough to yell by itself it'seven more vantastic if you eat this with
some corn bread or better yet somebeautiful warm homemade corn tortillas
which I'm hoping to show you how to makevery soon so consider yourselves teased
but anyway that's it what I'm callinggreen chicken chili now was standing at
having not the most gorgeous green colorin the world I really do love everything
about this chili except please doyourself a favor and do not sprinkle
over any pumpkin seedssince above and beyond their appearance
the texture was all wrong all right itwas almost like there was little
undercooked beans in there or some kindof little pieces of chicken gristle so
do not under any circumstances add thatto yours
but besides that I really do hope yougive this great chili a try soon so head
over to food wishes comm for all theingredient amounts of more info as usual
and as always enjoy
you
you