Tag: crockpot

Crockpot Chicken Tinga

I found some important info about adobo sauce, which I think has helped. Also, this is the crockpot-adapted version, no other cooking vessel got dirtied. We’ll see. Of course I neglected to make notes of the intermediate experiment which worked so well; we’ll see how this crockpot-specific version goes.

Ingredients:

  • 2T olive oil
  • 4 yellow onions, minced
  • 10 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3 pounds chicken (frozen in big chunks)
  • 2T powdered ancho chile
  • 1t freshly ground black pepper
  • 2T cumin seeds
  • 1/8t ground cloves
  • 2T apple cider vinegar
  • 4T oregano
  • Couple of good pinches of salt
  • 4 cups chicken stock (bouillon)

Directions:

Place onions and garlic at bottom of crockpot. Add all seasonings, and layer the chicken pieces on top of that. Pour boiling water over this to cover.

Cover the crockpot and set on high.

When done, shred chicken with forks. Probably add flour or masa to thicken.

Pork Tinga Experiment

That is, a spicy pork filling for things like tacos.

Also, the second experiment in the little crockpot.

Ingredients:

  • Small pork roast, 1.7 lbs with bone in my case, trimmed of excess fat and divided into natural pieces
  • 1 medium onion, minced
  • 2 tsp minced garlic
  • 1 tsp thyme
  • ½ tsp salt
  • 2 cups beef broth
  • 1 T olive oil
  • 1 T oregano
  • 1 tsp cumin seed
  • 1 roma tomato, minced
  • 1 ancho chile, cut up
  • 1 bay leaf
  • 1 tsp powdered guajilo chile
  • ½ tsp chile arbol
  • ½ tsp cayenne (ran out of chile arbol)

Preparation:

Put the onion, tomato, and seasonings into a small crockpot.  Put the meat on top.

Add beef broth slowly (it takes a while to work its way down through the layers) until nearly covered (remember, crockpot should be less than ¾ full).

Cover and cook on high for 5 hours.

Take out the bone, picking off and returning any edible bits.  Mash the remaining meat with a potato masher (it should be cooked enough for this to work).

Notes:

I served this in soft corn tortillas.  Adding crystal hot sauce made it considerably better, it was not sufficiently seasoned initially. There’s too much liquid to use directly, dish it up with a slotted spoon or have very soupy tacos.

We got 4 servings out of this, each of which filled three tacos decently. Adding some garnishes, chopped onion and sour cream for example, would probably help.

The original recipe called for tomato sauce rather than actual tomato, and had no cumin in it (shock, horror!). And had numerous other differences (and was for a much bigger batch).

I’d want to increase the chiles, the cumin, and the herbs.  And add something, beer or wine or vinegar, to move the flavor that direction a bit.