Category: Personal

Mexican Spicy Chicken

Taco filling; no doubt also useful as a burrito filling or even added to a quesadilla, but not tested beyond tacos yet.  This is an attempt to report what I actually did, rather than the recipe I started from :-).  See notes at the end for thoughts towards the future.

Ingredients:

  • 2T olive oil
  • 4 yellow onions, minced
  • 10 cloves garlic, minced
  • 3 pounds chicken in half inch cubes (I mixed breast and thigh)
  • 2T old hot Hungarian paprika (too much)
  • 1t fresh black pepper
  • 1T generic paprika
  • 2T cumin seeds
  • 1 dried  Ancho chile snipped into 1/2″ pieces
  • 1/2 cup Mrs. Renfrew’s medium salsa
  • 1/2 cup overage Zinfandel
  • 4T oregano
  • Couple of good pinches of salt
  • 4 cups chicken stock (bouillon)
  • 2T white flour mixed in 4T water
  • 3T olive oil
  • small corn tortillas

Directions:

Sauté garlic and onions in 2T olive oil until lightly browned.

Cook chicken cubes in 3T olive oil.  When half done add all the dry seasonings.  Keep well stirred.

Bring stock to a boil.  Add cooked onions and garlic, and cooked chicken and spices.  Cook for half an hour at least.

At around the last 5 minutes, stir in the flour and water to thicken.

Heat pairs of tortillas on a lightly oiled grill until they are soft and perhaps starting to brown in spots.  Fill each pair of tortillas with a big spoon of chicken filling.

Notes

Kind of aiming towards the kind of spicy chicken filling you get at places like Pinedas Tacos.  That includes cubed rather than shredded chicken.

This was, if anything, a little too spicy. I’d skip the Hungarian paprika next time, and substitute a dark-flavored Mexican pepper, ground.  Also, more cumin.  And possibly still more salt (I started out conservative since I used stock, which tends to be very salty).

Also a bit too liquid.  I’d like to get it down to a less liquid consistency without the thickening.  Maybe less water, more cooking.  The original recipe dredged the chicken in flour to start, and probably got some thickening out of that.

Basically fairly close to goal, though.  I’d work towards using some standard tomato product plus more seasoning rather than the salsa, to make it more reproducible and less dependent on processed ingredients.

Might be worth trying the same basic recipe with pork cubes.