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I’ve got a lot to say about why I think you need this recipe in your arsenal, but it’s probably best to get straight into the recipe so you first see how easy it is. Here are all the ingredients you’ll need to gather, and you can screenshot the list now or refer to the description for a text-based recipe.
It’s all gonna go into a slow cooker so it works as a base for weekday meals. Weekday cooking has to be easy and produce food that maintains a pleasurable texture three days later, and braising meat in an electric crock pot achieves both. Start with a whole white onion that’s been broken down, be it roughly diced by hand, in a chopper or with a mandolin. Put those onions in the pot, plus three garlic cloves. You could properly mince these, but for a low-effort everyday meal like this, one just smash it to irregular bits with the side of a knife. Add one can of fire-roasted tomatoes. 14 and a half ounces is a standard size, but you can give or take an ounce or two. It doesn’t have to be exact. Same goes for the chicken thighs. 2 pounds is a good amount to make sure it’s a big enough batch to last several meals over, but you don’t get to choose exactly how much chicken comes in a pack, so anywhere between 2 to 3 pounds will be alright. Once you get closer to 4 pounds of chicken, you’ll have to up the salt accordingly. To my 2 pound pack, I’ll sprinkle 3 teaspoons of salt. Viewers who have been taking notes will point out that one teaspoon of salt per pound of meat is my typical ratio, but there also has to be enough salt to season the onions-- hence the 50% increase.
This is the major flavor contributor of the dish: chipotle peppers canned in adobo sauce. Plop 2 peppers in if you’re not too keen on spice, or 5 if “pica pica” is a phrase in your household that’s strictly reserved for pokemon. A spoonful of the adobo sauce can come along too. For the finishing spices, churn out several big cranks of black pepper, and add 1 teaspoon of ground cumin and 1 teaspoon of oregano. I’ve seen recipes that also add chili powder, a bay leaf, or even sugar, but as long as you have that backbone of cumin and oregano, the base flavor profile will be in the right zone. After that, you can freestyle or abstain as desired. I do tend to get fussy about oregano, since Mexican oregano is totally different from the kind you’d find in an Italian spice blend. If your grocery store carries Mexican oregano, please buy some for this dish. As soon as you grind it between your hands and get a whiff of the aroma, you’ll notice it’s a different ingredient unto itself. If you can only get the other kind oregano, it’ll be fine. I guess…
Cook this all on the low setting of a crock pot for 6 hours if you’re gonna go to bed overnight or work overday, or on the high setting for 3 hours if you don’t wanna wait that long. You could also do all this in a dutch oven over the stove in like, 1 hour depending on how high the heat is, but remember this is deliberately presented as a recipe for electric slow cookers. I feel like crock-pot recipes get popular in the winter, then unfairly forgotten in the summer, whereas my preference is the opposite. I like being able to cook half a week’s worth of lunches without making my house hot and smokey. Is it the traditional means of chicken tinga cookery? Of course not! Tinga recipes date back to the 1800s and the crock pot didn’t exist until 1940. But modern problems require modern solutions, so let the robot do the cooking, and after the requisite number of hours have passed, observe the texture. When the chicken fails to support its own weight, it’s fully cooked and ready to pull. Set it all aside on a plate so it cools enough to handle with bare hands, and shred it apart. You can shred meat with two forks or plastic claws, but if you just let it cool, you won’t need a tool. And why should we put so much importance on resting seared meats, but not slow-cooked ones? Anyway…
At this point, you’ve done it. Chicken tinga. Good job. You could spoon some of the braising liquid on top, call it a day, and you’ll have made a simple, hands-off, totally respectable chicken dish that freezes well, reheats well, and lends itself to dozens of meal preparations. If you’re looking for the lowest-effort meal possible, stop watching now and go enjoy your dinner. To everyone else, this one extra step adds so much flavor for such little effort. Leave the chicken out on the cooling dish, pick out your bay leaf if you added one, and blend this braising liquid into a smooth sauce. It’s gonna get thicker from all that rendered chicken fat and spicier from the chipotle peppers getting fully integrated. Set the crock pot to high and add the shredded chicken back in. You want this to cook for 10 more minutes so the sauce gets a little reduced, and so it can fully adhere to the meat. Now that this meat can be served warm, luxuriating in its own thick sauce, you don’t need to add a salsa when assembling it into a taco. I’ve noticed that a lot of contemporary braised meat recipes instruct you to throw out the cooking liquid out, but this final action creates an asymmetrical return in value. It’s free real estate.
I have tried to increase the flavor even more by searing the chicken first, then browning the onions, then deglazing any remaining pan fond with the acidic tomatoes, then braising everything together, but the improvement of flavor just wasn’t enough to justify all the cleanup. It would totally make sense if you made the whole recipe in one dutch oven on the stove, but if you’ve got a crock pot, I must insist that the hands-off approach is the easiest, most reliable way to make flavorful, shredded chicken. And once you do, you’ve got two pounds of meat that can be added to nachos, quesadillas, burritos, burrito bowls, enchiladas, and of course, tacos. If you followed my instructions on how to make perfect corn tortillas, chicken tinga and a slice of avocado with a lime wedge on the side is a wonderful way to showcase your work. I don’t actually think you need me to pitch you on the hundreds of uses for flavorful shredded chicken— it’s one of the most popular proteins for a reason. Plus I bet you’ve got half the requisite ingredients in your pantry already, so the only ones who still have an excuse are the vegans, and they can swap the poultry for jackfruit. From this point forward, do not talk to me until you’ve tried making chicken tinga at least once… bye bye!
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