How to Make Chicken Chili

Rob Carson: Hi! My name is Rob Carson, I am a radio personality and I like to cook. And traditionally, when you think of comfort food, you might think of chili. Traditionally, you are thinking of chili as a red sauce with maybe beans and maybe beef. Today, we are doing something a little different; we are doing a White Chicken Chili. It’s a little bit lighter; it’s very flavorful, and you will want it.

The ingredients we are going to need are fairly simple. We are going to need about three or four large chicken breasts and we can cut them up into cubes. You can also use a roast chicken that you can get at the store, they have prepared roast chickens and I have done that several times too. You just pull the already cooked meat off and use the entire chicken, it works very well. This is I am going to sauté and it will become really tender as we cook it.

I have also got a couple of cans of these green chilies; these are four ounces a piece. I have got a little bit of cumin, around five cloves of chopped garlic. One large chopped yellow onion. I have got a bay leaf; I am going to use two of these. When you use a bay leaf, you let it steep in whatever you are cooking for a long amount of time and the flavor comes out of it and you don’t want to heat it because it doesn’t taste good.

I have got chicken broth of about two pounds here. I am using Great Northern Beans, these are white beans, I am going to use three cans of these. These are 15 ounces a piece. You can do the beans with your so-called knife and boil it and all that stuff, that’s fine. But I am putting this together with these; these actually are fairly crisp out of the can. I am going to add chickpeas too, that’s kind of cool. Of course, salt and pepper as always. Olive oil, a little bit of light cream, and a little bit of this wonderful seasoning made by Goya called Adobo.

Big sauté pan, big stockpot, notice everything is big here. Wooden spoon is fine; you can use a ladle. You are going to need a chef’s knife to cut your chicken and your onion. Be careful, it’s sharp. And if you need it, measuring spoons. So you are ready to make some White Chicken Chili? Let’s get started.

I am going to throw in my onion and there’s this all cooking videos, generally. You cook your onions until it’s translucent. I am going to let the onion and garlic cook for a couple of minutes at a high heat, kind of soften up a little bit, then I am going to add my chicken.

I am going to let these flavors melt nicely as the chicken cooks. You want to cook the chicken until it’s done and then of course, it’s going to cook some more when you add it to the stockpot. This is probably going to cook around 6-10 minutes then we are going to add our other ingredients and add it to the stockpot and make our White Chicken Chili. I am going to add my salt and pepper now. I always say, salt and pepper to taste but if you need a measurement, a teaspoon of fresh cracked pepper and about a teaspoon of sea salt or kosher salt.

I am also going to add my cumin, I am going to use about a teaspoon, maybe a little more. I never use measuring spoons a lot of times. Alright, with most canned beans with the exception of like porkin beans, there is a syrupy kind of liquid with them because a lot of the starches from the beans are leached into the water and sits in the can. We want to get rid of that because it’s kind of sticky right now, they stick at the bottom of the can and I don’t want to use the spoon to get them out; we’ll just chop them up. Again, I am using about three cans of Great Northern white beans.

Okay, my chicken is cooking nicely. I am going to take some green chilies. Now I put two cans in here. I am going to put most of them in and we’ll see how it looks. I may decide to add more. I have decided to add more; that didn’t take long, did it? So in here, you’ve got this nice green chili sauce with onion and it’s going to be a really nice base to get started with my chili. I am going to go ahead and add a couple of cups of chicken broth, keep my heat on high. This is, like I said, about a quarter of chicken broth, I am going to use the whole thing, here it is, it’s 32 ounces. Here are my beans.

I like using chicken broth inside of water, especially since this is a chicken based soup. Let’s go ahead and let’s just put all in there. So there we go, that’s with two 32-ounce cartons of chicken broth, that’s a nice consistency. That’s about what you need. You want to get covering your ingredients having enough soup left over for the chili. I am going to do one bay leaf, and I will do like a smaller one here. There you go.

Now, I am going to let this cook for about a half-an-hour at a relatively high heat. You may want to use a thickening agent, a little corn starch or flour, I choose not to. I am going to bring the heat down to the simmer, because I don’t want to scorch the cream; I want it to cook nicely. Give it about another 20-30 minutes, let it cook down a little bit and you are going to have White Chicken Chili.

Alright, so here we are with our White Chicken Chili. Like I said, you can add a thickening agent, a little bit of flour, a little of corn starch. I am not going to do that; I have got a lot of the chili in here and I have got a little bit of cream. And I am going to take a little dollop of sour cream, right there in the middle, a nice little dollop. And I have got some really nice pickled jalapenos. Let’s spray those on top, that’s going to add a little flavor to it. You can use a raw jalapeno, if you’re brave they’re a little hotter. But I am going to do it this way. And there you go guys, White Chicken Chili. Enjoy!