Tex-Mex pulled chicken

Pulled chicken - after reducing the sauce and adding back the shredded chicken

The sauce after about 20 minutes

"If this is only half as good as our pulled pork recipe, it will be brilliant."

Well, not a quite as good as pulled pork, but very tasty, and it went a long way. Using a medium chicken and lots of home made salsa it would probably stretch to 6 people. I added crushed new potatoes to the wrap, just because we had some spare - that helped to bulk it out and made it a little different.

Ingredients

Ingredients

Printable 🖨 shopping 🛒 list & 👩‍🍳 method for this recipe

• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• 1 onion, peeled and sliced
• 2 Cloves of garlic, peeled and crushed
• 1 teaspoon white cumin seeds ground to powder
• ½ teaspoon chilli powder (or to taste)
• ½ teaspoon mustard powder
• ½ teaspoon garlic powder
• ½ teaspoon ginger powder
• 1 teaspoon coriander seeds, ground to powder
• 1 teaspoon of paprika powder, smoked paprika powder is even better if you have it.
• Pinch of ground cinnamon powder
• * Note to self: go easy on the cinnamon!
• Enough chicken pieces for four people, skin removed - one medium chicken, jointed, is ideal.
• sea salt and freshly ground black pepper to taste
• 2 teaspoons of muscovado sugar or brown sugar
• 190 ml (3/4 cup) cup of tomato salsa, you can make your own here but bottled salsa is still pretty good
• 250 ml (1 cup) chicken stock
• Juice and zest of ½ a lime

serve on

• corn tortillas

to garnish

• avocado slices
• lime slices
• salad leaves
• soured cream

Method

1. Heat the olive oil in a pan and gently sauté the onion and garlic until it is translucent - about 6 minutes
2. Add the spices and stir-fry for a few minutes
3. Mix in the chicken, salsa brown sugar and chicken stock, bring to the boil then reduce to a simmer
4. Cover and cook for 40 minutes then remove the chicken pieces from the pot and allow to cool a little
5. Leave the cover off the pan and continue simmering the sauce until it is reduced by more than half and most of the sauce has gone - probably another 30 minutes.
6. Meanwhile use 2 forks and shred the meat from the bones
7. Once the sauce has reduced, add back the chicken, mix in the lime juice and zest and season to taste

Serving suggestions

Serve on tortillas or similar flat breads Garnish with avocado slices, soured cream and salad leaves

Variations

This makes a great sandwich filler too.

Chef's notes

As I almost invariably do after jointing a chicken, I cut slashes all over the chicken pieces; refrigerate and marinade them in the juice of a lime and a big pinch of salt. It's a habit picked up from an Indian cookery course that seems to make chicken very tender and tasty.

See also

• Get chicken pieces the economical way, joint the chicken yourself