Way back when, the St. Louis Bread Company (a.k.a. Panera Bread) served a great white chicken chili. I love that stuff. Unfortunately I must have been one of the few people who did, because it has been gone for a long, long time. Good news, one day (I no longer remember where) I found a dead simple white chicken chili recipe that has become a staple in my family's fall/winter dinner meal rotation. I made it today and posted this slightly blurry photo and got two requests for the recipe. If you search, you can find this recipe elsewhere, so it is far from a secret, but I have one major twist that makes a ton of difference in my opinion. I don't cook the chicken in the crockpot.
Ingredients
- 2-3 boneless skinless chicken breasts grilled to perfection
- 2 (15 ounce) cans great northern beans or 2 (15 ounce) cans navy beans
- 1 (15 ounce) cans hominy or 1 (15 ounce) cans white corn
- 1 (1 1/4 ounce) envelopes taco seasoning
- 1 (4 1/2 ounce) cans of chopped green chilies
- 1 (10 3/4 ounce) cans condensed cream of chicken soup
- 1 (14 ounce) cans chicken broth
- sour cream (optional)
- chopped green onions (optional)
- monterey jack cheese (optional)
- avocado cut into bite size pieces (optional, but why would you not include it)
Directions
A day or more before you are going to have the chili, grill some boneless, skinless chicken breasts. We typically plan our meals for the week, so we grill on Sunday or Monday and can have the chili any time in the week.
The morning of the wonderful chili night:
- Drain & rinse the beans. Drain the corn.
- Place the beans in a slow cooker
- Top with the corn
- In a medium bowl, combine taco seasoning, chiles, condensed soup, and chicken broth. Pour over top of ingredients in the crock pot.
- Cover and cook on low for 8 to 10 hours.
- When you are about 15 minutes until meal time, turn off the slow cooker unless you like to burn your tongue off.
- Shred the grilled chicken with a fork or your fingers. Don't be lazy and slice it, shredded chicken is much better.
- Gently stir in the chicken and make sure it is all mixed up. No need to heat it up before adding it to the chili, it will warm up nicely.
- Now cut up the green onions and avocado. This will give the chicken time to warm up and the chili just enough time to cool so you can eat it without any burns.
- Ladle a generous helping into your favorite bowl, but not so much that you don't have leftovers. This stuff is awesome left over.
- Top the chili with jack cheese, a generous dollop of sour cream, a small handful of chopped green onions and at least half of an avocado.
Find yourself a nice place to sit and enjoy a simple, yet wonderful bowl of white chicken chili.
Variations
- While the original recipe calls for cutting up about a pound and a half of chicken breasts and having the chicken cook in the slow cooker all day, don't do that. Most meat in a slow cooker is just plain bad.
- Some people will also say to mix about half a cup of sour cream into the entire chili pot right before you eat, but I like to add individual dollops to each bowl. It looks prettier.
- I guess the green onions and cheese can be optional, but if you don't add cheese and green onion, you are not really living.
- Final variation would be to add an entire avocado instead of just a wimpy half.