Chicken for filling

This is a great way to cook chicken that you'll use in another dish. You can use this in tamales, jambalaya, enchiladas, chile rellenos or any number of things.


Ingredients:

4 chicken thighs
1/2 cup Paprika*
2 tablespoons Chili powder*
2 teaspoons Dried oregano*
1 teaspoon Celery salt*
1 teaspoon Ground cumin*
1 teaspoon Ground coriander seed*
Kosher salt*
Ground pepper*
2-3 tablespoons olive oil
2 celery stalks (cut up)
2 carrots (cut up)
1 onion (peeled & quartered)
Water

* Don't hold me too much to these amounts. I just dumped some in until it looked about right. I didn't measure a single THING.


You will also need:

Medium bowl
Stock pot or dutch oven
A little wine to deglaze if you have it


Method:

In medium bowl, combine paprika, chili powder, oregano, celery salt, cumin, coriander, salt and pepper.

Preheat oven to 350 F.

Rinse and pat the thighs dry with paper towels. Toss in the spice mixture to coat fully and allow to sit for about 30 minutes.

Heat oil in stock pot or dutch oven over high heat. Once hot, reduce heat to medium-high, add chicken skin side down and cook for approximately 3 minutes. Turn chicken over and cook for 3 additional minutes.

If you have some white wine sitting around that nobody is drinking, splash just a little (1/4 cup or so) in to deglaze all the spices cooked to the bottom of the pan. Allow that to simmer and reduce for a few minutes. Add enough water so that the chicken is not quite completely covered up. Throw in your aromatics (celery, carrots & onion), bring to a boil, cover and place in a 350 F oven.

Cook for 20-30 minutes, until chicken is done and easily comes away from bones. Remove from oven, remove chicken from liquid and allow to cool before removing from the bone. Reserve the cooking liquid to use in another dish as needed.

~~~

The spice mixture. Like I said, I dumped some stuff in & didn't measure anything.




Stir the chicken until well coated in the mixture. It's kind of hard, but they need to be well coated.




Once you add the thighs into the pot skin side down, you can pour what's left on top so that all the spice mixture is used. Flip after 3 minutes or so.




Throw in some aromatics and some water & stick that thing in the oven. Don't think about it again for a good while.




The result is very flavorful chicken that will stand up to being shredded and used in a myriad of ways. I bet you could even just do some shredded chicken tacos if you wanted.