El Pollo con Chile Verde (chicken with green chile sauce)

I can not tell you how amazing homemade Chile Verde is. So, so, so, soooooo much yummier than the jarred stuff. Roasting the tomatillos, poblano peppers and garlic brings out a flavor that just can't be put into words. Sweet, tangy, charred, slightly spicy are some that come to mind.
This dish is mouth watering, eye popping, authentic tasting goodness.
Honestly, this is pretty simple. It definitely falls into the "If I can do it, anyone can do it " category.


Do you know how easy it is to make your own corn tortillas?
I didn't until my mom made a batch in all of about 5 minutes!
I'm talking 3 ingredients people, and that's including the water!
Oh my! I will never be able to eat the thin cardboardy corn tortillas sold at the store ever again.
They totally made the dish an authentic masterpiece.

click here for tortilla tutorial (say that 10 times fast...)

For El Pollo con Chile Verde,
You will need:

SERVES 6 PREP TIME 30 MIN COOK TIME 40 MIN TOTAL

2 pounds large tomatillos, husked and rinsed

1 head of garlic

2 poblano chiles

1 small white onion ( 1/2 cup)

12 homemade corn tortillas (recipe to follow)

4 chicken breasts halves

1 cup shredded Jack cheese

cilantro and green onion for garnish

low-fat sour cream to dollop on top of finished pie

Putting it all together:

For the Chile Verde:

Preheat your broiler and put the rack about 6 inches
from the top.

Husk and rinse the tomatillos. Rinse the

poblanos. Slice the top of the garlic head off and remove outer skin. Drizzle with a tiny bit of EVOO.

On a broiler pan, spread tomatillos, poblanos and garlic, not touching if possible.

Put in oven and cook 8-10 minutes.

Using tongs, flip the peppers and the tomatillos over.

Cook about 5 more minutes. They should be pretty charred but not burned.

Remove from oven and carefully put tomatillos ( they will be smushy), whole, into your blender and set aside.

Put the poblanos into a paper bag and roll closed to steam the peels off, about 10 minutes or so.

Set garlic aside to cool slightly.

Add quartered onion to blender. I let it cool a bit while I'm preparing the rest of the meal so it doesn't blend boiling.... scary.

Turn oven down to 400 degrees!

I use my pressure cooker and can cook frozen solid chicken breasts in 6 minutes. You can boil them for about 15 minutes if you don't have one.

I throw the cooked chicken into my KitchenAid with the cookie paddle attachment and turn it to speed 4 for about 1 minute to shred my chicken.

You can use the dual fork method also.


Check this out...... don't hate me.

In goes 5 cooked chicken breasts...

30 seconds later, perfectly shredded chicken.

Beautiful!

O.k. back to the salsa verde......

Remove poblanos from bag and the peels should come off super easy. Pull on the stem and squish the seeds out, a few seeds are fine. Throw them in the blender with the tomatillos, onion and garlic and blend for 2 minutes until smooth.

Now, just put a layer a few tortillas, then chicken, salsa verde and Jack cheese into a baking dish. Top with another layer of tortillas, drizzle with more salsa verde and sprinkle with a little more cheese.

It's as easy as uno, dos, tres! ;-)

Bake at 400 for about 20 minutes.

Garnish with chopped cilantro, diced green onions and light sour cream!

Ice cold cerveza optional.

PRINT THIS RECIPE!