Easy Chicken Tinga Recipe
This is a simplified chicken Tinga recipe, made with a slightly spicy chipotle tomato sauce. You’ll love this recipe for freezable batch cooking and to have in your rotation of healthy meal prep recipes.
If you’re looking for healthy chicken dinner ideas, chicken Tinga is a great way to boost excitement in your meal rotation. Shredded chicken tacos are one of my favorites, and I especially love it simmered in this easy Tinga sauce. I’ve simplified this recipe without sacrificing flavor. And, I especially love how versatile it is, with the different ways of serving it. I’ll get into that below, but there’s more ways than just tacos!
When it comes to healthy meal prep ideas, I like recipes that can make big portions, so I’ll have several meals in the freezer for future lazy dinners. This way I maximize my effort in the kitchen, and have flavorful meal components with less time and effort. I portion out servings and freeze them for easy reheating in future weeks.
Is Chicken Tinga Spicy?
The spice in this recipe comes from the chipotle in adobo. I remove the seeds from the chipotles before adding them to the sauce. If you want more spice, you can add more chipotles or adobo sauce. The amount I have in this recipe isn’t very spicy, but this is totally relative. If you’re sensitive to spice, maybe add half the amount and add more by taste. The sauce alone will be spicier than the final dish, because the chicken will dilute it and it will be less concentrated.
What is Tinga Sauce Made of?
Chipotle in Adobo
I use canned chipotles in adobo, you can use whatever brand you can find. They come with whole peppers mixed with a marinade sauce. You can cut them in half and remove the seeds. I usually take the whole can, remove the seeds from the peppers and puree everything in a little chopper. This is a life saver because I’ll put it in a baggie and lay it flat in the freezer to freeze in a thin sheet. Then whenever I need it, I can break a piece off to add to whatever I’m cooking!
Tomatoes
Many recipes use canned tomatoes but I actually prefer using tomato paste. I always have a jar on hand (in the freezer) so it’s less ingredients to buy. Plus I find the tomato flavor is more concentrated and less acidic.
Garlic
I prefer using fresh garlic cloves, rather than jarred or powdered. But if that’s all you have or prefer to use, then do that! To make it easy, I finely grate the garlic on a microplane into the pan rather than chopping it by hand.
Onion
I’ve used both red and yellow onion in this recipe without noticing a difference, so you can use what you have on hand. It’s a great way to use that half of an onion sitting in your refrigerator, since you don’t need the whole thing.
Ground Cumin
This is pretty simple, thought it helps to make sure you have fresh/new-ish ground cumin, since spices lose their flavor the longer they sit in the cabinet or drawer.
How To Eat Chicken Tinga
Chicken Tinga Tacos
This is the more common way to serve chicken Tinga. Tacos, whether on a flour or corn tortilla, are easy and you can add so many different toppings depending on your preferences. Sometimes I’ll add corn salsa or mango salsa, or you can keep it simple street taco style with just chopped onion and cilantro.
Chicken Tinga Tostadas
Tostadas are one of my favorite meals. You can crisp up a corn tortilla in the oven heated to 350F (you don’t even have to add oil if you want to save calories). Then top it with various things. For this recipe, I might do a layer of refried beans, then the pulled chicken Tinga. You can add some cheese to the top if desired and broil it until just melted. I might add some sautéed peppers on the side, with avocado and salsa or hot sauce.
Burrito Bowl
I love using this shredded chicken Tinga on rice bowls, and layering on different toppings like you would at Chipotle. You can do a base of rice or riced cauliflower (or a mix of the two) and add sautéed bell peppers, beans or refried beans, different salsas, guac or chopped avocado, sour cream or a chipotle crema. It’s an easy healthy dinner, especially if you prep the rice and peppers ahead to simply reheat and assemble.
Taco Salad
A taco salad is a great way to make an easy weeknight dinner healthy. It’s similar to the burrito bowl but with a base of greens. I think crunchy greens work best like romaine or little gem, but anything would work. If you need a dressing you could mix some olive oil, fresh lime juice and honey together to toss it altogether, or you could even do ranch (or chipotle ranch!).
Recipe for ‘Easy Chicken Tinga’
Prep Time: 20 minutes
Cook Time: 1 hour
Yields: 6 servings
*Note: If you want it saucier, spicier or more flavored, go heavier on the sauce ingredients! It doesn’t have to be perfectly measured :)
Ingredients
1.5 pounds of cooked, shredded chicken
2 tbsp tomato paste
2 tbsp chipotle in adobo and sauce (chopped or pureed)
1 tsp ground cumin
1 cup onion, chopped
3 garlic cloves, finely grated
1 tsp sea salt
Oil (olive oil, butter, ghee) for cooking
Water for simmering
Directions
Start with cooked, shredded chicken. You can use dark and/or white meat. Rotisserie chicken is a great short cut, but I also love baking chicken breast on the bone with skin on and shredding the meat once it’s cooled. You can do this step ahead to break up the meal prep if you’re low on time.
In a pot heated to medium, add a drizzle of oil and sauté the onion and grated garlic for a few minutes, until softened.
Add the chipotle peppers, tomato paste, cumin and salt and stir until mixed and fragrant.
Add the shredded chicken to the pot. Then add water until it comes up to about half the depth of the chicken (it doesn’t have to be covered), and stir to thoroughly mix and further break up the shreds of chicken.
Simmer uncovered for about 30-40 minutes, until the liquid has reduced, stirring every 5-10 minutes or so.
