Love this! So easy and I’ve done it loads of times. One of my favourite recipes and I often tell myself it has beans in it which are good for your heart.
Ingredients
- Red Onion 1-3 (you can substitute brown if you need to)
- Boneless Chicken (I prefer breast, but some people feel thigh is juicier and cheaper) 300-500g chicken
- Garlic 2 cloves
- Tomato puree (half a tube – full tube if you want it very tomato-ey and you’re using chilli paste and not salsa).
- Red kidney beans – a can is normally enough
- A Bell Pepper (optional)
- Chipolte paste / salsa (Picking the right one can make or break this recipe see below)
- A sprinkle of Cumin and smoked paprika (if you’re only doing one make sure its the smoked paprika)
- A Chicken stock cube
- 8 flour Tortillas
- Grated cheese – cheddar or mozarella
- Oil for frying
Tools
- Oven tray
- A tall-sided frying pan or wok
Quantities
Most of the above are good for 300-500g of chicken meat. If you are buying one of those 1kg packs you want to double the other ingredients. If you try to do more than 1kg of chicken you’re going to find it hard to keep the ingredients from separating into layers and you’re going mush the beans into a paste.
Chilli Paste / Salsa
Okay permissively, you *can* use any type of chilli-paste, but in practice I tend to find nothing goes down better than certain chipotle pastes, but others not so much.
One of the first times I tried this was with Lazy Chipolte paste from Sainsbury’s. I didn’t remember getting this from Tesco. I thought I got it from M&S.
The second time, I couldn’t find paste anywhere and I grabbed Luchitos chipotle salsa, tried a big with a chip and it seemed perfect so I poured the whole jar in. The dish was a winner, again!!!
The third was M&S hot chipotle chilli paste, thinking I had used this before, I hadn’t. The dish was inedibly spicy. It was deadly for most of us and we couldn’t taste the chilli flavour only the spiciness!
Thinking I would be safe with Luchitos since their salsa worked last time, I tried their Gran Luchito Mexican Hot chipotle chilli paste knock-out flavour and again we couldn’t eat it. Maybe you can, but generally, a lot of people agreed it was too spicy, but the salsa from the same brand was fantastic.
Eventually, I rediscovered the Lazy Chipolte when I recognised the jar. I found out this was the perfect one!
I haven’t tried them but looking at the Tesco and Asda options. I think the Tesco would be fine, but the ASDA hot one might be a bit much since they feel the need to warn about heat levels on the jar. I also tasted a bit of the las chicas tinga paste on a different dish and I think it would work.
Cooking Instructions
- Fry the onions in oil or butter. Cook on a very low heat for a while until cloudy
- Add the garlic, either crushed or very finely chopped
- Turn up the heat and when the pan is hot and the onions have begun to sauté, add the chicken so it is immediately seared on the outside.
- You can add bell peppers if you want at this point.
- Once the chicken as nearly completely cooked, add the stock cube to some boiled water and stir until dissolved.
- Add half a tube of tomato puree to the stock and once it is mixed in pour it over the chicken, onion and garlic and stir it in.
- Add the chilli paste / salsa, red kidney beans, a little cumin and plenty of smoked paprika.
- Take the oven tray and put the flour tortilla in it and spoon some sauce. Fold the flour tortilla in half so that the sauce spreads out a long the length and then roll it into a tube and push to the end of the oven tray.
- Repeat 8 until the whole tray is full and then sprinkle some grated cheese on top.
- Bake in the Oven for 20-25 minutes on 200’C or until the cheese has turned golden brown.