White Chicken Chili (Easy Chili Recipe!)

Welcome back to our mini-series we're calling Keep the Love and Ditch the Labor, easy recipes from my brand new cookbook, The Mediterranean Dish, Simply Dinner. Today's recipe is a white chicken chili but with a Mediterranean twist. I can't wait for you to try it. Let's go. Simply chili from The Mediterranean Dish, Simply Dinner. When I wanted to make a version of chili that kind of spoke to my Mediterranean roots but also my current home here in the heart of the American South, I thought a white chicken chili. So that's what we're going to be making. I'm going to jazz it up Mediterranean style with some beautiful flavors. It's so good. So we're going to start in a big pot or Dutch oven, whatever you have, medium-high heat. We're starting with a drizzle of some good extra virgin olive oil, no big deal. We're going in with an onion, just yellow onion, roughly chopped. I mean, who doesn't love a big pot of comforting chili, right? I'm gonna toss this around just a little bit, about three to five minutes or so. We just want to get some color on these onions and allow them to nicely collapse. We're gonna go in now with some garlic. I mean, when I say we start with olive oil, onion, and garlic, it's gonna be good. It's gonna be good, baby. Toss, toss, toss. 30 seconds is all you need once you put the garlic in. Let's go in with the chicken. We've got some chicken breasts here. We're making a gorgeous broth. So we're adding in our chicken breasts and we're going in with some water. I can just hear someone say, there's no chili in Mediterranean food. And I'm just gonna say, you know what? There are versions of chili almost anywhere you look. I mean, think about it. Chili is a big pot of goodness that you make out of some beans, some sort of meat, some chilies are entirely beans. And if you think about it, there's a relationship here between chili and minestrone. They're all beany things, right? I'm not stretching it really. Salt and pepper, no big deal so far. Once this pot begins to bubble, we're gonna allow it to simmer for about 20 minutes or so, which is all you need for the chicken to fully cook through. And I like to do this part in advance sometimes to make this even quicker on any given night of the week. So you could cook the chicken ahead of time and have your broth ready. And then any given night of the week, you can throw together this chili. It's so quick. Now that everything is happily bubbling, we're gonna turn it down to a simmer. We're gonna kind of cover partway and let the chicken cook through fully. It's gonna take about 15 to 20 minutes at the most. Chicken has been happily simmering. Oh yeah. We're in business, guys. Here we go. We're gonna let the rest of the liquid simmer away because we're going right back in this pot. But we're gonna shred our chicken. I just do it the old-fashioned way. You know, have a fight with my forks, pulling at it. And it's fast, really. Some people use food processors, but like, I'm not gonna go grab my stand mixer just to shred my chicken. You know what I'm saying? We're gonna just use the fork. It's chili. Chili is not meant to be perfect. It needs to look rustic. It needs to feel rustic. Okay, we've got our broth bubbling away still. We're going into this cooking liquid with one teaspoon of chili powder. That's right, just the same as any other chili. We're using one teaspoon here of chili powder. Some cumin, about a teaspoon of cumin here. One teaspoon smoked Spanish paprika. This is gonna be so good, adding in some depth of flavor and a little bit of red pepper flakes. I'm using Aleppo pepper, which you can find over on TheMediterraneanDish.com there. Just enough heat, but they also have a little bit of tang and sweetness. Very, very delicious. About a teaspoon also. I'm gonna give this party a stir. Two cans of white beans. I'm using cannellini here from a can drained and rinsed. At this point, because I want to create some texture, some creaminess without using heavy cream, I'm going to go ahead and blend some of this. You can turn the heat off just to make sure nothing is bubbling in your face. So we're going in and that's probably good enough. And then we're gonna go in with the corn. The sweetness of the corn with all these beautiful spices is just right and I think you guys will like it. And then we're gonna go back in with our shredded chicken. Beautiful. So in my pot right now, we have two cans of cannellini beans, some fresh corn, our shredded chicken, which is already fully cooked at this point, which I said you can do ahead. This is looking great. We're just gonna let everything sit together and simmer for just a couple more minutes and we're in business. I tell you, when I start to smell beans, I feel like chili is ready because the beans have released some of their starch in the pot and so you can see it has thickened. It's ready. This is really the magic moment that you don't want to miss, all right? So far, if you were to eat this chili just the way it is, you will like it, but I want you to love it. And so I want to add to it a couple more flavor makers that are absolutely necessary in my book. I know it sounds crazy, but this little bit of lime juice is going to wake everything up and really, really, really bring the flavors together. So a little bit of lime juice and jalapeno peppers, spicy and chopped up nice. I'm using two. And then my magic special sauce. Wait for it. I make this and keep it in my fridge because I have so many uses for it. This recipe is also in the Mediterranean dish Simply Dinner. It's called chermoula. It's a beautiful North African sauce that is extra herby. We have cilantro, we have parsley, and a bunch of spices, and of course a little bit of garlic. So it's gorgeous. And you can spoon as much or as little of it as you like in your chili. You can go for like a half a cup and then add from there. For me, like I can put all of this in here. So white chicken chili with chermoula, the Mediterranean dish way. I wish you could smell my kitchen right now. I'm smelling some smoky goodness from the smoked paprika here. I have all the herbs from the chermoula. I have a bit of that spice from the jalapeno, some lime. This is a flavor party as flavor parties go. You know what I mean? So good. Oh my gosh, David. It's really good. I'm not kidding. You don't really get too much citrus. It's very subtle, but it rounds out the flavor so well. Thank you. Find this recipe in the Mediterranean dish Simply Dinner, my brand new cookbook 125 easy Mediterranean diet inspired recipes to eat well and live joyfully. And if you're looking for more cozy recipes, be sure to check out the next video. I'll see you later. Ciao.