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chicken tinga tacos
Did you know that slowly cooking chicken thighs in a smoky tomato sauce turns them into a SUPER tender taco filling?
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Prepare Ingredients
Gather Equipment
In large saucepan, heat oil over medium heat for 1 minute (oil should be hot but not smoking). Add onion and cook, stirring occasionally with wooden spoon, until lightly browned, about 5 minutes.
Stir in garlic, salt, cumin, paprika, cinnamon, and chipotle chile powder and cook until fragrant, about 30 seconds.
Stir in tomato sauce, scraping up any browned bits on bottom of saucepan. Use tongs to add chicken to saucepan and stir to combine.
Bring mixture to boil. Reduce heat to medium‑low, cover, and simmer until chicken is very tender, about 25 minutes. Turn off heat.
Use oven mitts to remove lid. Use clean tongs to transfer chicken to cutting board and let cool slightly. Use 2 forks to shred chicken into bite-size pieces.
Shredding Meat
Transfer cooked meat from saucepan to cutting board or large plate and let cool slightly.
Use 2 forks to pull meat apart and shred it into bite-size pieces.
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We share fun and engaging resources to help kids learn in the kitchen—and make something delicious along the way.
Food for Thought
How to Chop Onions
Follow these three steps whenever you need to chop onions:
Halve onion through root end, then use your fingers to remove peel. Trim top of onion.
Place onion half flat side down. Starting 1 inch from root end, make several vertical cuts.
Rotate onion and slice across first cuts. As you slice, onion will fall apart into chopped pieces.
How to Peel and Mince Garlic
Follow the steps on the next two slides when you need to mince garlic cloves for a recipe. Garlic is sticky, so you may need to carefully wipe it from the sides of the knife to get the pieces of garlic back onto the cutting board, where you can cut them. (You can also use a garlic press to both peel and mince garlic—so easy.)
Crush garlic clove with bottom of measuring cup to loosen papery skin. Use your fingers to remove and discard papery skin.
Place one hand on handle of chef’s knife and rest fingers of your other hand on top of blade. Use rocking motion, pivoting knife as you chop garlic repeatedly to cut it into very small pieces.
Make a Mexican Favorite at Home
A dish called tinga is traditional in Mexico’s Puebla region. Making tinga involves cooking meat in a spicy, smoky tomato sauce until it’s perfectly tender and then shredding the meat and using it to fill tacos or top tostadas. One version of tinga, tinga de puerco (“TING-uh deh PWERK-oh”) is made by cooking a piece of pork for hours—sometimes all day! This version, tinga de pollo, (“TING-uh deh POY-yo”) uses chicken thighs instead of pork and cooks MUCH faster—that means you get to eat tacos sooner!
Tinga dishes have a sauce that’s often made with smoky, spicy chipotle chiles in adobo sauce. Chipotle chiles are actually dried and smoked jalapeño chiles, and the adobo sauce is made from vinegar, tomatoes, and herbs. To tone down the heat (and save you some cleanup), this recipe uses chipotle chile powder for spice (a little goes a long way!) and smoked paprika to give your tinga that special smoky flavor.
Here are three ways to add smoky chipotle flavor to dishes like Chicken Tinga Tacos:
Chipotle chiles: Dried, smoked jalapeños
Chipotles in adobo sauce: Chipotles chiles packed in a spicy sauce
Chipotle chile powder: Ground chipotle chiles (we use this in our tacos!)
