Cookbook Chronicles: White Chicken Chili

Cookbook Chronicles is an on-going series at The Bookery. Over the course of the next year, we'll delve into The Pioneer Woman, Ree Drummond’s, cookbook, Super Easy! trying one recipe per month.

The recipe: White Chicken Chili

The cookbook: Super Easy! by Ree Drummond, page 121

The details: I have been looking for a white chicken chili recipe for years. I’ve tried a few—from five ingredients or less to more involved recipes to recommendations from friends and family—and never have found “the one.” While I’ll probably still try a few more versions out, this recipe will definitely be in heavy rotation in my house!

Ree’s recipe is pretty straightforward and doesn’t involve a ton of chopping or difficult cooking techniques. Plus, it’s a soup you could feasibly pull together quickly after work (with a few shortcuts), but it can also be slow simmered throughout an afternoon or evening if you’d prefer.

The adjustments: I didn’t go too far off-script for this one, but I did have to make a couple of adjustments. One was the masa harina used as a thickening agent in this recipe. I definitely wanted my soup to have a little body and texture to it, but I wasn’t going to search the stores for a specialty ingredient (at least where I live) that I would likely only use for this recipe. So I used regular all-purpose flour to thicken the soup. I think you could also use corn meal if you wanted. Ree’s published recipe also called for fire-roasted frozen corn, and while I did look in a couple of stores for this ingredient, I wasn’t able to find any that sold it in my area. I didn’t look terribly hard, though, because I knew I had a bag of frozen corn in the freezer that would work just fine. Also, because I didn’t want to cook chicken to shred, I purchased shredded white chicken meat at Sprouts that took a bit of the work out of the recipe for me. You could also buy a rotisserie chicken to save yourself some time (and freeze the meat that’s left over).

The verdict: I loved it! I do think I’ll likely try out a few other white chicken chili recipes, but this may turn out to be my favorite. I liked the addition of corn (which isn’t included in most of the simpler versions of white chicken chili) and I liked that the recipe didn’t call for cream cheese, which is used to create the “white chicken” feel in many similar recipes. The Tex-Mex-inspired flavors were perfect for me! I topped it with cotija cheese and served it with warm corn bread baked in a cast iron skillet. YUM!

Up next: Very Green Orzo

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