Pretty much every Colorado Native, most Transplants and every Red Wagon CSA member and employee I know has Green Chile running through their veins. We eat it on, and with everything!

There is no wrong or right way to make or eat it. This is just one simple recipe I like that is adaptable and really fast because it uses an Instant Pot/Pressure cooker and only 4 ingredients if you don’t count salt and spices.

Chicken chile verde is a great base for lots of quick meals like burritos, nachos, tacos or tostadas.

You can substitute the tomatillos with fresh or canned tomatoes if you like, and you can substitute pork for the chicken.

Chicken Chile Verde

• 1-2 pounds chicken thighs or breasts. You can also use any cut of pork, though perhaps that might be a different blog post…?
• 1 pound of tomatillos or tomatoes, fresh or canned
• 1 pound, about 6 or 7 roasted green chilies
• 1 medium onion
• garlic and spices are optional, I used 1 teaspoon each of cumin and oregano
• salt and pepper to taste

I used a pressure cooker, the times and directions are pretty much the same for Instant pots.

1. Place the chicken in the instant pot or pressure cooker to brown the skin, you aren’t cooking it, just browning it. You will remove the skin and any bones after cooking but I like to leave it in now for more flavor. If you are using skinless/boneless just brown the meat.

2. Put the rest of the ingredients into a blender or food processor and whiz that up for a minute or so.

Hey look, you made salsa verde!

3. Dump the salsa verde in with the chicken and cook it under medium to high pressure for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes slowly release the pressure. Remove the meat and when it is cool enough to handle discard the bones and skin and shred the chicken.

In about a 1/2 hour you have some lovely chicken chile verde delicious as is or ready to make into any number of meals through the week.

This is easily doubled or tripled and freezes beautifully.