Chicken Chili Stew

You guys!  You are the best.  Thank you, thank you for indulging me with your comments and sharing my pancakes.  Sorry I hogged the syrup.

In other news and happenings, I’d like to inform you that if a person didn’t know that the Super Bowl was going to happen next weekend, a person might, I mean maybe, accidentally book tickets for her and Ben and Emily and Dan to go see a musical show.  Four glorious tickets to a matinée of Wicked (!), on Super Bowl Sunday.  A person might do this!  By accident.

But let me tell you, if a person did do this, she wouldn’t hear the end of it.  The Ben, and also the Dan, wouldn’t be entirely happy with the person.  Because the person would have inadvertently taken away a Ben’s and a Dan’s ritual of manhood, one of body-bashing and fist-waving/yelling-at-the-tv and zone-blitzing and chicken-winging, and replaced it with… Glinda.

Oops.

Let’s eat some chicken chili stew?  A warm and hearty peace offering?  It’s totally manly.  You can smother it in shredded cheese and sour cream and eat it with corn chips.  Like men.  Like men at a Super Bowl party.  Or, um, the theater.

Just… just eat.  We’re cool, right?

Chicken Chili Stew

Adapted from Simply Classic, the Junior League of Seattle

The lowdown: roasting chicken is pretty easy, but you could make this REAL easy (and quick) with a store-bought rotisserie chicken.  Also, this is a dish easily made in advance (it also freezes well), so make it this weekend to serve at your Super Bowl musical party!  Tra-la-laaaaaa football!

Ingredients:

• 1 whole chicken, broken down into 8 pieces (leave bone-in and skin-on)
• olive oil
• salt and ground black pepper
• 2 large yellow onions, chopped
• 4 cloves garlic, finely chopped or grated
• 2 (4 ounce) cans chopped mild green chilies
• 2 teaspoons ground cumin
• 2 teaspoons dried oregano
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 1/4 teaspoon chili powder
• 1/4 teaspoon cayenne pepper
• 2 (15 ounce) cans Great Northern beans, rinsed and drained
• 1 (15 ounce) can pinto beans, rinsed and drained
• 8 cups chicken stock
• 1 (12 ounce) can beer (I used Stella Artois)
• shredded cheddar cheese, sour cream, and chopped cilantro for topping

Directions:

Heat oven to 425 degrees F.

Place chicken pieces on a rimmed baking sheet or large pyrex baking dish, and sprinkle each piece liberally with salt and pepper.  Drizzle olive oil over chicken (about a teaspoon oil per piece) and rub to evenly coat.  Bake chicken until cooked through (chicken skin should be nicely crisped and juices will run clear), about 30 minutes.  Set aside to cool.  Turn oven off.

While chicken cooks, heat a tablespoon of olive oil in a large pot over medium heat.  Add onions and sweat for 10 minutes, until softened and translucent.  Add garlic and green chilies and cook 2 minutes more.  Next, add all of the spices — cumin, oregano, cloves, chili powder and cayenne — and a large pinch of salt, and sauté until nice and fragrant, about 5 additional minutes.

Add the beans and chicken stock.  Bring to a boil.  Reduce heat slightly and let the stew boil gently (you don’t want a rolling boil, which will quickly break down the beans), for about 30 minutes, until liquid has reduced by and inch or two.

While stew is softly boiling away, remove the skin from the cooled chicken.  Remove all of the meat from the bones and shred or chop it up into small pieces.  Add the chicken pieces to the stew.

Once chicken has been added and some of the stock has reduced out of the stew, add the beer.  Continue to simmer for about 10 minutes, or until the chicken chili stew has reached your desired thickness.  Taste the stew and season it to your liking with salt and ground black pepper.

Serve stew hot, sprinkled generously with shredded cheese, chopped cilantro and spoonfuls of sour cream.

Makes 8-10 cups stew.