3000 miles 'til dinner.

Original MIL Mission #51: Pork Chili Verde

Yup, that’s right. Chicken Chile Roja. That is no typo, my friends. When I went to the store to purchase my mission ingredients, I blindly purchased crushed tomatoes instead of crushed tomatillos. Only when I was already in the throws of putting together the recipe did I realize that tomatoes did NOT in fact equal tomatillos. I gasped at my mistake and then even drove down to the store again to find tomatillos, fresh or canned. Unfortunately, they had neither. So I decided to do a major wing-it, and pushed onward. So thus, I present… ROJA style! 

♥HOW I MADE IT.♥

Below are my ingredients. I made the chicken version since the hub and I don’t typically eat pork. Note the can of crushed tomatoes hiding in the back, embarrassed that it wasn’t up to the sprightly green-ness of its tomatillo cousin. 

For my chicken, I used skinless, boneless dark meat. Unfortunately, I read the other DIL’s attempt with MIL’s tips for cooking dark meat on bone so I had to make do with what I had. I cut up the chicken meat into 3 inch chunks and roasted in the oven per MIL’s wing-it instructions.

While the chicken roasted, I got to prepping the roja sauce.

Ahhh, how I’ve missed my Cuisinart. And it was just as easy as I remembered. Look at the beautiful green-ness of the onions, garlic, serrano and cilantro.

Now comes the roja part of the equation. I put my chopped ingredients into a pot and added the rest of the liquid ingredients and spices to simmer for a while.

Still beautiful!

Once the sauce had simmered and the chicken was roasted, I placed the chicken into the pot and stuck it into the oven to bake for one hour.

♥MIL MISSION #51: ACCOMPLISHED.♥

Muy sabroso!

There was no need for the tomatoes to be embarrassed. The dish done roja style was simply delicious. It still had that “chile verde” flavor to it, if not a bit deeper, richer. I served it with black beans, sliced avocado and an extra sprinkling of cilantro, just because I love it so! The dish had the right bite of spice, and the flavors blended perfectly together. I was pleased to hear hubby say, “This is goooood” and go back for seconds.

♥PLATE IT, ATE IT, GRADED IT.♥

scale: 0 (not at all) to 5 (very)

Cupboard to table time: 2 hours

Difficulty: 2

Deliciousness: 5

Impressed Husband factor: 5 (he actually gave it a 10, but I had to remind him our top score was a 5!)

Leftover-friendly: 5 (and definitely even better the next day)