This homemade Chicken Birria (Birria de Pollo) is a twist on the classic using chicken instead of beef! A delicious meal with a sauce that is a labor of love, but worth it for the amazing flavors!
Table of Contents
Why You Will Love This Recipe
Birria is a classic Mexican stew recipe that has been booming in popularity recently! We take this classic recipe, traditionally made with goat or beef, and give it a twist by using chicken.
Made with lots of flavorful peppers and spices, you will fall in love with this amazing recipe!
Ingredients
The KEY to a great birria is the sauce! So you will need to plan time and energy to make the sauce with some fantastic ingredients in order to make a great birria.
You can find full quantities and recipe instructions at the bottom of this post. But let’s talk a little about some of the ingredients you need in more depth!
Chicken – you can use white or dark meat chicken, whatever you prefer. Since the meat cooks in the sauce, there is little risk of it drying out. Just make sure any meat is boneless and skinless.
Tomatoes – Roma tomatoes are best because they have a lot of flesh and little “guts.” But feel free to swap out for what you have.
Dried Peppers – we use a few versions of dried peppers here. You can learn more about them below as they all bring different flavor profiles to the sauce, which means depth and yumminess! They store extremely well and can be used in a variety of recipes.
Where to Find the Peppers
These dried peppers are easy to find in the latin or hispanic section of your grocery store.
If you are having difficulty finding them, or for ease, they are readily available online. Here are links to chile de arbol peppers, ancho chile peppers, and guajillo chile peppers.
These peppers are all very common in Mexican cooking and you will be able to use them all in other fun recipes! One of my favorites is Salsa Chile de Arbol, which has become my new favorite!
Learn more about the different pepper heat levels on our Birra de Res (Beef Birria) post!
Modifications and Substitutions
Adjust the heat by adding more chile de arbol, which is a spicy pepper. The heat for this base recipe is more on the mild side.
Learn more about the different pepper heat levels on our Birra de Res (Beef Birria) post!
Kim’s Tips
The sauce does take some time. It can easily be made in advance whether the same day or days before.
I find that this and my Birra de Res (Beef Birria) taste better when cooked in the oven as it allows the flavors to develop more. But the Instant Pot instructions are included for a faster meal that is still delicious!
How to Use Chicken Birria
You can use Chicken Birria as you would use most shredded meats across different types of Mexican food!
The classic way that you see in many restaurants is as a taco, which is really more of a quesadilla with melted cheese. You can follow the instructions for our Beef Birria Quesadillas here!
It can also be added to enchiladas, tacos, burritos, or as a main course!
Be sure to keep and use that consume sauce from cooking to dunk into when you eat as it holds SO much flavor!
More Mexican Chicken Recipes
Birria de Pollo (Chicken Birria)
Ingredients
- 4 guajillo chile peppers dried
- 3 ancho chile peppers dried
- 4 chile de arbol peppers dried
- 4 roma tomatoes (approximately 1 pound)
- 3 pounds chicken (boneless and skinless, either white or dark meat as preferred) (any weight 2-4 pounds will work)
- salt
- black pepper
- olive oil
- 2 Tablespoons white vinegar
- 4 cloves garlic
- 2 teaspoons black pepper
- ¼ teaspoon ground cloves (or allspice)
- ⅛ teaspoon ground cinnamon
- ⅛ teaspoon cumin
- ⅛ teaspoon dried thyme
- ⅛ teaspoon dried oregano
- 2 bay leaves
Instructions
- Fill a pot with 4 cups of water and bring to a boil. Add all of the dried peppers and boil for 5 minutes. Remove from heat and let soak until soft, at least 15 minutes.
- Heat a grill pan over high heat. Blister the tomatoes on all sides until they are starting to peel, approximately 5 minutes. Remove from heat and set aside. (You can also do this by broiling in oven, turning as needed.)
- Dry the chicken with paper towels and season all sides with salt and pepper.
- Heat a Dutch oven pot on a stove over medium high heat.
- When hot, add the meat and sear on both sides, approximately 8-10 minutes total. Remove the pot from the heat, but leave the chicken in the pot. We will be cooking in this later.
- Preheat oven to 325°F.
- Make the sauce: put the tomatoes in a blender. Add all of the dried peppers (simply pull off their stems and discard stems before adding). Add the vinegar, garlic, black pepper, clove, cinnamon, thyme, oregano, and ¼ teaspoon salt. Add 1/4 of the chile pepper water and blend until smooth. Do not discard the remaining chile pepper water, you will use it later.
- Push the sauce through a fine mesh strainer using a spoon or spatula into the chicken pot. Once strained, discard the pieces you removed that are in the strainer.(Optional, if you want a smooth sauce. Otherwise you can skip this.)
- Toss the chicken in the sauce to coat. Add the bay leaves to the pot. Cover the pot and place in oven.
- Cook for approximately 30-45 minutes, until the chicken is cooked through falling apart.
- Serve as desired. Use the remaining pepper water to thin out the sauce or serve on the side as consume for taco dunking, if desired. All remaining pepper water can be discarded when you have used what you need.
Instant Pot Instructions
- To cook in Instant Pot, follow steps 1-9 as written however step 5 can be seared in the Instant Pot itself on saute setting, and assemble step 9 in the Instant Pot itself.
- After combining the seared chicken, sauce, and bay leaves, put the lid on the Instant Pot and cook at manual pressure for 10 minutes.
- After the cook time, let the chicken sit at Natural Release pressure (not opening the valve) for another 10-15 minutes (or longer, if desired).
- Release the valve to release all remaining pressure. Open the lid. Remove the bay leaves.
- Shred the chicken as desired with forks and mix back into the sauce.
