• 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.