Smoked Chicken Tinga Tacos
One of the most frequent comments I get on this site are folks asking if I knew that same exact recipe is also posted on Serious Eats. Yes, I know, because I'm the author of both, but while a good chunk of my work for Serious Eats is also represented on The Meatwave, on Serious Eats I branched out beyond grilling and developed some really killer recipes that just didn't fit the grilling and barbecue theme. One such recipe was for chicken tinga tacos, which was one that made several times to get just right, resulting in some of my favorite smokey and spicy tinga. I decided to make that tinga for a cookout last summer, but realized I could actually turn it into Meatwave content if I chose to cook it in the smoker, and that's how these smoked chicken tinga tacos were born.
In my original tinga recipe, I first seared chicken thighs which were then simmered in the tinga sauce to fully cook. Moving this to the smoker though required a change in that process where the cooking of the chicken was completely divorced from the making of the sauce. While I knew that was going to sacrifice a bit of flavor, I hoped the addition of smoke might make up for it. Beyond that, this sauce recipe is pretty much the same one I had thoroughly tested previously, starting with sautéing garlic, onion, and tomatillos until browned.
Fire roasted tomatoes, chipotles, vinegar, chicken stock, and oregano were added to that, simmered for a bit, then pureed in the blender until smooth. Next I seasoned the sauce with salt and it tasted just as good as I remembered it all those years ago.
I waffled back and forth on whether the chicken needed any seasoning beyond salt because ultimately most of it would be on the skin, which was just going to be discarded anyway. However, I imagine at least a bit of the flavor from the spices would make their way into the final dish, so I did choose to add cumin and chipotle pepper to make a pretty simple seasoning.
I applied that to a bird that I had halved and patted dry. After applying a good layer of seasoning all over, I let the chicken rest in the fridge overnight. This allowed time for the bird the brine, where the salt draws moisture out of the meat and then reabsorbs it in a way that both concentrates the flavor and results in better moisture retention during cooking.
If you don't have time to dry brine the chicken, I wouldn't fret about it that much because low and slow smoking is also good at preventing the meat from overcooking and drying out. I cooked this bird at 225°F with a couple of cherry wood chunks thrown on the fire, and it took over an hour and half for the breast meat to hit my target internal temperature of 155°F. When you compare that to high heat cooking, the chicken cooks much, much faster and can go from nice and juicy to dried out before you know it.
Once the chicken was done, I let it rest until cool enough to handle, then went forth with pulling the meat from the bones. I shredded the meat right into a dutch oven that had the pre-made tinga sauce, and then heated the entire thing up and kept it warm for serving.
I couldn't wait to assemble a taco and dig in, and my personal favorite combo of tinga toppers are onion, cilantro, salsa verde, and lime (the taco in the photo above got bonus radish and cotija), but you can adorn it to your personal preferences. No matter how you dress it up, the immense smoky character of the chipotles come through with just enough heat that it can be tasted despite the corny tortilla and myriad of extras that work to temper it. I worried the extra smokiness I gave the chicken might change the tinga too much, but the chipotles were so strong I barely noticed that the chicken was smoked, but what was notable was the very tender and juicy way the low and slow cooking rendered the meat. It might have been a little too moist in fact because the tinga sauce ended up getting a bit watered down, but I made adjustments to the proportions to account for that in the final recipe. Mainly though, this reminded me how much I loved that tinga recipe and I was all too happy to have a venue and audience to share it with once again.
