Smoked Chicken Chile Verde

Step 1

Prepare the salsa by preheating your grill to 400°F. Put the onion and garlic on a small grill-safe baking sheet or a double layer of tin foil. Place on the preheated grill. Put the peppers and tomatillos right on the grill grates.

Step 2

Let the onion and garlic cook for about 10-15 minutes. The tomatillos can come off the grill as soon as they have some grill marks. Let the peppers cook until the skin is blistered and has some color. Remove the peppers from the grill and put onto a tray. Cover the tray tightly with foil right away. We want them to steam a bit in their own steam.

Step 3

Reduce the heat on your smoker or pellet grill to 250°F.

Step 4

Season the chicken thighs with the Verde rub. If you don't have any, you can sub in generous amounts of salt, pepper, garlic powder, and onion powder.

Step 5

Put the chicken thighs on the smoker.

Step 6

While the chicken is smoking, peel the skin off of the peppers and toss out the stems. If you keep the seeds in, it'll preserve some of the heat. How hot the end result will be depends on how hot your peppers are.

Step 7

Put the freshly peeled roasted peppers and whole tomatillos for the verde sauce into a large blender and pulse until everything is chopped up. Add in the cilantro and lime juice and pulse just to chop up the herb a bit and combine things. Taste, and then add half the salt. Mix. Taste again. Add the rest of the salt, if necessary.

Step 8

Put about half of the the verde sauce into a grill-safe baking dish that's big enough to fit all your chicken thighs. Bring it out to the grill and put it in. Once the chicken thighs have smoked for about 30-45 minutes they can go into the sauce to finish cooking. Add a little more sauce if you need to. You want the chicken thighs to have a good amount of sauce to cook in. Put the rest of the verde sauce in the fridge for another time. You'll thank me later. ;)

Step 9

Turn the grill heat up to 350°F. Let the thighs simmer in the sauce for an hour or so. The meat should be super tender and come off the bone easily.

Step 10

Remove the skin from the thighs and debone. Add the meat back into the pot with the chile verde sauce and add in the white beans. Stick it back in the smoker for 10-15 minutes.

Step 11

Serve with sour cream, shredded cheese, hot sauce, and tortillas and/or tortilla chips.