Quick and easy is not always in the cards when it comes to making some dishes and there is just no way to make good chili happen quickly. If we are going to invest the time into making great chili, why don’t we make it exciting too?
I think we are all familiar with the classic Texas beef and bean chili that we can eat straight-up in a bowl or smother over some of our favorite foods like burgers, baked potatoes, and nachos. While versatile, it is often hard to get excited about. Since I want you to get excited over the food you are cooking, I want to take you on a journey to the southwest with a focus on New Mexico and the hatch chili.
Litehouse® Hatch Chile Ranch can be used any time of year to bring that Hatch chili flavor into your cooking. Hatch chili season is usually only for a few weeks in the fall and it would be a tragedy if we could only have the great flavor of Hatch chilis once a year. Thankfully, we do not.
When it comes to vegetables and other ingredients, we like to add cucumber, tomatoes, red onion, chickpeas and kalamata olives. Chickpeas are optional but make the salad much more filling and more balanced. Salty Litehouse® Crumbled Feta Cheese is a must – it adds so much flavor to this recipe.
I am not sure how many of you have heard of white chili, but that is just what you are going to get in this recipe. The foundation of this recipe is the chicken, cream cheese and Northern beans, all of which have a rich off-white color. The visual difference between this chili and a classic chili has led to the name white chili. No mystery there.
One of the big differences between white chili and classic Texas chili is that it is extremely creamy and that allows it to be as spicy or mild as you want it to be. Because we are using hatch and classic green chilis, the base heat level on this recipe is low making it kid and family friendly.
If you want to up the heat of this dish, I recommend that you add fresh jalapenos to the top of the bowl when serving.