The Best Chicken Tinga & Cilantro Tacos

This chicken tinga recipe is fabulous for tacos, but it can also be used for nachos, burritos, flautas, tostados or stuffed inside a tortilla and fried for chicken tinga chimichangas. It’s about as easy as a recipe can get + it’s hearty, delicious and perfect for a crowd or even served at dinner for two. You’ll love it!

What is Tinga?

Tinga is just a fancy, one-word way to describe a popular Latin-American sauce made from chipotle peppers, tomatoes, onion and herbs. Depending on how many chipotle peppers are used, the sauce can vary between super, super spicy or fairly mild.

I prefer to keep my taste buds, so rarely do I go for the super spicy. This recipe is made for others like me, but if you like things spicy enough to make your eyes water, just increase the amount of chipotle peppers you add to your tinga sauce and that'll do the trick! Just be easy.. it doesn't take many to add some heat.

The process:

I'm not sure there is an easier sauce to make. It's even easier if you keep a jar of browned butter sautéed onions in the fridge like I do. I use them for so many different recipes, and I'm not sure if you've seen the recipe for my Balsamic Mushroom & Caramelized Onion Puff Pastry with Gruyere Cheese yet...if not, check it out! The point is, for that recipe, having some caramelized onions ready to pull out of the refrigerator saved on a little time. With that in mind, you can absolutely sauté some onions fresh for each recipe if you'd like; it just helps me to have some already cooked as soon as I need them.

With my tinga sauce, I added some caramelized onions, minced garlic, a couple of chipotle peppers in adobo sauce, a cup of fire roasted tomatoes, chicken broth, and some fresh herbs and spices in my food processer and blending until my sauce was smooth. Then I added the sauce to some rotisserie chicken I had shredded and simmered in a skillet over medium heat for about 20 minutes. That's literally all you do!

Toppings for Tinga Tacos:

Now that's a tongue twister! I wanted to use my tings sauce for tacos, but it would also make super delicious nachos, burritos, flautas, chimichangas, etc... No matter what you decide to do with your Tinga sauce, the toppings really make this recipe shine!