White Bean and Chicken Chili is one of my very favorite winter meals. If it’s cold out and you’re tired of chili, try this version with white beans, chicken, chicken stock, and green chiles. It’s delicious with grated cheese and sour cream on top.
This recipe is legal on the GAPS Diet.
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White Bean Chili
Ingredients
Navy beans, dried (1 lb)
Filtered water
Chicken stock, homemade (5 cups)
Butter, ghee, lard, tallow, grass-fed, duck fat, or expeller-pressed coconut oil (4 tablespoons) — where to buy coconut oil
Garlic (2 cloves)
Onion, yellow or white, medium (1)
Green chiles, canned (8 oz)
Chicken breasts and/or thighs, pastured or free range organic, skinless & boneless (1 lb)
Cumin, ground (1 TBS)
Oregano, dried (1 TBS)
Red pepper flakes (1 pinch)
Sea salt (to taste) — where to buy sea salt
Freshly ground black pepper (to taste)
Sour cream or coconut milk kefir — where to buy starters
Garnish: Cheese, cheddar, or Parmesan, from grass-fed cows (2 oz)
Equipment
Stock pot or Dutch oven
Directions
1. Rinse beans well, and pick out any stones.
2. Put the dry beans in a stockpot or Dutch oven and cover with warm filtered water. Cover with a lid, set in a warm place and let soak for 12-24 hours.
3. Drain and rinse beans.
4. Place beans back in the stockpot with chicken stock and bring to a boil over high heat.
5. Meanwhile, cut up chicken into bite-sized pieces. Set aside.
6. Chop the onion and mince or crush the garlic. Set aside.
7. In a large saucepan, heat 4 TBS of butter or other fat (see ingredients) on medium heat.
8. Add garlic, onion, and green chiles and saute for 5 minutes.
9. Stir in the chicken, cumin, oregano and red pepper flakes.
10. Add to the stock pot with the beans.
11. Set the heat to low and cook, stirring occasionally, for 1-2 hours. Or you can transfer to a crock pot and cook for 3-4 hours.
12. Serve with lots of grated cheese and sour cream or, if you are dairy intolerant, add fermented coconut yogurt.
Photo Credit: love sorting beans by veganjoy, on Flickr
Disclosure: cmp.ly/4 and cmp.ly/5
{ 13 comments… read them below or add one }
Ann Marie,
This looks great! I love white chili and have never had a good recipe! I am for sure going to make this! We are still on the hunt for good local free range chicken, but I am hopeful!
Adrienne, depending on where you are, you could check eatwild.com or the nearest WAPF chapter leader for sources for good pasture-raised chicken.
This sounds delicious! Cook’s Illustrated has a great technique of whizzing a couple kinds of peppers and onions in a food processor, sauteeing them in fat rendered out of browning the chicken pieces and then pureeing the chiles and onions, some broth and some of the beans before simmering the chicken in that mixture with more stock. When the chicken is cooked, you shred it and stir in some more whole beans. Its honestly the best white chile recipe I’ve ever had. Made with all the high quality ingredients you use, it would be even better! Maybe this will end up on my menu this week. Thanks!
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My mom had taught me to do beans by bringing to a boil (5-10mins) then let them soak for an hour. Then you rinse and fill with new water and cook several hours (3-5 hours). I’m wondering how this rates on the scale of making them more digestible and reducing the phytic acid? I once soaked them overnight as recommended, but they remained firmer, so maybe my water didn’t stay warm enough overnight? Just wondered if you had heard of this and have any thoughts? Thanks!
I made this soup today, but never got to eat it. My beans are stubborn and won’t cook. I cooked the soup for 6 hours today. I will try to cook it some more for lunch tomorrow. Anyone ever have this bean problem?
Heather I soaked for almost 2 days and they cooked very quickly
Thanks- I will definitely try that next time. These beans never cooked.
I also had trouble with my beans cooking. I soaked them overnight on “warm” in my crockpot. And even after cooking on high, which yields a boil in my particular unit, they still were not ready until after about 8 hours of cooking. We had already gone out to eat because our dinner was not ready, so we will enjoy it tomorrow.
I made this yesterday in my crock pot for a group of people and was afraid that I was going to have the same problem. It had cooked for 5 hours on low and the beans were still semi-hard. I turned the crock from low to high for 2 more hours and it came out ok, but I would probably pre-soak the beans next time.
That has happened to me twice, and my mom told me the beans must be old if they are soaked and don’t cook in the usual time (Hispanic mom cooks beans all the time!). I now have a better source of beans, so it hasn’t happened since then.
This sounds really good. My mother in law gave me a green chile recipe that uses pork. It was good but I think I cooked it too long the pork got kind of stringy. I bet making beans with the chili sauce and keeping the meat separate would help keep it from being too dry!