Mexican crockpot chicken

Our friends Manuela and Ana taught us to make this wonderful, amazingly simple dish.

Medium-spicy rather than hot, if you fill a 3 or 4-quart crockpot with chicken thighs and use one small can of hot sauce.

Menos pollo, màs piquante. - The less chicken, the spicier the dish.

DIRECTIONS
Place thawed chicken thighs in slow-cooker. One family-pack (4 or 5 pounds) will usually fit in a 3-quart cooker if you remove most of the skins (you may want to leave the skins on the top layer of chicken. Pour a small (about 8 oz.) can of El Pato Mexican hot sauce (in the little yellow can) over chicken. Add a little salt. Cook for several hours, until chicken is tender, stirring at least once after juices are released from chicken. Adjust salt and skim fat from sauce. Serve with rice and/or tortillas, spooning some of the sauce over the rice. Serve with some vegetables or a salad. David likes refried beans with it.

Serve with hot sauce for those who want more heat.

Leftovers still taste good. For a milder flavor, use enchilada sauce (El Pato brand is in a red can. For a slightly different, spicy flavor, use Jalapeno salsa. I think the sauce in the yellow can is the best choice.

VARIATIONS

This is a family-style dish. There's an easy-to-serve variation for a crowd here.

Or you can make this dish "gringo style" by cooking the chicken thighs first, removing skin, bones and cartilage, skimming fat from liquid then adding the hot sauce and cut-up or broken-up chicken to the cooking liquid and allowing everything to cook together for a few more minutes. If you don't have time to cook the chicken in a slow-cooker, you can simmer it on top of the stove in a little broth or water until tender but not falling apart.

You should end up with chunks of chicken in about enough sauce (including liquid from cooking the chicken) to almost cover the meat. This method allows you to remove a little more fat from the dish. You can serve the chicken and sauce with Spanish or white rice or mix the chicken and sauce with cooked white rice. Plus vegetables, beans, etc. as desired.