White Chicken Chili-except with Turkey

Jenna over at Eat Live Run raved about this White chicken chili so much that I felt compelled to make it. Yeah. I know. Chili is supposed to be red.  I declared it here, on this very blog, on my fourth post ever.  Well, after nearly 3 years of posting, it's time for me to eat my words.

This chili was awesome.  Totally awesome.  Even if I changed the recipe up quite a bit.

The biggest change I made to the original recipe was to use leftover turkey from Thanksgiving.  I actually had this recipe in mind when I was carving up the leftover turkey after Thanksgiving.  This chili is probably a bit meatier than the original recipe, as I used a pound of pre-cooked turkey, not raw.  I think raw meat looses moisture and weight as it cooks.

The other big change to this recipe was that I used dried pinto beans instead of canned cannellini. Earlier in the week I cooked up over a pound of dried pinto beans to use in bean dip. (Precooked beans freeze really well.) It made loads more than I had anticipated. Considering I didn't have enough containers, or space in the freezer for all those beans, I set aside a whopping 4 cups of beans for use in this chili.

Four cups of cooked beans is considerably more than 2 cans of beans.  Figure each can is 14-15 oz and some of that is liquid that gets drained out. So why so many beans when I've stated several times on this blog that I am not the biggest fan of beans? Simple. I pureed all but a heaping cup before adding them to the chili. I didn't have any cream in the house and I figured the pureed beans would make up for some of that creaminess. Plus it would give us extra fiber, protein and good beany vitamins. No one, not even Blockette, complained about the beans, whole or otherwise, in the chili.

Along with the beans, I was afraid that Blockette was going to complain about the green chilies. I mean there are 2 cans of those babies. She didn't even know they were in there. I'd been avoiding cooking with chilies because I am a wimp, but seriously, I couldn't taste any heat from them. Neither could Blockette!

I call this picture, "chili smells so good I have to quick snap a horrible picture so I can shove it in my face."

White Chicken Chili adapted from Eat, Live, Run
1 lb shredded, cooked turkey
1 medium onion, diced
1 T vegetable oil
4 c cooked pinto beans, divided
4 c chicken broth or stock, divided (I had turkey stock on hand)
2 4-ounce cans chopped green chilies
1 tsp salt
2 tsp cumin
2 tsp oregano
1/8t cayenne (Mrblocko added lots of hot sauce to his bowl to up the heat.  Use more cayenne if you don't have wimpy taste buds.)
3 garlic cloves, minced
1/2 c milk
8 ounce reduced fat sour cream
Cheddar cheese for topping

Heat oil in a large soup pot over medium high heat. Saute onion, 6 min. Add garlic, cook 3 min. Meanwhile, puree all but a heaping cup of beans in a blender or food processor. Use some stock as needed to get the beans smooth.

Add turkey, beans (pureed and whole), spices,  remaining stock and green chilies. Bring to a boil. Reduce heat and simmer 30 minutes.

Turn off heat and add sour cream and milk. Serve cheese and sour cream to top.