Welcome back to Sunday Scratchups — AKA: Grocery matchups cooking from scratch. This week, chicken is fairly cheap. We had a couple of pounds of boneless skinless chicken breast (left over from the last Zaycon Foods pickup) thawed this afternoon, but lacked a plan. Then I started thinking about how delicious, yet how expensive, Chipotle is, and about: How hard could it be to make a knockoff chicken burrito? So I started looking up copycat recipes on the Internet, most of which called for re-hydrating dried ancho chiles overnight. Well, this wasn’t an option, given that it was about 2PM when I concocted this Chipotle scheme, so I cobbled together a recipe from multiple other online copycats.

What I came up with really tastes nothing at all like a Chipotle burrito, but was quite good nonetheless! So let me share the recipe with you — and I won’t even charge you an extra buck-eighty to add a skimpy spoonful of guacamole. This time.

So for this, I used about two pounds of boneless skinless chicken breast. (Chipotle uses chicken thighs, which will make your burritos juicier — take your pick, mix a bit of both, or use what you have on hand.) Here are your matchups for scratchups:

• Chicken leg quarters jumbo pack are $.69/lb at Tony’s this week.
• Whole fryers are $.79/lb at Dominick’s, and $.88/lb at Ultra Foods, and always $.89/lb at my ALDI (perhaps yours too!).
• Chicken thighs jumbo pack are $.99/lb at Tony’s, and boneless skinless jumbo pack thighs $1.99/lb.
• Boneless skinless chicken breast family pack, $1.89/lb at Pete’s this week, bone-in chicken thighs $.89/lb, drumsticks $.79/lb.
• Boneless skinless chicken thighs are $1.99/lb at Valli.
• Or put this recipe aside and save it for when you pick up your Zaycon chicken in April!

Not at all like Chipotle chicken burritos — a recipe

The chicken

Ingredients — marinade

One 7 oz can chipotle peppers in adobo sauce (use all the sauce, but remove all but two peppers)
1 small onion
juice of 1/2 small lime
2 cloves chopped garlic
2 tsp cumin
1 tsp oregano
1/4 C canola oil
1/2 tsp black pepper
1/2 tsp Kosher salt
1 tsp chili powder

Directions

Combine all marinade ingredients and puree in food processor (used a little food chopper since it wasn’t a lot of stuff), then pour into bowl. Add 2lbs of boneless chicken — we cut ours into strips first so that it would get nicely marinated all over.

Marinate chicken at least an hour in refrigerator. Grill or sautee until cooked through, then cut into bite-sized pieces. This came out a bit more spicy than the Chipotle version, but good — I might even leave more peppers in next time, but adjust according to how much of a kick your own family prefers.

Ingredients — the cilantro-lime rice

OK, here I totally kludged it. To make yummy fluffy Chipotle-like cilantro-lime rice, you’ll want to use a nice basmati type rice, cook it up, and add the other ingredients. Well, I just used a bag of Bird’s Eye Steamfresh brown rice. It was good, but it was no Chipotle, lol.

Bag of Bird’s Eye Steamfresh brown rice
juice of 1/2 a small lime
One good grind of sea salt
a little chopped up cilantro, to taste

Cook rice according to package directions. Add lime juice, sea salt, cilantro, stir.

So then you have your chicken and your cilantro-lime rice. Make yourself up some guacamole, and then roll yourself up some burritos on warmed tortillas with whatever other fixings you desire — black beans, cheese, sour cream, salsa, whatever floats your burrito boat.

Above, the dairy-free version on a gluten-free tortilla for Mr. non-dairy 10.

Or, the cheese + sour cream version. I didn’t make up any black beans or use salsa tonight, but the addition of both would probably make it more authentic. This is another recipe that adapts well for both Atkins and allergies. Gluten free? Have yours on corn or gluten free tortillas. Doing Atkins? Have yours on salad or just eat a big bowl of meat n cheese n stuff, skipping the rice. Dairy free? Skip the cheese and sour cream. We’re all about the adaptable recipes over here, and these Not at all like Chipotle chicken burritos are worth making again, yum.

Want more affordable and easy recipes?

• That’s the only kind I post! Check out more recipes and Sunday Scratchups here.

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