Mexican Pulled Chicken is easy to make, super flavorful and the basis for so many delicious meals!
Jack recently prepared a wonderful Mexican-themed dinner for us, and this Mexican Pulled Chicken recipe played a starring role in several of the dishes he made. This chicken is perfectly flavored with a spicy blend of tomatoes and peppers as well as other seasonings. It’s cooked in the oven until fork-tender, then shredded. Scroll down to the recipe card below to watch a video to see how it’s made.
A good Mexican pulled chicken is a great recipe to have in your go-to recipe collection! It can be eaten as-is or as part of a sandwich, or it can be used in many other recipes! In fact, several of our other very popular recipes here on A Family Feast use this recipe including our enchiladas, Mexican lasagna, and our chicken chimichangas!
The key is to use a mix of white and dark meat in this recipe (we used a combination of boneless chicken thighs and breasts) – because the thigh meat lends so much more flavor and juiciness to the finished dish than using the breast meat alone.
Since originally posting this recipe back in February 2013, this Mexican Pulled Chicken has become one of our most popular recipes of all time. We’ve updated the photos and created a video (scroll down below to watch it) since our original post.
Can I make Mexican Pulled Chicken in the slow cooker?
Over the years, we’ve been asked if this Mexican Pulled Chicken recipe can be made in the slow cooker. The answer is YES!
While we haven’t cooked it in the slow cooker ourselves, several of our readers have posted in the comment section below that they saw great results making this recipe in their crock pot. Enjoy!
Interested in more chicken recipes?
Click here for our 100+ Best Chicken Recipes.
You may also like these other recipes made with this Mexican Pulled Chicken:
- Chicken Enchiladas with White Sauce
- Chicken Chimichangas
- Pulled Chicken Chilaquiles
- Pulled Chicken Tacos
Mexican Pulled Chicken
Mexican Pulled Chicken is easy to make, super flavorful and the basis for so many delicious meals!
- Prep Time: 15 mins
- Cook Time: 3 hours
- Total Time: 3 hours 15 minutes
- Yield: 8 servings 1x
- Category: entree
- Method: Baked
- Cuisine: Mexican
Ingredients
- 1 sweet red pepper, stemmed and seeded and cut into large rings
- 1 large onion, trimmed and cut into large rings
- 2 pounds boneless skinless chicken breast halves, trimmed
- 2 pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs, trimmed
- 4 tablespoons cider vinegar
- 2 14.5 ounce cans diced tomatoes
- 4 tablespoons tomato paste
- 4 tablespoons Agave Nectar
- 2 tablespoons whole grain mustard
- 2 teaspoons onion powder
- 1 teaspoon cumin
- 1 teaspoon chili powder
- 1 teaspoon garlic powder
- 1 teaspoon Tabasco sauce
- 1 tablespoon dried oregano (leaves)
- 1 tablespoon coriander
- 2 tablespoons Rocket Fuel (or your favorite hot sauce)
Instructions
- Preheat oven to 275 degrees F.
- Spray a pan or glass baking dish with non-stick cooking spray and lay pepper and onion rings on the bottom.
- Lay chicken over onions and peppers.
- In a medium sauce pan, place all other ingredients and heat to a boil. Stir to combine ingredients and remove from heat.
- Pour the tomato mixture over the chicken. Cover with parchment paper then foil. (The parchment paper will prevent the tomato acids from reacting with the foil.)
- Place in oven for three hours.
- Remove the pan from oven and peel off parchment paper and foil.
- Place chicken on a cutting board and shred with two forks.
- Pour remaining mixture from baking dish into a strainer and strain out most of the liquid then place back into baking dish
- Place pulled chicken meat back in with tomato mixture in baking dish and mix to combine.
As written recipe sounds amazing, but did have one question. Could I replace the tomatoes with crushed tomatoes.
Can’t wait for your response, I sooooo want to cook this soon :o}
Thanks a million
Hi Janet – You won’t see the same chunks of tomatoes throughout the finished dish and it will probably be more liquidey with crushed tomatoes. If that doesn’t bother you, then yes, you could swap a similar amount (or maybe a little less) of crushed for diced.
Can white vinegar be used instead of the cider vinegar or a different substitute?
Hi Tina – White vinegar has a more pungent taste – if you have white or red wine vinegar, I’d go with one of those instead.
We made this for Chase’s engagement celebration and it was simply fabulous! We added 1/2 jalapeño pepper chopped fine, otherwise, followed the recipe. This is a keeper! Easy and delicious for a large group.
Glad you all enjoyed the recipe Marty! Congrats to Chase!
AWESOME we loved it! Could not bring myself to drain off the juice! Served it all over rice! Nummers!! Tomorrow tacos! Thanks so much for wonderful recipe! I didn’t have all correct ingredients very forgiving flexible recipe! Will make again and again! Can’t quit slurping the sauce!
Thanks Margaret! So glad you enjoyed it!
Other than the homemade Rocket Fuel, what hot sauce do you recommend? I’m looking for the store bought variety. Thanks for your help.
I have two personal favorites. The first is a sweet/hot sauce called Trinidad habanero sauce. Just search for that and it comes up everywhere. A less spicy sauce sold in supermarkets is Cholula. Cholula is very flavorful and only has a slight kick. And of course, can’t go wrong with Tabasco.
This is soooo good! I have made it several times, both in the oven and the crockpot. It makes great tacos, enchiladas, chimichangas, you name it! It also freezes beautifully by itself or in premade enchiladas. My picky brother who doesn’t like anything had me send the recipe to his wife! Definitely worth a try!
Thanks Kelly – glad you all enjoyed the recipe!
I made this for my family the other night. I loved the recipe, the only thing I noticed was it was a but sweet which was probably my fault…however my childeren loved it even my “I don’t like chicken” child!! He said “mommy that chicken was so good it tasted perfect”. He ate it 2 days in a row! This will be a staple!
Thanks Ericka – so glad you all enjoyed the recipe!
This recipe was easy and deliscious! Can’t wait to try it in the chimichagas tonight. Since this makes 4 lbs, have you frozen this? Do you premake one of your dishes and then freeze or just freeze the chicken? Thanks in advance.
Hi Barb – The cooked pulled chicken freezes very well so you could definitely put some aside in a zipper seal bag for a future recipe.
Great recipe and a little goes a long way! In addition to the ingredients, I added some brown sugar…
Glad you enjoyed the recipe Elizabeth!
I made this tonight and it’s stupendous! I added a can of chilies as I like it a bit spicer, but that is the only change I made. Thank you so much for sharing this recipe – and I must commend you on your kind responses regardless of whether the comments are positive or not. You seem like a lovely person.
Thank you for your kind words Danielle! (We do take feedback – positive or negative – to heart!) Glad you enjoyed the recipe!