Chipotle Chicken Recipe (Copycat)

Chipotle Chicken (Copycat) recipe captures the exact Chipotle flavors for you at home with the chili, garlic, cumin and vinegar notes without leaving home! 

We love the magic of making restaurant favorites at home. Fill your Mexican buffet with Chipotle Barbacoa Beef, Chipotle Cilantro Lime White Rice, and Chipotle Corn Salsa and Chipotle Guacamole you don’t need a second mortgage for!

Chipotle Chicken Copycat Recipe
 Chipotle Chicken Recipe

Chipotle Chicken is a super flavorful, marinaded, grilled chicken you can make at home in no time at all. Then, once you’ve made it, you will literally top it on everything you can because it is so flavorful (yet healthy) that you will find yourself eating salads just to add this chicken on top. It is that good.

The first trick to achieving the same spicy and aromatic Chipotle chicken in your kitchen is to start with a seasoned marinade. Marinades use oils, herbs and spices to amplify flavor and to tenderize. This technique can be used on chicken, pork, beef and vegetables too. This Chipotle chicken marinade has a familiar list of ingredients– chipotle chili powder, dried oregano, and cumin can be found in multiple Chipotle menu items. You likely have these spices in your pantry already! The restaurant only uses a total of 51 ingredients and bases their recipes on the combination of smoky heat and deep Mexican herbs and spices. We can do the same at home.

The second trick for making copycat Chipotle chicken is to grill the marinated chicken on a medium high grill. An outdoor grill is great but you can sear chicken on an indoor grill pan as well to get that charred outer layer. Grilled chicken breasts risk drying out when cooked but you will overcome that trouble by pounding the chicken breasts into a thin, half-inch thickness BEFORE marinating. The chicken will cook quickly and you’ll keep all that juicy goodness inside your meat as it cooks on the grill.

How do i marinate chicken?

  1. Pound the chicken to an even thickness about 1/2 inch thick
  2. Add all of the ingredients into a large, resealable plastic bag. Mix well after closing then place in the refrigerator for 6 hours.
  3. Remove the chicken from the marinade and discard the marinade. Grill the chicken for 5-6 minutes a side on a medium high grill.

How long should I marinate chicken?

Most marinades are effective from anywhere from 2 hours to overnight. We recommend marinating with this chipotle chicken marinade for at least 6 hours to develop that restaurant quality flavor.

A great time saver for weeknight meals is to put the chicken in the marinade in the morning before work, then it is ready and waiting to be grilled when you get home.

SAFE TEMPERATURE FOR COOKING CHICKEN:

When cooking (or grilling) chicken you must cook your chicken to a safe minimum cooking temperature of 165 degrees °F (per foodsafety.gov) to avoid any issues with possible contamination. While the chicken rests it actually holds this temperature which allows it to kill any germs that may be remaining, so remember to rest the chicken for 5 minutes before serving.

how do I get grill marks on chicken?

Heat the grill to medium high heat. Make sure to let the grill preheat completely. The chicken marinade contains oil so you don’t need to further oil the grill. Lay the chicken done away from you on the grill and let it stay in one position. The chicken will release from the grill on its own and then you can use tongs to flip the chicken over to the second side.

The most important part of getting the chicken to look the same as chipotle is the “double cooking” that chipotle does. Once the chicken breast has been cooked they chop it into small pieces, then continue to cook it on the griddle until the small pieces form their own crust. Do not skip this part of the cooking, it is essential. You can also see this cooking method used when I made my Halal Cart Chicken and Rice (Copycat), the texture and the flavors of the chicken are completely different than a classic Easy Grilled Chicken.

Alternative methods to cook chipotle chicken

Grilling chicken is the best way to mimic the style of food cooked at Chipotle Mexican Grill, but there are alternative methods you can use at home. This marinated chicken recipe can be cooked in the slow cooker, stove top, or baked in the oven.

  • Slow Cooker: Do not pound the chicken breasts if cooking in the slow cooker. Simply add all of the ingredients to the slow cooker and cook on high for 3 hours or on low for 6 hours.
  • Stove Top: Cut the chicken into cubes before marinating. Cook the chicken cubes in a large saucepan on the stove top until cooked through.
  • Oven Baked: Place the pounded and marinated chicken breasts on a baking tray and roast at 400° F for 18-20 minutes.

How to use Chipotle Chicken (Copycat) recipe

  • burritos
  • tacos
  • enchiladas
  • quesadillas
  • taquitos
  • salads
  • bowls

More Copycat Recipes

Did I mention I have the ENTIRE Panda Express Menu?!

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Chipotle Chicken Recipe (Copycat)

Chipotle Chicken Recipe (Copycat) captures the exact Chipotle flavors for you at home with the chili, garlic, cumin and vinegar notes without leaving home!
Course Main Course
Cuisine Mexican
Keyword Chipotle Chicken Copycat Recipe
Prep Time 15 minutes
Cook Time 15 minutes
Marinade Time 3 hours
Total Time 30 minutes
Servings 6 servings
Calories 261 kcal
Author Sabrina Snyder

Ingredients

  • 3 chicken breasts , boneless skinless
  • 1 teaspoon kosher salt
  • 1/2 teaspoon coarse ground black pepper
  • 2 teaspoons chipotle chili powder
  • 1 teaspoon dried oregano
  • 1 teaspoon cumin
  • 1/4 cup distilled vinegar
  • 4 cloves garlic , minced
  • 6 tablespoons rice bran oil , divided (vegetable oil is ok)
  • 1/4 cup water

Instructions

  1. Pound the chicken to an even thickness, about a half inch thick.
  2. Add all the ingredients together (save 2 tablespoons of oil) in a large ziplock bag (removing as much air as possible), mixing it well together after closing, and marinate for at least 6 hours.

  3. Remove from marinade and add to a medium high heat grill and cook for 5-6 minutes on each side until cooked through then chop roughly. 

  4. Add chopped chicken and 2 tablespoons of oil to a large pan on medium high heat to crisp for 4-5 minutes, stirring occasionally. 

Nutrition Facts
Chipotle Chicken Recipe (Copycat)
Amount Per Serving
Calories 261 Calories from Fat 153
% Daily Value*
Fat 17g26%
Saturated Fat 3g19%
Cholesterol 72mg24%
Sodium 531mg23%
Potassium 445mg13%
Carbohydrates 1g0%
Protein 24g48%
Vitamin A 230IU5%
Vitamin C 2mg2%
Calcium 20mg2%
Iron 0.9mg5%
* Percent Daily Values are based on a 2000 calorie diet.

About the Author: Sabrina Snyder

Sabrina is a professionally trained Private Chef of over 10 years with ServSafe Manager certification in food safety. She creates all the recipes here on Dinner, then Dessert, fueled in no small part by her love for bacon.

Dinner, then Dessert, Inc. owns the copyright on all images and text and does not allow for its original recipes and pictures to be reproduced anywhere other than at this site unless authorization is given. If you enjoyed the recipe and would like to publish it on your own site, please re-write it in your own words, and link back to my site and recipe page. Read my disclosure and copyright policy. This post may contain affiliate links.

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Comments

  1. Hi Sabrina! So glad I found your site. I can’t wait to try your recipes. Can you please tell me if this recipe can be frozen after you marinate the chicken and then defrost and cook it later? I’m trying to do more freezer meals and cook later during the week.

  2. This is very good, but I wouldn’t say it is the exact replica of Chipotle’s chicken. It was much more smokey in flavor than Chipotle’s. However, it is very good.

  3. THANK YOU Sabrina, This was a fabulous dish. Best of all, I had all the ingredients in my pantry. Five stars for easy preparation, five stars for easy grilling/pan frying and ten stars SUPERB SATISFACTION to the tastebuds. Grilling and pan frying makes this such a delicious recipe. We LOVED this recipe. I will be trying many more of your recipes!
    THANK YOU!!!!!!!!

  4. I’m trying this recipe for tomorrow’s dinner. Just put it in the fridge to marinate over night. We will let you know the results tomorrow! Thanks for sharing your recipe!

  5. This recipe is SO GOOD. It’s certainly a favorite in our house hold. My significant other loves chipotle and so this recipe has now become a weekly request. The only substitution that I make is instead of using water I use organic bone broth. If for some reason I didn’t have that on hand (we always do) I would use chicken stock. Just my personal preference. Otherwise I follow this recipe exactly and always double the qtys due to the amount of chicken that I make (usually 6-8 breast). I am so happy I found this recipe. Sabrina is so talented and I cannot wait to try her other recipes. If you don’t follow her on Instagram I strongly suggest you do. You will not regret it!

    1. You can tent it with foil for about 10 minutes before chopping to help be able to handle it better if you’d like but you don’t have to. Enjoy!

  6. How much chicken – 1 1/2 lbs? This makes it easier for me…what do you think about cooking the meat in an air fryer? Still pound it thin? I want to try and get my almost 14 year old to make this – she is oppositional to almost any kind of work in the kitchen – so not like me…I loved helping my mom cook.

  7. Hi I was looking forward to making this, however I do not have a grill. Do you mind telling me if it were to be possible only using the stovetop. If so do you mind letting me know an alternative cooking instruction like how long and what temperature? Thank you so much.

    1. This recipe can also be done on an indoor grill pan on the stovetop. I also give alternate instructions in the post above for making this in a slow cooker or baked in the oven as well. Hope that’s helpful!

  8. Very well detailed and written. You leave nothing out for “guess work”. Thank you so much for your obvious hard work!

  9. Love this recipe! It tastes much better than chipotle chicken. I love how I can have chicken that tastes close to chipotle’s chicken and have the ability to control the amount of salt used on the chicken. Great in burritos, in a bowl, or on a salad. I recommended this recipe to my mom and hope she will try it soon!

  10. I can’t say this tasted exactly like Chipotle but it definitely was tasty. I will also be the first say that it could’ve been the cook’s error (me). I also skipped the pan cooking and grilled it completely, it was yummy.

  11. Thank you so much Sabrina!! I’m so excited by how the chicken turned out. New favorite for sure!

  12. Made this tonight! It was awesome! We’re not able to get to our usual Chipotle during this time, so my hubby wanted me to learn to make it at home! Good job with this recipe, some people use ingredients that are not in my pantry, but this was attainable!!

  13. OMG! Literally so good, it tastes just like the real thing! Keeping this recipe forever! And no I’m not just saying that.

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