Queso White Chicken Chili Recipe

Name: Queso White Chicken Chili
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 40 min
Ingredients: 2 pounds chicken breast (cooked and shredded); 4 cans Great Northern beans (2 cans mashed, 2 cans whole beans); 6 cups chicken stock; 8 oz. Queso cheese (shredded); 2 cups onion (diced); 2 poblano peppers (diced); 2 cans diced green chiles (4 oz. cans); 2 limes (juiced); 4 cloves garlic (minced); 2 tablespoons olive oil; 1 tablespoon cumin; 2 teaspoons chili powder; 1 teaspoon garlic salt; 1 teaspoon dried basil; ½ teaspoon Old Bay seasoning; ½ teaspoon dry mustard; ½ teaspoon pepper; Sour cream; Avocado; Cilantro; Tortilla strips; More shredded queso!

Published October 9, 2019 | Updated November 16, 2021 | By: Lydia | 87 Comments

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What happens when you take a zesty and flavorful chicken chili and add Queso to it? Magic, that’s what happens! This Queso White Chicken Chili is the perfect comfort food and a cool weather menu staple!

Hi there and happy Monday! It’s a crisp fall Monday in Columbus today, a welcome relief from the 90 degree weather we had last week! It’s finally starting to feel like football weather! Football and fall weather go together like football and chili! Football and chili go together like baseball and cracker jacks! Chili goes into our menu rotation on full blast come fall. We’ve already plowed our way through a batch of my go-to chili (you can check out that recipe here) so I decided to take another stab at perfecting my White Chicken Chili recipe.

When I say take another stab, what I mean is that every previous attempt has been a fail. You know how when you make up a recipe and it isn’t quite right and you keep tweaking it and then it’s over-tweaked and you don’t really know where it went (even more) wrong? Yeah, that’s been my situation with attempting to find a white chicken chili recipe that I love. Well I finally found the missing piece. Queso! Queso, you complete me. Or at least you complete my white bean chicken chili.

Are you ready to try it? Let’s go!

What beans do you use for Creamy White Chicken Chili?

Any kind of white beans will do. I used Great Northern for this one but I’ve also used Cannelini and those work just as well. One of my favorite tips for this recipe is mashing half of the beans. My friend Heather taught me this trick and it adds such a dreamy creamy consistency to your white chicken chili. This Queso Chicken Chili has layers of flavor and is the perfect bowl of comfort!

Check out the video and grab the printable recipe card below.

Grab a bowl of this, and some football or Netflix and you have the perfect night in, I’d say!

Tips for making any soup

I highly recommend using a dutch oven to make this chicken chili and any soup. I have a glass electric cooktop and after over 2 years in our house, I still can’t predict how hot it will decide to be on a given day. These are the sautéed onions for the chili in a dutch oven. In any other pan, by this point in the cooking there would be several scorched spots.

How to serve Queso White Bean Chicken Chili

With more queso, of course! Also adding some tortilla strips, avocado, cilantro and sour cream round out the flavors perfectly.