The title says it all, really.

A few days ago I was really craving some Chipotle, but being a college student, I have to limit how many times per week that I eat out, especially when it comes to Chipotle which is like 10 bucks a meal. So, instead of going out to eat I decided to try and find a homemade recipe that would be pretty close to a Chipotle bowl, but maybe a little different and possibly better.

I looked around online and found this recipe from BudgetBytes that seemed super simple and quick to make, which was good because I was trying to make this on my lunch break.

Here are the ingredients for a lunch-time taco bowl:

  1. 1 cup white rice
  2. 1 chicken breast
  3. 1 15 oz can of black beans
  4. 1 cup salsa
  5. 1 teaspoon chili powder
  6. Green onion
  7. Shredded cheese, any kind

Also, here are some optional ingredients that I recommend adding if you want it to look a little bit more like a bowl from Chipotle:

  1. Shredded lettuce
  2. Sour cream
  3. Guacamole
  4. Corn
  5. Other veggies

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The original recipe says that you can buy pre-cooked rotisserie chicken or any other type of pre-cooked chicken, but I just decided to make my own shredded chicken and use that instead because I already had a package of chicken breasts in my freezer.

The next thing to do is simply throw the chicken, uncooked rice, beans, salsa and chili powder into a large sauce pan and heat it up. I made a few changes to the original recipe for this step, so I’ll go over those really quickly.

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As you can see from this picture, that is A LOT of chili powder. I cut the amount of chili powder that I used in this recipe down to about half from the original 1 full tablespoon, and it’s still a lot. I think it depends on how spicy you like your food, but I would recommend only using a teaspoon, like I said above, especially if you’re using really hot salsa.

Another thing I “changed” (I really just did it wrong) was I cooked the rice before putting it in the pan, which you definitely don’t have to do. Not cooking the rice will help out a lot with putting some flavor into the rice and it will help with how liquid-y this is, as you can see above. I ended up adding in a little bit of uncooked rice along with the cooked, and drained the pan a tad. IMG_2955

Once it’s almost done heating up, I threw the cup of cheese on top and mixed it in.

After that, just spoon however much you want into a bowl and put the rest into a Tupperware container to save for another time you’re craving a trip to Chipotle.

Once you have it in a bowl, add whatever toppings you want and go crazy. I just chopped up some green onion and added a bit more cheese.

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It looks like slop, but it tastes pretty good if you like spicy foods. Next time I make this I will definitely grab some more toppings from the store.

This will likely be the first of a string of blog posts where I look for a good homemade Chipotle bowl duplicate recipe, so let me know if you guys have any favorites!