Dominican · Main

Pollo Guisado Dominicano

Intermediate
30 min
roughly 2 of 4 for cost

umami-deep · herb-fresh · briny · smoky Leads with savory depth stacked from the pantry’s bass notes, fresh herbs arguing happily on top, on a drift of smoke.

Ingredients

1.4 kg bone-in chicken, chopped through the bone into small pieces
60 ml sour orange juice, or lime juice
60 g sazón dominicano
8 g dried oregano, rubbed
12 g salt
45 ml neutral oil
30 g white sugar
150 g red onion, sliced
100 g ají cubanela, sliced
30 g tomato paste
40 g pitted green olives
2 leaves cilantro ancho
300 ml water

The skills inside

Reducing a sauce Frying the paste until the oil splits The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil

The words inside

Ancho

Allergen screen

None found among the 14 screened.

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Toss the chicken with the sour orange, sazón, oregano and salt and leave it an hour in the fridge; the acid firms the surface so it browns instead of steaming.
Heat the oil in a heavy caldero over medium high heat, scatter in the sugar and leave it alone: it melts clear, then bronzes, then goes the colour of dark rum at the edges.
The instant the first wisp of smoke lifts, put the chicken in all at once and turn the pieces until every one wears a mahogany coat, about 5 minutes. 5 min
Add the onion, ají and tomato paste and cook until the paste darkens from red to brick and the oil around it runs orange.
Pour in water to come halfway up the meat, add the olives and cilantro ancho, cover and hold at a lazy blip until a thigh gives at the bone, then uncover and reduce until the sauce coats the spoon and leaves a trail.

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Reducing a sauce 95 recipes

A steady simmer with the surface moving, never a rolling boil that throws it up the sides and scorches what is left on the base.
Judged by behaviour rather than the clock: it coats the back of a spoon and holds a clean line when a finger is drawn through it.
The drop in volume is visible against the side of the pan: there is a line to see, not a guess about whether anything has happened.
Seasoned at the end and not the beginning, because salt concentrates at exactly the rate everything else does.
Nothing is catching underneath: a spoon drawn across the base comes up clean, with no browned film building where the heat is fiercest.

Where it goes wrong It was seasoned at the start and then reduced by half. The salt concentrated along with everything else, so the sauce reaches perfect body and is too salty to serve. And the only remedy is to dilute it and reduce it all over again.

Frying the paste until the oil splits 95 recipes

It is being fried, not simmered: the paste is in fat over live heat and moving, holding a steady sizzle throughout rather than bubbling as a wet mass.
The colour has deepened and darkened from raw to cooked, and the volume has visibly reduced and tightened.
The split, the signal the whole technique is named for, is unmistakable when it comes: clear fat separates out and pools at the edges and on the surface, and the paste pulls away from the pan floor in one mass.
The smell has turned from sharp and raw to round and fragrant, with no raw bite left from any of the aromatics that went into it.
Nothing has caught: no black specks through the paste, no bitterness, and a pan floor that is browned but not burnt.

Where it goes wrong It was taken off as soon as it smelled good, before the fat separated; the raw edge of the aromatics is still in it, and the finished dish tastes thin and sharp no matter how long it simmers afterwards.

At the Table

The Pour: Pinot Noir or Gamay
Also Right: Chianti or Barbera
From the Taps: Bière de garde
Zero-Proof: Verbena iced tea

Chicken is wine’s most agreeable partner. Match the SAUCE, not the bird: cream to oak, tomato to Sangiovese’s acid, herbs to Loire whites.

Family notes

Saved on this device and kept across visits: export from My Menu to move them.

Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Pollo Guisado Dominicano The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Dominican kitchen