Colombian · Soup

Sancocho de Gallina

Intermediate
35 min
roughly 2 of 4 for cost

herb-fresh · earthy · aromatic · warm-spiced Leads with fresh herbs arguing happily on top, an earthy, grounding base, fading in warm spice.

Ingredients

1.6 kg stewing hen, jointed, skin on
3 L water
3 cebolla larga (spring onions), bruised
1 onion, halved
4 garlic cloves, crushed
3 g ground cumin
15 ml achiote oil, or a good pinch of ground annatto
2 green plantains, peeled
600 g yuca (cassava), peeled, woody core pulled out
400 g papa sabanera or other waxy potato, halved
2 ears of corn, in thick rounds
6 leaves cilantro cimarrón (culantro), or a large handful of cilantro stems
20 g cilantro, chopped, to finish
2 limes, in wedges
salt

The skills inside

The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth

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

Cover the hen with the water and bring it up slowly, skimming the grey foam until the surface runs clear, then add the onions, garlic, cumin, achiote and culantro.
Hold at a bare simmer, one bubble breaking every second or so, until a skewer enters the thigh with only slight resistance; an old hen takes close to two hours and will not be hurried.
Snap the green plantains into thumb lengths with your hands rather than cutting them, drop them in and give them 15 minutes. 15 min
Add the yuca, then 10 minutes later the corn and the potato, and cook until the potato yields to a knife and the yuca is soft but still in recognisable pieces. 10 min
Season, cut the heat, scatter the chopped cilantro over and serve with lime and white rice alongside.

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.

Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes

It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.

Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.

The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil 183 recipes

The surface is read rather than assumed: bubbles break slowly in one or two places, or the surface merely shivers, and it does not reach a rolling boil at any point.
It was held there: the pot was watched and the heat adjusted rather than set once and left, and there is no tide mark up the pot wall from a boil-over.
The liquid stayed as clear as it should be: no clouding from agitation, and no fat churned into an emulsion through it.
Whatever is in the liquid is still intact: nothing shredded, broken up, or worried apart by movement.
The level is roughly where the elapsed time should have left it; a large drop is the evidence that it ran hotter than this while nobody was looking.

Where it goes wrong It was brought to a boil and then left on the same heat, so it churned for the whole cook: the liquid clouded, the fat emulsified into it, and the solids broke apart into the broth.

At the Table

The Pour: Fino or Amontillado Sherry
Also Right: Grüner Veltliner
From the Taps: Saison
Zero-Proof: The soup is the drink, sparkling water beside

Broths love Sherry’s savory echo (consommé’s old partner); cream soups climb to gentle oak. Weight to weight, always.

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 Sancocho de Gallina The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Colombian kitchen