How to Make Our Recipe for Arroz Con Pollo

[Music] if you grew up eating chicken and rice you know it's the ultimate comfort food and like many comfort foods it's a dish that is deceptively simple but what we've got here is a bullet proof method for getting perfectly cooked rice and really moist juicy chicken every single time of course we're talking about arroz con pollo hmm that polio means that we're going to start with the chicken now what we have here are 6 bone-in skin-on chicken thighs what I want to do first Pat them dry with paper towels and season them with salt and pepper now this is a teaspoon of salt and a quarter teaspoon of pepper I'll go ahead and flip these over make sure to season them on both sides this one of the cardinal sins that people make is they don't season their food enough right at the start of cooking now these are going to go into our Dutch oven I've have 1 tablespoon of vegetable oil that's been heating in there over medium heat so gonna let these cook skin side down without moving them around that way they'll build some fond on the bottom of the pot some of the fat is going to render - it's gonna make for a great dish that's gonna take about seven to nine minutes now we're going to make the flavor base of it always come for you it's it's the flavor base for a lot of Latin cooking and that is as you know the sofrito so the ingredients that go into a sofrito can change from region to region and this is the cooks country sofrito that's right it's our sofrito we have one cup of cilantro and this is both the leaves and the stems and we have a 1/2 cup of chopped onion five cloves of garlic that we've chopped I have a teaspoon of ground cumin and one more ingredient that's over there and that is cubanelle pepper now cubanelle pepper is used often in Latin cooking and a lot of people make the mistake a substituting a green bell pepper cubanelle has a much sweeter flavor and perfect for us - frito this is one cubanelle pepper and we've stemmed and seeded it and chopped it alright put the lid on and now I'm gonna let the processor go for about 20 seconds I want this to be pretty finely chopped and I may need to scrape down the sides a couple of times let me get the sofrito out of there no it tastes good and almost anything and we're gonna use that in two applications here as well so aren't you clever I need that little bowl all right I'm gonna take two tablespoons and just reserve it we're gonna use that a little later on for now all we need to do is wait on the chicken to finish cooking on this first side and I'm gonna flip it over and let it go on the second side for exactly the same amount of time seven to nine minutes you can see I flip the chicken over seven to nine minutes on that first side seven to nine minutes on the second side all that browning means flavor and you can see it's giving off quite a bit of fat to the pot and that's a good thing now we're gonna use some of that let's see how much we have in this pot we only need two tablespoons and that is just about perfect so I'm gonna add this right back and we're going to heat that back up on medium heat because I just took it out of the pot it's nice and hot I'm gonna go ahead and add 1/2 cup of chopped onion and we're gonna go ahead and cook this onion about three to five minutes over medium until that onion starts to soften in the meantime I'm gonna go ahead and remove the chicken skins mmm the favorite part from the chicken now we're not going to use the skins in this recipe but you could if you wanted to you could go ahead and continue to render them in a skillet keep them warm in the oven they're so crispy crunchy you know in this kitchen snack exactly but you don't want to eat them right off of the chicken like this because the chicken is still undercooked mmm chicken fat and onions good we already browned the chicken let's talk about the rice no Rose con pollo has a more creamy kind of cohesive consistency so we're gonna get that by using medium green rice and this is authentic to the dish it's 2 cups of medium grain rice this has been rinsed and also our super-secret knots or secret ingredient this is also authentic in some recipes this is a tablespoon of saison we're going to cook it until the rice turns translucent that's gonna take about two minutes saison is this signature spice blend of Latino cooks it's used in everything from beans and rice to soup stews and more now there are many blends in ingredients can vary and we're using coolant or achiote in this recipe but saison traditionally contains groundin Otto or achiote seeds which lends a rich yellow color garlic powder cumin and coriander also often included and you can look for saison in the Latin American or international section of the supermarket all right so we're seeing a little bit of translucency and it smells so good in this kitchen now we want to stop it from overcooking at this point so we're gonna deglaze the pan with two and a half cups of chicken stock that's looking good now a few more ingredients so in many dishes in Latin cooking they have something called Alka privada and that is a condiment usually contains green olives and capers this is a quarter cup of green olives the pimento stuff type and we've gone ahead and cut them in half and 2 tablespoons of rinsed and drained capers it's gonna add a really peak hunt and briny flavor we've got a couple of bay leaves two tablespoons of lemon juice for some brightness mm-hmm and got a teaspoon of salt and a half a teaspoon of black pepper and way down yonder ah I recognize this yes mmm yes sir so free throws the rest of the sofrito so we're gonna put it in at this point that's a lot of flavor it sure is and the braininess and always in capers garlic the cilantro that's gonna be delicious smell everything all right so at this point we're gonna nestle the chicken right back in this mixture any juices this is up to a simmer that is perfect so we're gonna put a lid on it and this is going to go into a 350 degree oven and cook for about 20 minutes it's not going to burn on the bottom as it might on the stovetop [Music] chickens still in the oven and while it's in there let's talk a little bit about sauce let's talk about sauce now we found a couple of recipes that made an herb sauce to go with the other oasc employer just drizzle it on top and we love that idea and we're making it even easier starting with mayonnaise this is a half a cup of mayonnaise because we want a nice creamy sauce all right and we have one and a half tablespoons of lemon juice so hungry little bit of salt 1/8 of a teaspoon and the magic ingredient the secret 2 tablespoons of sofrito you took out at the beginning exactly so this is going to add tons of flavor it's really really packed full of flavor and we're gonna let this process for about 30 seconds I'm gonna see this may turn a beautiful color look at that color it almost looks like a salad dressing it does Green Goddess alright so let me go ahead and scrape this into a bowl and you can see the consistency it really is a sauce that's very cool now I'm going to cover this with plastic and put it in the fridge it's just gonna wait on the chicken and the final dish YUM [Music] the owner owes compile was in the oven for 20 minutes and I let it rest here for 15 minutes just so the rice can absorb any excess moisture in there if we were to cook it all the way through for 35 minutes the rice can be very very mushy so we should see a nice plume of steam here oh oh I'm smelling so many things at once it's smells delish smells amazing and look at the colors in there absolutely beautiful I'm gonna do my best to fish out the two bay leaves I'm gonna take a fork and just start fluffing that rice look at the texture of that rice so they're affection and now 1/2 cup of thawed peas and look how beautiful that is that's a looker all right so we are ready to eat Oh beautiful rice there for you look at that there you go chicken thigh and of course we have our sofrito sauce so we made earlier and some linens I'm excited to try that saw Oh what are you going for first ok rice oh that's got some deep hearty flavor my goodness mmm you know it's that forward brine enos from the capers and the olives that really come through but that sauce it adds a little kick of that fresh sofrito at the end get a little of that chicken in there now I love that used bone-in thighs cup and bone added some good flavor to the rice that's exactly right hmm oh it's perfectly tender when I'm feeling under the weather this is what I want not chicken noodle soup I want burros to come for you to make our version of a roast caballo start with bone-in chicken thighs medium grain rice and season to give the dish an authentic flavor make us a freedom in the food processor with fresh cilantro chopped onion cubanelle pepper some garlic and a little cumin after browning the chicken add the rice and saison to the fat left in the pot and around out the dish add some pimento stuffed green olives capers and some green peas served with a creamy sofrito sauce this is the best chicken and rice you've ever tasted so from Cook's Country an authentic version of a roast Campo you thanks for watching cooks country from America's Test Kitchen so what'd you think leave a comment and let us know which recipes you're excited to make or just say I now you can find links to today's recipes and reviews in the video description and don't forget to subscribe to our Channel see you later alligator [Laughter]

Channel: America's Test Kitchen

Views: 228,402

Keywords: arroz con pollo, cook's country, cooks country, chicken and rice, how to make arroz con pollo, how to make chicken and rice, comfort food recipes, recipes, recipe, cooking show, learn to cook, cooking tv show, dinner recipes, dinner recipe

Id: r6h81rlVCok

Length: 9min 47sec (587 seconds)

Published: Sat Feb 23 2019