Arroz con pollo

As tradition built it

Arroz con pollo

Soda Palace, San José

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken breast chicken
• 2 litres cold water
• 1 sweet pepper
• 1 to 2 stalks celery
• 1 to 2 onion
• 2 to 3 cloves garlic
• to taste salt and pepper
• 1lb (450g) rice
• 2 tbsp achiote
• 2 carrot
• 1 cup green beans
• 1 tin peas

Method

1. Cover the chicken in cold water with sweet pepper, celery, onion, garlic, salt and pepper.
2. Simmer 1 to 1½ hours, then shred the chicken.
3. Cook rice in the resulting achiote-and-vegetable stock.
4. Fold carrot, green beans and peas through.
5. Combine the shredded chicken with the rice.

Notes

Rooted in Spanish rice-and-chicken tradition, adapted with achiote for colour, and Salsa Lizano and Worcestershire in the sofrito.

A Sunday and celebration dish, rooted in the historically widespread Costa Rican practice of keeping backyard chickens, making it accessible rather than elite, and specifically named among the signature dishes of the Soda Palace, the San José institution.

What a modern chef changes

Held temperature, clarified stock

Method

1. Poach the chicken sous vide at a precise, held temperature rather than a rolling simmer, keeping it properly moist through the second cooking it undergoes once folded into the finished rice.
2. Bloom whole achiote seed in fat and grind it fresh in a spice grinder rather than reaching for a commercial paste, for a cleaner colour and a less muddy pepper note.
3. Pass the poaching stock through a chinois before it goes into the rice, for a clarity a home pot rarely achieves on the first try, closer to what a soda's decades of practice would produce by habit than what a single home attempt usually manages.