Puerto Rican Chicken and Rice, Arroz con Pollo

If there were such a thing as a national Puerto Rican dish, I think this would be it. My native Puerto Rican island is a tiny 100 miles long from east to west, and 35 miles from north to south. Since it is easy to travel such short distances, families and friends often come together on Sundays. Nowadays, there are many restaurants in Puerto Rico and people frequent them. However, when I was a youngster, although there were some restaurants around, specially in the metropolitan San Juan area, most families got together at grandmother's house or at the home of someone in the family. My family got together at my Abuelita Casilda's home in Lares. Grandmother Casilda was my father Silvestre's mother. Almost all my family lived in Lares. We often had Arroz con Pollo, with red beans cooked in their own sauce, and perhaps some biftec (beefsteak) with onions, and other side dishes.
Arroz con Pollo

Ingredients
  1. *1.5 - 2 lb. Chicken: 1 whole chicken, cut up in pieces, or chicken pieces, like thighs. Use chicken with bone in, not boneless chicken. The bones have a lot of flavor, and so does the skin.
  2. * 3 cans Chicken broth or 3 1/2 bcups water
  3. *Salt
  4. * Pepper
  5. * 2 tbsp. oil (olive all is best)
  6. * 1 large onion, chopped
  7. * 5 cloves garlic, chopped
  8. 1 red bell pepper (not a hot pepper), chopped
  9. 1 bunch fresh cilantro, chopped
  10. 2 envelopes Sofrito with either azafran (saffron) flavor or achiote (annato) flavor in it. These are spices already mixed in an envelope, several envelopes in a little box, the brand name is Sazón. I buy it at the regular grocery store (Latino foods or spices).
  11. 1 small can tomato sauce
  12. 4 bay leaves
  13. 2 teaspoons of capers, with their juice
  14. 2 - tsps green olives of any kind, with their juice
  15. * 1/3 cup vinegar (white, or red cider, or red wine vinegar)
  16. 1 tbsp cumin seed or 1 tsp ground cumin
  17. * 2 cups uncooked rice (I prefer any long grain, parboiled rice)
  18. For decorating and presentation: sliced lemon; small jar of red peppers (pimientos)
(Wow! That's a bunch of stuff! Of the 18 ingredients above, those marked with an asterisk (*) are essential. You can skip the others, if you don't have them.)
Directions
A. Making the soup base:
  • In a large pot, put ingredients 1-4 above. Add about 2 tsp salt. Heat on high to a rolling boil; then, reduce the heat to low, cover, and cook for about 40 minutes. The purpose of this is to make a flavorful sort of chicken soup or base, which will be put in the rice later. This soup should be abit on the salty side, as the salt will be absorbed later.
  • While the chicken base cooks, continue to make a Sofrito, which means a sauté base of spices and flavors onto which we will later add the rice and the soup base. Reserve soup with the chicken for use later (below).
B. Making the Sofrito
Use the big pot or Dutch oven, as everything will eventually be put in here.,
  • Add olive oil to the empty pot.
  • Add ingredients 6-14 above, and let it all boil once, and then lower the heat to medium or a bit lower, and let it cook for about 8 minutes, until all flavors blend well.
  • Add ingredients 15-17. Mix aeverything well. Let it get to boil once. Now, adjust the liquid; that is, make sure that there is enough liquid (the broth of the chicken soup that you first made) to cover the whole thing, up to about a 1/2 inch above the surface of the ingredients in the pot. If you do not have enough soup, add chicken broth from a can, or water. Bring to boil, then lower heat to low and cover. Cook for 25-30 minutes. Turn about halfway through this time, turning the ingredients on top to the bottom.
The arroz con pollo is done when the rice grains are not hard in the middle.
To serve, add the chicken ( take it off the bones) and decorate with slices of tomato or lemon, or with tiny green peas and strips of red pimentos.

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