After a month of Mediterranean recipes, I need a change. This week I’m going back across the Atlantic and into the southern hemisphere to South America. The first recipe I wanted to try is Peruvian Chicken with Green Sauce. The green sauce in this recipe is a take on Peruvian aji verde. The real thing is made with aji amarillo paste, a Peruvian chili paste, and huacatay paste made with an herb native to Peru. I know I could order these, but I wanted to keep things simple and accessible by using ingredients available in most grocery stores. Otherwise, the green sauce ingredients for this recipe are authentic, so I think I’m in for a treat. Let’s find out!
This is one of the best chicken recipes I have ever made… I definitely plan to make this again, many times over (and I hate repeating recipes… so you know this one has got to be good).
The Ingredients
As I mentioned, I didn’t have to special order any ingredients for this recipe. Instead, it uses ingredients that are readily available at my local grocery store. I was even able to find a whole chicken that was already cut into pieces.
I was also able to find the fingerling potatoes, although I thought they were pretty expensive at $5 for a 28-ounce bag. The upside was they were a pre-washed mix of yellow and red fingerling potatoes.
The Process
This recipe is made in three parts: marinating the chicken, baking the chicken and potatoes, and blending the green sauce. Here is how my time broke down:
- 9 minutes to make the marinade
- 5 minutes to prep the chicken the next day
- 70 minutes to bake the chicken and potatoes*
- 1 hour 24 minutes total (not including marinating overnight)
*I made the green sauce while the chicken was baking and refrigerated it until needed.
Everything went according to the directions, and the only special equipment needed was a ziplock bag and my mini-prep (used to blend the marinade and the green sauce).
The only thing I wasn’t happy with was the chicken thighs seemed to cook faster than the rest of the chicken. The skin on them was pretty dark when I took the chicken out of the oven, but they tasted okay. Next time I will try buying a whole chicken and cutting it up myself so I can keep the thighs and drumsticks together.
