Chicken breaded with breadcrumbs, oregano and paprika and baked or fried, with a sweet and sour sauce of peach jam, panela, vinegar and cream alongside.
Two recipes on one page
Until this rewrite the ingredient list ran straight from the chicken and the breadcrumbs into peach jam, vinegar, panela, water, cream and chilli flakes, with nothing to say where one thing ended and the other began.
Anyone reading it in order would reasonably have wondered what a cup of peach jam was doing in a breading.
It is a sauce, made separately in a pot while the chicken cooks, and it now has its own section.
The sauce has to be cold
Panela and water heated into a syrup, then off the heat and the jam, vinegar and chilli flakes stirred in. Then it has to cool completely.
The last stage is whipped cream folded into it, and that only works cold. Fold cream into anything warm and it deflates on contact: the air comes out, the fat melts and what you have is a thin pink liquid.
Pour it into a container and give it the time. It is the one step in the recipe that cannot be hurried.
Sweet and sour, properly balanced
A cup of peach jam and 100 grams of panela is a great deal of sugar, and half a cup of vinegar is what keeps it from being a dessert sauce.
The chilli flakes go in with the vinegar and give it a low heat underneath. The cream at the end rounds all of it off and turns it from a glaze into something you can spoon.
It is closer to a Chinese sweet and sour than to anything Colombian, which is part of why it works against plain breaded chicken.
Baked or fried
The first step offers the oven or the pan and the recipe is genuinely indifferent.
Baked at 180°C for twenty minutes on parchment: lighter, drier, less crust. Fried in oil: crisper and richer, and closer to what pechugas apanadas means in Colombia.
The paprika and oregano in the breadcrumbs matter more in the baked version, because baking gives the crust much less colour of its own.
More breaded chicken
- Milanesa de pollo al horno — baked, with a marinade.
- Crispy parmesan chicken breasts — double breaded, with cheese.
- Breaded chicken — the plain method.
- Colombian ají — the sharper sauce.
Breaded Chicken FAQ
Because whipped cream folded into a warm syrup collapses immediately. You get a thin pink liquid instead of a sauce, and there is no fixing it. The eighth step says to let it cool completely and it means completely.
It works for the same reason any sweet and sour sauce does. Half a cup of vinegar cuts a cup of jam and a panela syrup, and the chilli flakes sit underneath both.
Both are offered. Twenty minutes in the oven gives a drier, lighter crust; frying gives the crunch people expect from pechugas apanadas. The breadcrumb mixture is seasoned either way.
Unrefined whole cane sugar, sold in a block. Heated with an equal weight of water it makes the syrup this sauce is built on. Piloncillo is the same thing under a Mexican name.
Either, and the recipe says so. Strips cook faster and give more crust per bite; whole breasts stay juicier.
It goes into the breadcrumbs with the oregano, salt and pepper. It seasons the crust and gives it colour, which matters more in the baked version, since baking browns less than frying.
📖 Recipe
Pechugas Apanadas (Colombian Breaded Chicken Breasts)
Imprimir Pin ComentarIngredients
- 2 boneless chicken breasts
- 1 cup breadcrumbs
- ½ cup wheat flour
- 2 eggs (beaten)
- 1 teaspoon paprika
- ½ teaspoon oregano
- Salt and pepper (to taste)
For the sauce
- 1 cup peach jam
- 200 g cream
- 100 g panela (sugarcane sweetener)
- 100 g water (the same weight as the panela)
- ½ cup vinegar
- 1 tablespoon chili flakes
Notas
Instructions
- Heat the oven to 180°C (350°F). You can also fry these in oil instead.
- Line a baking tray with parchment paper.
- Leave the chicken breasts whole or cut them into strips, neither too thick nor too thin.
- Put the flour on one plate. On another, the beaten eggs seasoned with salt and pepper. On a third, mix the breadcrumbs with salt, pepper, the oregano and the paprika.
- Dip each piece of chicken first in the flour, then in the egg, and finally coat it in the breadcrumb mixture.
- Lay the chicken on the tray and bake for 20 minutes, or fry it in oil if you prefer.
- Meanwhile, make the sauce. Put equal parts panela and water in a pot and heat until they form a syrup.
- Take it off the heat, add the jam, the vinegar and the chili flakes. Mix well, pour it into a container and let it cool completely.
- Separately, whip the cream lightly and fold it into the cooled mixture to finish the sauce.
- Serve the chicken with the sauce alongside.
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