Cazuela de Pollo (Colombian Chicken Stew with Coconut Milk)

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Chicken pieces simmered with potato, carrot, corn and peas, then finished with coconut milk and cream. It is a thick stew cooked on the stovetop, not a baked casserole, and the coconut milk places it on the Colombian coast. Forty minutes, five servings.

Prep Time5

Cook Time35

Total Time40

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Colombian

Keyword: chicken casserole

Servings:

Calories: 618kcal

Author: Angela Giraldo

Ingredients

5 chicken pieces
4 tablespoons butter
1 onion finely chopped
2 potatoes peeled and chopped
1 small red bell pepper pimentón: the fresh vegetable, deseeded and chopped
1 carrot peeled and grated
¼ teaspoon cumin
4 cups chicken broth or water
2 corn cobs cut into pieces, or the kernels alone
2 cups coconut milk
½ cup heavy cream
1 cup green peas
Salt and pepper to taste
2 tablespoons tomato sauce optional
Cilantro chopped

Instructions

Melt the butter in a medium saucepan over medium heat.
Add the onion, the bell pepper, the peeled and grated carrot and the cumin, and cook for 3 to 5 minutes.
Add the peeled and chopped potatoes, the chicken pieces, the tomato sauce and the broth. Raise the heat and bring it up to a simmer.
Once it boils, lower the heat and simmer until the potatoes are tender, 12 to 15 minutes.
Add the coconut milk and the corn, cut into pieces or stripped off the cob, and carry on cooking for another 8 to 10 minutes.
Add the cream and the peas and cook for five minutes more. Season with pepper.
If it is thicker than you want, loosen it with more chicken broth or water.
Stir in the chopped cilantro and serve.

Notes

This is a cazuela, which in Colombia means a thick stew cooked in a pot on the stovetop. Nothing goes into an oven. The name translates badly into American English, where a casserole is a baked dish, and the recipe itself gives the game away by calling it a soup halfway through. The coconut milk is what places it: it is a coastal Colombian habit, and it comes in near the end because long boiling makes coconut milk separate. Same reason the cream goes in last, for five minutes only. Keep it below a hard boil once the dairy is in. Consistency is a matter of taste. It should be thicker than a soup and looser than a stew you could eat with a fork, and broth added at the end is the way to steer it.

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