I’ve been recently working on my Mexican culinary skills with my friend Paula.  I hope to share with you some authentic Mexican treats in future posts so I was very happy to see these classic Mexican recipes from contributing writer Chef Mark Vogel.

Another Mexican Feast

I love all kinds of ethnic cooking.  But when I want a really hearty meal I find myself returning to Latin fare more than any other cuisine.  And that’s why this is yet another Mexican feast!  It begins with chicken burritos made with a creamy sauce from poblano peppers and spinach.  It’s served with spicy refried beans and the coup de grâce, a pitcher of margaritas.  It doesn’t get much better than that.

Chicken Burritos with Creamy Poblano-Spinach Sauce

For the poblano-spinach sauce:

3 poblano chiles, divided, (two for the sauce and one for the chicken burritos)
1 jalapeno chile
1 large handful baby spinach leaves, roughly chopped
3 tablespoons butter
1 small onion, chopped
2 cloves garlic, chopped
3 tablespoons flour
1 cup milk
1 cup chicken broth
Salt and pepper to taste

For the burritos:

2 large, boneless chicken breasts
Salt and pepper to taste
Vegetable oil, as needed
1 poblano chile from the sauce recipe above
½ teaspoon chili powder
½ teaspoon cumin
6 flour tortillas (or substitute corn tortillas and make enchiladas instead)
Grated cheese such as Monterey Jack, or a supermarket “Mexican cheese blend,” as needed

Fully pre-heat your broiler.  Slice the stems off the three poblanos and one jalapeno and then cut the peppers in half vertically.  Remove the seeds.  Place the poblanos and jalapenos, skin side up on a foil-lined baking sheet.  Broil until the skins have blackened.  Remove from the broiler to cool.  Turn off the broiler and heat the oven to 350 degrees.  Place the spinach into a blender.  When the peppers have cooled, remove the skins.  Place two of the poblanos and the jalapeno into the blender.  Cut the remaining poblano pepper into thin strips and reserve.

Heat the butter in a saucepan.  Add the onion and on low to medium heat cook the onion until soft.  Do not brown the onion.  Add the garlic when the onion is almost done.  Add the flour and cook an additional minute or two.  Slowly whisk in the milk and chicken broth and continue to cook and whisk until the sauce thickens, about five minutes.  Season with salt and pepper.

Pour the mixture into the blender with the spinach and chiles.  Allow it to cool somewhat and then blend it.  Reserve the sauce in the blender.

Butterfly the two chicken breasts by cutting them down the center parallel to the cutting board.  Season both sides of the breasts with salt and pepper.  Heat some vegetable oil in a large skillet until it starts to smoke.  Sear the first side of the chicken until fully browned, flip and sear the other side.

Remove the breasts and cut into thin strips.  Don’t worry if they’re not cooked through to the center as they will be added back to the pan to cook more.  Reheat the pan, adding more oil if necessary.  Return the chicken to the pan as well as the one reserved poblano that was cut into strips.  Add the chili powder and cumin.  Sauté a few minutes until the chicken is fully cooked and the poblano has softened.

To make the burritos:

Give the reserved sauce in the blender another whiz to mix it.  Pour some of the sauce into the bottom of a 9 X 13 baking dish and swish it around to cover.  Divide the chicken/poblano mixture amongst six flour tortillas.

Place a tortilla in the microwave for about ten seconds just to soften it.  Add 1/6 of the mixture to the center of the first tortilla.  Pour a little of the sauce over the chicken and then roll the burrito.  Place it seam –side down in the baking dish.

Repeat with the remaining five tortillas.  When finished pour the remainder of the sauce over the rolled burritos.  Sprinkle the burritos with cheese.  Place the baking dish into the oven until the cheese melts.  Serve with the refried beans and some margaritas, (recipes below).

Basic Refried Beans

Vegetable oil, (or even better), lard, as needed
1 small onion, chopped
1 jalapeno pepper, chopped
4 garlic cloves, minced
2 cans pinto beans with their juices
½ teaspoon cumin
½ teaspoon coriander
½ teaspoon chili powder (or if you like it even hotter, ground cayenne pepper)
Salt and black pepper to taste

Heat the oil or lard in a large skillet.  Add the onion and jalapeno and sauté.  When the vegetables are almost soft add the garlic.  Meanwhile empty the two cans of beans with their juices into a blender and blend into a puree.  With a rubber spatula, scrape out the beans into the skillet.  Add the spices and stir and cook until the mixture has thickened.

Like so many recipes, alternatives abound.  The lard will absolutely impart more flavor but vegetable oil works as well.  Adjust the jalapeno and chili powder to suit your heat preference.  If you’re not a fan of heat, substitute some bell pepper for the jalapeno or omit it altogether.  The consistency of the dish can vary as well.

For a completely smooth final product you can blend the onion/pepper mixture with the beans.  Conversely, if you like some whole beans mixed in, only puree one can.  Drain and rinse the second can of beans and add them as is.  Finally, other spice options include Mexican oregano, achiote, epazote, or cilantro.

Margarita

This recipe will produce a small pitcher of margaritas.  Change the amount accordingly but use a ratio of 1.5 parts tequila, .5 parts triple sec, and 1 part lime juice.

12 oz. tequila
4 oz. triple sec or for a blue margarita use Blue Curacao
8 oz. freshly squeezed lime juice

Whiz the ingredients in a blender.  Add ice to the blender if you prefer a frozen margarita.  Take a lime wedge, slice it through the center and slide it around the rim of your margarita glasses.  Then dip the rim in kosher salt.  Add ice to the glass, (if not making the frozen variation), a lime wedge and serve.

Chef Mark R. Vogel

You’ve all seen those directions in your roast chicken recipes:  “Roast until Done.”  Gee, thanks for all the help. The same directions can be found in recipes for grilled chicken, sauteed, pan fried or any other way there is to cook this favorite bird.

Intuitively, we know what “done” looks like - the meat should be white all the way through, not pink.  It should also be completely opaque, no translucent spots.  And pink or bloody liquid is a no no.  The juices should always run clear.

That’s all well and good, and important, too, especially with salmonella’s being such a problem when it comes to poultry.  But how can we tell for sure when the meat is done all the way through to the bone and not overcooked?  The skin can be golden brown and the chicken can smell great, but it might not be done in the center or it may be completely overcooked and dried out.

Cooking Variables

For starters, and most importantly, it is almost impossible to go by stated cooking times in recipes. Start looking at those times as estimates and estimates only.  There are so many different variables at play when it comes to timing recipes; the size and make of the oven, whether or not it’s a convection oven, did you preheat the oven and the precise size of your chicken and its temperature when you put it in the oven in the first place.

If you pull a chicken out of the refrigerator and it’s 40ºF, common sense tells you it will take longer to cook than a chicken that’s sat out for 30 minutes and reaches a standing temperature of 60ºF. For these reasons, “350º F for 45 minutes” is not very helpful.

Why?

Besides all the variables just mentioned, most of us are so afraid to undercook food that we tend to let it cook longer forgetting that all meats and poultry need to rest to redistribute the juices and while it is resting, it is continuing to cook.

At best, consider “time and temperature” a ball park estimate.  Set the oven to 350º F, but start checking the internal temperature at 35 minutes, realizing it could take well over an hour.  Forget the notion that the time and temperature estimations for doneness is the holy grail. Sure it’s much easier to cook this way, but also a great way to get over or under cooked chicken. Remember - Time & Temperature is just an estimation

Whether you poach, grill, saute or roast your chicken, you need to find a reliable measure of doneness.  Cooking a bird for several hours “just to be on the safe side” is just as bad as serving undercooked meat.  It might be even worse.  You can always cook the chicken more, but there is no way to uncook it.

Popular Suggestions That Don’t Work

Many cooking resources advise that you cut into the leg to see if juices run clear.  There are a couple of problems with this method.  For one, and rather obviously, not everyone cooks whole chicken, and often we cook boneless cuts.  Another issue is that when juice runs out of the chicken, as it most certainly will when you slice it open, you end up with dry chicken.  So, even if you haven’t overcooked the bird, it might still taste overcooked just because it is drier than it should be.

Other cooking resources advise you to jiggle or tug on the leg to see if the bone feels loose in the socket.  I don’t think much of this method, especially since it’s the way I test for doneness when I’m slow cooking a rack of baby back ribs.

Yes, the meat will be done when the bone is loose in the leg socket, but most likely it will be overdone, as the looseness is a sign that the connective tissue that holds the bone in place has gelatinized. This is a good thing when what you are looking for is lip-smacking goodness.  It’s not such a good thing when you want tender, juicy, perfectly cooked roast chicken.  Plus, as I stated before, you might not always have a bone in a socket to wiggle.

How to Know When the Chicken Is Done

The most reliable and accurate way to test for doneness, regardless of cooking method, is using an instant read thermometer.  Just pierce the meat in the thickest part, being sure not to hit bone (the bone will be hotter than the meat).  Try to aim for the center of the piece of meat.  If you’re not sure, go ahead and pierce all the way to the bone (or all the way through, if you’re cooking a boneless cut) and then back it out halfway.

You’re looking for a final internal temperature of 165º F for white meat and about 180º F for dark meat.  Keep in mind that these are the USDA recommendations, and many people feel that they are set too high.  They are set for your safety though, so I find it is best to stick with these temperatures, especially when dealing with poultry.

Once you take a piece of meat out of the oven, its temperature will continue to rise.  How much it rises depends on the size of the piece of meat and the temperature at which you were cooking it.  For smaller pieces of meat, such as breasts, the temperature may only rise one or two degrees.  For larger cuts and whole birds, the temperature can continue to rise as much as 10-15 degrees over a half hour to forty-five minutes.

Keep carryover cooking in mind when you roast any sort of meat, and allow for it in your temperature readings.  For example, when roasting a whole chicken, take it out of the oven when the breast reads an internal temperature of 155º F-157º F, cover it and let it rest, allowing the temperature to rise to 165º F.

When roasting a chicken breast, remove it from the oven at an internal temperature of 162-163F, letting it rest, covered, until it reaches 165º F.  Not only will resting the bird allow for carryover cooking, it also gives the juices in the bird time to redistribute evenly throughout the meat, resulting in a juicy, tender bird.

Experience

You might ask if professional cooks use instant thermometers and I can tell you they all carry them on their person at all times because it is the law and I imagine most of them use them. I’m also sure after cooking thousand and thousands of chickens they intuitively know when they are done. I’ve even been told by one chef she could hear when a chicken breast is perfectly cooked while sauteing. Cooking by ear - sounds interesting.

You may find it a pain at first to check everything you cook with an instant thermometer but I think after a few perfectly cooked outcomes, you will make it a standard part of your cooking experience.

Your Experiences

Please share with us your tips for cooking delicious, moist chicken in the comment section below.

Related Topics

Instant Thermometers

Chicken Recipes

Blog Chicken Recipes

How To Saute

Chicken with Peppers

Pollo ai Peperoni

You may have noticed the last few days I’ve been spotlighting Lola, my new friend from Italy who writes a wonderful blog called Aglio, Olio & Peperoncino - Personal Thoughts On All Things Tasty. Lola is a very good writer and if you are into Italian cuisine and culture like I am, I think you owe it to yourself to take a peak at her blog.

I was doing just that, reading about her poultry vendor, Massimo, “her pollaralo” who sells not only chicken but turkey, rabbit, hare, and game birds. She describes how she has been going to this market since she was a little girl and now takes her 4-year-old son there. It’s a craftily written piece that ties the past to the present and finishes with a great recipe for Pollo ai Peperoni or Chicken with Peppers, a classic Roman dish that Massimo handed down to Lola’s mother 25 years ago. Very cool.

I prepared this recipe for some friends on Sunday night and served it with lasagna I pulled out of the freezer that needed to be eaten. We dinned outside under the pergola enjoying a perfect September evening, not too warm - not too cool.

I served the lasagna first as the Primo (first course) and the chicken second (secondo) along with a salad and lots of wine. The lasagna was good but a little runny however the Pollo ai Peperoni was extraordinary. The flavor of the slow cooked peppers combined with the chicken, tomatoes and other ingredients worked together this night just like they must have generations ago. Best of all, the leftovers were even better the next night.

I doubled the amount of chicken but not the peppers. This may have been a mistake but nobody noticed and more importantly, nobody complained. There were no requests for seconds but I think that had more to do with serving a big slice of lasagna first. Lola warned me the way Italians eat is much different then we do here in the US and it takes some getting use to.

So here are some photos of how I put this recipe together but if you would like the recipe along with Lola’s interesting story about the dish, go to Pollo ai Peperoni.

You may also want to read my Interview with Lola.

Food Writer & Blogger Lola

Friends Barbecue Bob & Bert