Pollo en Jocón

Helga Glaesel de BlandingSeptember 7, 2022

This post is also available in / Esta entrada también está disponible en ESPAÑOL (SPANISH)

Every year, during our independence month, we share typical recipes from Guatemala. Here you will find recipes to prepare chuchitos, chancletas, chiltepe chili sauce, rellenitos, chilaquilas and quite a few more that you can see in our Guatemalan Recipe section.

This time, we wanted to show you the recipe for Pollo en Jocón, which has been declared Intangible Cultural Heritage of the Nation by the Ministry of Culture and Sports. It is an original sauce from Huehuetenango, and its name has its root in the quiche jok om, which means green sauce.

Like many of the typical recipes, to standardize them so that the recipe is written with measurements and not with “a little of this and some of that” we took on the task of writing everything down with a notebook and pen while we were learning how to make it.
We hope you will try these recipes so that the culinary traditions of our country will continue to be passed on from generation to generation.

Helga

Pollo en Jocón

Recipe
Yields: 6 servings

Ingredients:

3 lbs bone-in chicken pieces
5 cloves of garlic
½ pound tomatillo
2 green tomatoes
1 bunch of cilantro
2 green bell peppers
1 corn tortilla (made from masa)
½ cup pepitoria seeds, toasted
1 white onion
4 green onions with stems
5-6 medium potatoes, peeled and diced
salt and pepper

Procedure:

Cook the chicken:

Remove the skin from the chicken pieces. Place them in a medium pot with 1 white onion cut into four, 2 cloves of garlic, a few sprigs of cilantro, salt, and pepper. Add just enough water to cover the pieces. For 3 cups of water, we add 3 teaspoons of coarse salt. Let it boil so that it cooks almost completely, 12 minutes, semi-covered. When the cooking time is up, remove all the vegetables from the pot so that only the chicken and the broth remain with nothing else. Strain it if necessary.

Toast the tortilla and pepitoria seeds:

In a small frying pan, toast the tortilla and also the pepitoria until golden brown. Grind the pepitoria so it becomes a powder.

Prepare the sauce:

Cut the green tomatoes, green bell peppers, and green onions along with their stems into medium pieces, and add the tomatillos, the remaining garlic cloves, and the bunch of cilantro. Add everything to a medium pot and season with 2 teaspoons of coarse salt and pepper. Add 1 cup of water, cover, and cook for 8 minutes or so. Little water is used so that it generates steam and we don’t end up with too much liquid.

After about 6 minutes of cooking, add the tortilla to the vegetable pot to make it soft. This ingredient is used to thicken the sauce.

Transfer all the ingredients to the glass of a blender together with the ground pepitoria and add the water in which the vegetables were cooked. You may have to work in 2 batches.

Add the green blended sauce to the pot with the cooked chicken and broth. Now add the diced potatoes and cover the pot. Cook over low heat until the potatoes are cooked and soft, it takes about 20 minutes on medium-low heat. Adjust the seasoning.

Serve in bowls with white rice.

Have you made this recipe?

Please let me know how it turned out for you! Leave a comment below and share a picture with the hashtag #thefoodieskitchen!

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