Pollo Guisado

An easy chicken stew that you can meal prep

I’m starting a new video series in which I take a sale cut of meat and show you what recipe I would make with it to stock my freezer! Often, when meat goes on sale, people just put the raw meat in the freezer to use later, but if I make a recipe right away and then freeze it, I’m much more likely to eat the meat.

A few weeks back, Aldi had chicken drumsticks on sale. I used those drumsticks to make a soy sauce braised chicken recipe. I deboned the chicken legs and saved the meat and sauce. Then, I turned them into freezer meals, layering the chicken over white rice and topping each meal with frozen broccoli (still frozen). These were great, easy meals that I quickly ate over the past few weeks. I intended to make them again when Aldi ran the same sale this week.

However, our plans changed, and we were having two friends over for lunch on Sunday, so I decided to make this stewed chicken instead. I made the stew with potatoes and carrots and served it over white rice. The stewed potatoes and carrots are my favorite part of this dish when served fresh, but they do get VERY soft, and I don’t think they would hold up well in the freezer. I deboned the rest of the chicken and mixed it with any remaining sauce and mashed any leftover veggies in with the chicken. You could leave out the veggies if you just meal-prepped the chicken.

You will need sofrito for this recipe, but if you’ve made some of my other Puerto Rican recipes, then you might already have this in your freezer!

I used one family pack of chicken drumsticks for this recipe, but unfortunately, I don’t remember how big it was. It was 11 drumsticks, but they were rather large. My guess is it was around 3-4 lbs.

Pollo Guisado

• 3-4 lbs bone-in chicken

• 2 packets of Sazon

• 2 tsp Adobo seasoning

• 4 tbsp olive oil

• 1/2 cup sofrito (8 tbsp)

• 1 yellow onion chopped

• 6 cloves garlic chopped

• 2 tbsp tomato paste

• 3 cups chicken stock

• 1 bay leaf

• 3-4 yukon gold potatoes, peeled and chopped

• 3 carrots, peeled and chopped

• 1/4 cup manzanilla olives (optional)

In a large bowl place the drumsticks and season with 1 packet of sazon, 1 tsp of adobo, 2 tbsp of olive oil. Mix well and leave the chicken to marinate for 30 minutes up to overnight in the fridge.

Sear the chicken on each side for a few minutes in a large dutch oven or heavy-bottomed pot (I used my electric dutch oven for this). The sazon is a red color so it may be hard to judge browning; just be careful not to burn the chicken. I also had to do this in two batches. Remove the chicken to a plate or bowl.

Add the chopped onion to the pot with the remaining 2 tbsp of olive oil. Stir to get up any fond that has developed on the bottom of the pan. Then add in your sofrito and saute until softened (if it’s frozen just put the lid on the pot for a few minutes). Add your chopped garlic and stir for 1 minute just until the garlic is fragrant, then add the tomato paste. Cook that, stirring with the rest of the aromatics until the color of the tomato paste deepens. Then add the remaining packet of sazon and the remaining Adobo seasoning.

Return the chicken to the pot along with any juices that collected while it was resting. Then add the three cups of chicken stock, the potatoes, carrots, and olives. And toss in the bay leaf.

Cover and cook on a simmer for 2 hours. In my electric dutch oven I did the first part of this recipe on the sear function and then I switched to the braise function.

Serve over white rice. To freeze it, I deboned all the chicken and mixed the meat in with the sauce. I froze that in the 1-cup souper cubes trays.