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Sous Vide Red Chili Chicken (Adobado)
Sous vide chicken stays incredibly moist and tender. We tried dry rubs, but cooking the meat with a flavorful sauce worked best. For our flavorful red chili sauce (adobado), we liked the earthy, fruity flavor of ancho chilies, but pasilla, guajillo and pulla chilies worked, too. For a milder heat, remove the seeds after stemming the chilies. Serve with rice or tortillas and sour cream. For an equally flavorful but simpler alternative, cook each chicken breast in ¼ cup coconut milk whisked with 2 teaspoons red curry paste.
4
Servings
Tip
Don’t fear the 145°F cooking temperature. Though it is well below what we are typically told to cook poultry to, J. Kenji Lopez-Alt of The Food Lab has shown one and a half hours at this temperature is quite safe. The chicken will look and taste fully cooked.
2 hours
30 minutes active
Ingredients
-
2
tablespoons grapeseed or other neutral oil
-
2
ounces whole dried ancho chilies, stemmed and seeded
Directions
-
01Using an immersion circulator according to product directions, heat a water bath to 145°F. Meanwhile, in a 12-inch skillet over medium-high, heat the oil until shimmering. Add the chilies and toast until lightly browned, about 20 seconds per side. Transfer to a food processor, reserving the oil in the skillet. Process until coarsely chopped, about 30 seconds. In a small saucepan, bring the water to a boil. Add the chilies, oregano and garlic then cover, remove from heat and let sit for 15 minutes.
Reviews
August 29, 2024
Highly recommended
I'm not a big fan of chicken breast, it's bland and is easy to dry out. The sauce in this dish does all the heavy lifting in the flavor department, and sous vide ensures consistently moist chicken. Would I prefer making this with chicken thighs? Absolutely, but this is going into the regular rotation as is. I normally don't like to sub ingredients on the first time I make a recipe but I had to swap a mixture of guajillo and aji panca for the ancho chilies, and sherry vinegar for the apple cider vinegar. The chili swap I had to do will push the flavor of the sauce to be a bit more fruity than the earthy flavor that would have come from ancho and adds a tiny bit more heat (trivial for my family but ymmv), but honestly it worked well. Also, the only chicken I had was in sous vide bags in the freezer, so I made the sauce in the morning and chilled in the fridge. Once the sauce is chilled, I cut open the bag with the frozen chicken, added the sauce and resealed using the gentle/moist setting. From frozen, I usually add an extra hour of time in the water bath and everything works out perfectly. I served as filling for burritos with spanish rice, avocado, cilantro, onions and sliced radishes.
If you use the simplified version with the coconut milk and curry paste, would you still stir in butter and lime juice at the end?
Esther - good question. You will definitely want to add the lime juice at the end, in order to give the chicken a nice pop of brightness at the end. The butter can be optional, since you will have a nice amount of creaminess from the coconut milk; I would recommend still using it, as butter helps to emulsify the sauce and make it silky smooth. If you take a taste without the butter and are happy with the texture and richness, however, you can skip it.
Best,
The Milk Street Team
Hi Jarrod -
Ancho chiles are dried poblano peppers, which are relatively mild. They measure between 1,000 – 2,000 on the Scoville Scale. Compare that to a bell pepper, which has no heat and measures at zero and a jalapeño pepper which is about 5,000 and you can generally gauge how hot this will be. Hope that helps!
Best,
The Milk Street Team
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This was so stinking good. Thank you!!!