Red Chile Marinated Grilled Chicken

Chicken pieces marinated in a spicy, flavorful red chili sauce, then grilled or baked. Pollo adobado recipe.

This is some of the best chicken I’ve ever eaten – grilled, roasted, baked, whatever. Juicy, spicy, tender, lipsmackin’ good.

Here’s the deal, there are two ways to make this recipe. One way entails making your own red chile sauce from scratch, using dried ancho and guajillo chiles that you can usually only find at a specialty Mexican market. Even our local Whole Foods doesn’t carry these dried chiles.

The second method starts with a base of canned red chile sauce, which is a little easier to find in a regular supermarket, and saves quite a few steps.

I’ve made this recipe both ways. As you might expect, if you have access to the dried chiles and can make the time to make your own sauce base, it’s totally worth it for the extra intensity and depth of flavor.

The good news is that if you can’t get a hold of the dried chiles, or you don’t have the time, canned red chile sauce works fine as a base for this sauce. Red chile enchilada sauce works too, though you may need to add some chili powder to it to increase the heat. In any case you are going to pump up the sauce a bit with ground cloves, cinnamon, and cumin.

The sauce is slightly acidic. So, as with marinating chicken overnight with yogurt or buttermilk, a long marinating time in this sauce will help the chicken be surprisingly moist and tender.

This recipes is adapted and inspired by Diana Kennedy’s Barbacoa de Pollo in The Art of Mexican Cooking.

Red Chile Marinated Grilled Chicken Recipe

  • Prep time: 10 minutes
  • Cook time: 1 hour
  • Marinating time: 1 hour
  • Yield: Serves 4-6

Making the sauce from scratch, our chicken ended up quite spicy hot, almost like jerk chicken. Using canned sauce as a base, even one with medium heat, most of the heat was lost in the cooking process. If you like your chicken spicy hot, and you are using a canned sauce, I recommend starting with one that is graded « hot ».

Ingredients

  • 3 pounds bone-in, skin-on chicken parts, preferably thighs, trimmed of excess skin and fat
  • Salt
  • 1 1/4 cup Mexican red chili sauce, either homemade* or canned (if you are gluten intolerant and are using canned chili sauce, make sure to read the ingredients on the can, some makers put wheat products in their sauce)
  • 1 tablespoon extra virgin olive oil
  • 2 tablespoons white or cider vinegar
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
  • 1/2 teaspoon ground allspice
  • 1 teaspoon cinnamon
  • 1/4 teaspoon ground cumin
  • A couple of turns on a black pepper grinder
  • A pinch of dried oregano, crushed
  • 1 teaspoon minced garlic

Garnish

  • Avocado slices
  • Thinly sliced lettuce or cabbage
  • Thinly sliced radishes
  • Cilantro

* To make your own homemade sauce, take 2 ancho and 2 guajillo chiles, open them up, remove the stems, seeds, and ribs. Lightly toast the chiles on a medium griddle or cast iron pan for a minute or two, flattening them down with a metal spatula. Place the chiles in a saucepan, cover with water, bring to a boil, remove from heat and let soak for 10-15 minutes, until chiles are softened. Place chiles, 1 1/4 cup of the soaking water, 1 clove of garlic, a pinch of salt, in a blender. Blend until completely smooth. Put mixture through a strainer to strain out any solids. Proceed with the recipe, but don’t add any more garlic to the sauce.

Method

1 Simmer chili sauce and spices to make the marinade: Heat oil in a medium sized saucepan on medium heat. Add the chili sauce. Add vinegar (2 Tbsp if using canned sauce, 4 Tbsp in you’ve made your own sauce), cloves, allspice, cinnamon, cumin, black pepper, oregano and garlic.

Bring to a simmer and let simmer for 5 minutes. Remove pan from heat and let cool.

2 Marinate chicken: Sprinkle salt over all the chicken pieces on all sides. Put chicken pieces in a non-reactive bowl or a large freezer bag. Add the marinade, make sure all pieces are coated well with the marinade.

Marinate in the refrigerator at least one hour, preferably overnight.

3 Grilling Instructions: Remove the chicken from the refrigerator before starting up the grill. Preheat your grill, allowing for a space on the grill for cooking the chicken with indirect heat. (If using coals, move all the coals to one side of the grill, if using gas, after the grill is hot, turn off one of the burners.)

Brush the grill grates with olive oil. Make sure the chicken pieces are well coated on all sides with the paste-like marinade.

Place the chicken pieces on the indirect heat part of the grill (not over a flame or coals). Cook, covered, for 25-30 minutes, turning the pieces over after the first 15 minutes. Try to keep the temperature in the grill around 350°F. Chicken is done when juices run clear, breasts have an internal temperature of 165°F and thighs 175°F.

3a Roasting Instructions: If you aren’t in a grilling mood, you can roast the chicken pieces in the oven. Preheat the oven to 350°F. Place the chicken pieces in a roasting pan, skin-side up. Cook for about 45-50 minutes, until breasts have an internal temperature of 165°F and thighs 175°F.

4 Serve with garnishes: Serve garnished with sliced avocado, sliced lettuce or cabbage dressed with a little vinegar and oil, sliced radishes and cilantro.

Makes for great leftover chicken to cut up and put into tacos.