28 Sep Aji de gallina: Peruvian creamy Chilli Chicken recipe
Aji de Gallina: Peruvian Creamy Chilli Chicken must be one of the most common plates among Peruvian households cuisine. For me, it is just like comfort food that would transport me to my childhood at home.
But this dish has more than two hundred years of history. It is a variation of a sweet Spanish plate called “Menjar Blanc”. Yes! a dessert! Crazy right? The dessert consists of hen or chicken stock with almonds, sugar and thickened with rice and flour to achieve a pudding texture. When it came to Peru, people replaced the almonds with nuts and the sugar with yellow Peruvian chilli (“Aji Amarillo”). The Peruvian Yellow Chilli will give that characteristic yellowish colour to the dish. To use the yellow chilli, you have to make a “sofrito”, a base of fried onions, garlic and yellow chilli.
Nowadays, most Peruvian households will prepare this dish, but instead of hen (gallina), people will use more tender and cheap chicken for cooking. Still, we will call this dish “aji de gallina”-Chilli Hen even if it has no hen because it is in our tradition to call it like that.
This “Aji de Gallina” Peruvian Creamy Chilli Chicken recipe is my version of this dish, the one I grew up with and the one I love, but you will see that they are some variants of the same recipe. Some people will use crackers instead of bread, just stock and not a combination of stock and milk, so it depends on what you like most, but I guarantee the version you made you will add it to your dinner rotation.
Normally, this dish will be served over slices of boiled potatoes, a side of cooked rice and garnish with slices of boiled eggs.
Common Questions About this Peruvian Creamy Chilli Chicken dish:
Chicken, Chicken Stock, Sofrito (Onion, Garlic and Peruvian Yellow Chilli “Aji Amarillo”
You can do it as spicy as you want because you can purchase the chilli paste without spicy or do it from scratch with the fresh yellow chilli. You can do a paste deveining all the chilli and discarding all the seed and let it seemer for a minute or two in hot water. Blend it with some water to make a paste, and you can use it and have the flavour without the heat. If you want some heat in it, leave some of the seeds, and you get it. Otherwise, you can buy the regular yellow chilli paste.
This time we use pecans, but you can use nuts or Brazilian nuts.
Yes, you can freeze it without a problem for a couple of months.
You can feel some crepes, empanadas, phyllo dough, etc., whatever your imagination wants.
Some Products I use for this recipe*:
- Non Stick Saucepan: https://amzn.to/3FA1kma
- Wooden Spoon: https://amzn.to/3p1hEGK
*The above link is an affiliate link, meaning Canguro Criollo makes a commission if you purchase via our link. This does not affect the price you pay in any way or our decision to recommend them. We will provide an exact product or something similar if the same product is no longer available.
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Hi! I’m Valeria (aka Val) the photographer and recipe developer behind Canguro Criollo. My passion for food began when I was little at my home when everything will revolve around food and now I discover this new creative outlet of food photography. I wish you can follow my journey discovering unique ways of preparing Peruvian food abroad and some other family-friendly foods.
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