Pollo al Maní: Peanut Chicken

Ready to dig in!

If you are anything like me you absolutely love peanuts and anything with a peanut flavor. If you feel the same about peanuts then you will definitely enjoy this recipe for Pollo al Maní which is a traditional Peruvian peanut sauce chicken dish. Since peruvians are not big peanut butter eaters, like many people are in the United States, this dish was one of my first tastes of peanuts in Peru and I was pleasantly surprised by the rich taste of the peanut sauce! Also if you are looking for other peanut recipes you can check out my previous blog Peanut Passions!

In order to prepare this delicious dish you will need a large cooking pot to prepare the main dish, a medium pot to prepare potatoes, a rice cooker for the rice, a blender to prepare the peanuts and the following ingredients:

• 3 or 4 tbsp vegetable oil
• 1 small red onion
• 1 tsp of garlic paste
• 1/2 tsp pepper
• 1 tbsp salt
• 2 1/2 cups of roasted peanuts
• 5 potatoes (served in halves)
• 10 portions of chicken 
• 10 portions of rice 
• Water

First off turn your burner onto high and add the oil and minced onion into your large pot. As the oil begins to boil stir the onions and add in the garlic and pepper. Let these ingredients cook for 2-3 minutes while stirring and then add in 1 liter of water (about 4 1/4 cups). Once the liquid comes to a boil add in your chicken and salt and let the chicken cook for the amount of time necessary based on what type of chicken you are using. 

Chicken cooking before adding in peanut sauce.

While waiting for the chicken to cook go ahead and prepare your potatoes and rice. Typically Peruvians use a yellow variety of potato but any kind will do. 

Also while waiting for the chicken to cook prepare the peanuts by putting the contents into a blender on high until they are well chopped. Once your peanuts are chopped to the point where the blender just keeps spinning and the peanuts do not move around go ahead and add 1 1/4 cups of water in order to turn the peanuts into a smooth and liquid consistency. 

Preparing the peanut sauce.

Once your chicken is cooked add in the peanut sauce and continue to cook for about 15 minutes until more of the water has evaporated out of the pot to leave a delicious peanut chicken dish! 

Adding the peanut sauce to the chicken.

This is about the consistency when the dish is finished.

Finally serve the dish with a portion or rice for each person with the chicken and peanut sauce dished over top and half a potato on the side. If you like you can also serve up your favorite salad to add in some vegetables to your meal. 

As always I hope you thoroughly enjoy your time preparing this dish and I hope your friends and family love the taste of this traditional peruvian meal! If you do prepare this dish please share your experience with everyone by writing a comment below and/or writing a comment on the Facebook group where you can also post a picture of your final plate! Thanks for reading this post and enjoy your culinary adventures!  

The Journey Starts Now

Throughout the past year I have been to Greece, Jamaica, many different states in the United States, and I am currently studying in Lima, Peru for 5 months. During all my travels I have begun to realize that my experiences with food have been limited to say the least. Now don't get me wrong, I am not trying to blame this on my family or anything, I am just noticing that through living in the United States, and not eating out very often, I have been unaware of all the varieties of delicious foods out there. 

I have been in Peru now for three months and at first all I could think about was the amazing food, so my photo blog, Finkster Photos, quickly became overridden by pictures and stories of peruvian food. That's when I got the brilliant idea to start up a second blog that had the soul purpose of talking about food, sharing recipes, and hopefully highlighting ethnic foods from around the world through the vantage point of myself and other international students studying in other countries. While this is still the focus behind the blog, I must confess that my studies and other social activities have swallowed me up and spit me out and so about a month after I had planned to launch my blog I am finally doing so. Today I would like to give you just a little taste of what is to come by giving you this nice photo collage of one of my resent dinners I had here with my Peruvian Host Family. This past weekend we ate this delicious spread of peanut chicken with potatoes, a salad mixture, and a peach dessert to top it all off. Based off of this photo alone you may be able to infer that my living situation in Peru has been pretty fantastic, between the warm interactions with my host family and the abundance of delicious food. 

Since you will be hearing a lot more about my culinary adventures in Peru I should let you know that my inspirations stemmed not only from peruvian food, but also from a specific Peruvian woman, Lucy. Who is Lucy do you ask? Lucy works at my host family's house and prepares the most amazing food in all of Peru. Yes that sounds like a pretty broad generalization, but I am serious, her food is to die for! There is one other international student at my house, from the United States, and we have started to tag out Tweets and Facebook messages with the hash-tag #ILoveLucy whenever we talk about food. So as a heads up I wanted to let you know that you will be hearing of Lucy a lot through my following blogs and you will hopefully be able to see pictures and videos of her preparing authentic Peruvian dishes. While I would love to take videos of us preparing food together all the time I unfortunately haven't found a good way to capture the video yet, so if I can do so I will be able to not only provide commentary, pictures, and recipes but I will also provide step by step videos. 

As I finish this first blog entry I would like to say thanks for reading and ask that you help me make this blog a hit by following my blog, liking my Facebook page, and sharing this entry on your social media networks like Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, Google +, and whatever other social media sites you use. Also if you are a student who is currently studying abroad please leave a comment on this blog entry and let me know so we can work together to get a blog post up about your culinary adventures in your host country.