Pollo en Jocon; a Gutemalan Dish Using Green Sauce

Pollo en Jocon is basically a cooked chicken in green sauce. The dish can as easily be made with a beef roast (making it "Carne en Jocon") as with chicken, and I can tell you from experience that green sauce is truly excellent paired with pork also.

A few days back I wrote about making green sauce, or Salsa Verde. The recipe is absolutely delightful, and I really need to make more to keep around. I also promised a picture, which I have here, for this post. Though my husband is mostly unfamiliar with green sauce, being an upper Midwest guy (I am an Ohio gal myself, but got where I am via Guatemala for 12 years), he really liked the flavors of the chicken in the green sauce, so I took that as a big coup; winning his approval.

Pollo en Jocon

Guatemalan sauces very often contain sesame seeds and pumpkin seeds, called "pepitoria". These are in most of the sauces, whether sweet or savory. Things like mole, whether a savory mole over chicken, or a sweet mole over plantains, contain these seeds, toasted and ground. Guatemalan tamales have these seeds in the sauce that is made to go over top of the tamal. Again, the tamales there have 2 versions, a sweet and a savory, and the sauce starts out the same for either one, with the same seeds involved in the recipe. These are a couple of examples, but the use is widespread. 

A word about the sesame seeds: they need to still have the hull intact, which means they are not the kind found in the little jars in the spice section of the grocery. Unhulled sesame seeds are a dull, flat tan color, and not the pretty, shiny, polished little things in the jars. The shiny ones in the jars will not brown properly in the dry skillet. Look for unhulled sesame seed a at your local health food store. 

With that in mind then, I was quite surprised to find that in the two recipes I had found

Carne en Jocon

for Jocon, somewhere in Guatemala (one was a newspaper clipping), neither one had used sesame seeds or pumpkin seeds. Hmmm. One of the two recipes did not even mention using day old tortillas in the sauce, which is a very common thickening agent. Instead of thickening a sauce with flour or cornstarch, in Guatemala they will use cookie crumbs to thicken a sweet mole sauce, or bread, soaked and stirred into a sauce as for Hilachas (or Ropa Vieja), or tortillas, soaked and blended up into a sauce like Jocon. So, in one of the recipes they suggested thickening the sauce If it is too thin, with tortillas. Corn tortillas here in the U.S., made with a lot of additives and preservatives, pressed and sold in packages that seem to be able to last forever - these really will not easily soften and dissolve. To make this easier, keep a small package of Masa harina for corn tortillas in your freezer and pull it out for times like this. It thickens beautifully and gives the authentic flavor needed. Just moisten some corn masa flour with water and stir into the stew and cook until it thickens to your desired stew consistency.

Understand that this dish is supposed to be a stew of a sort. Once the green sauce is made, the rest of the recipe (as I made it) is just cooking the cut up chicken in the green sauce, and then put to cook for a while in this sauce to infuse flavors. 

Pollo en Jocon or Carne en Jocon

Serves about 6

Pollo en Jocon

1 whole chicken, cut up,  (for Pollo en Jocon)
OR 
2 lbs beef stew meat (for Carne en Jocon)
olive oil, for browning
1½ cups (more if desired) Salsa Verde / Green Sauce
1½ teaspoons salt
1 - 2 bay leaves
1 teaspoon dried oregano
1 tablespoon unhulled sesame seeds
1½ tablespoons raw, green pumpkin seeds

2 tablespoons corn tortilla flour (Masa Harina or Torti-ya)

Heat a dry skillet over medium heat until very hot, then add in the sesame seeds. Stir constantly, and they will begin to pop and snap. Once they turn a light brown, turn them out immediately to a plate to cool. Add in the green pumpkin seeds and stitrring constantly, toast them until they begin to get browned spots but do not let them burn! Once browned a bit, turn out to the plate with the sesame seeds. Once cooled, place the toasted seeds into a spice grinder or coffee grinder used only for grinding spices and grind fine.
Have the recipe for green sauce already made, either fresh or frozen. Heat some olive oil in a heavy duty oven safe enameled cast iron stew pot or Dutch oven and brown the chicken pieces or stew meat. Pour the green sauce over the meat and add in the salt, bay leaves and oregano. Stir in the toasted and ground seeds. Bring to a boil and cover with tight fitting lid. Place covered pot in a preheated 300 degree oven for 1½ to 2 hours for chicken and about 2 to 2½ hours for beef. Ensure that there is plenty of liquid in the pot, adding water if it gets low during cooking.

Once the meat is cooked through, Stir together the Corn Tortilla Masa flour with a little water to dissolve, then stir into the pot and allow to cook for about 15 minutes more, to thicken. Serve with rice.
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If you would like to thicken your sauce with a corn tortilla or two, soak it in hot water until very soft and then blend or just crumble before adding to the sauce.

My passion is teaching people how to create a harmony of flavors with their cooking, and passing along my love and joy of food, both simple or exotic, plain or fancy. I continue my journey in ethnic and domestic cuisines, trying new things weekly. I would love to hear from you, to help me continue my journey to explore diverse culinary experiences and hopefully to start you on a journey of your own. Join me also at A Harmony of Flavors on Facebook, and Pinterest.