Pollo Al Carbon Estilo Sinaloense

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Chicken to the charcoal Sinaloa Style.

Much like passing a coffee mill the aroma of charcoal chicken is a tangible highway distraction.

But did you know that most of the charcoal chicken is broiled over oak and some over mesquite.

But deeper down into the country Mexico City southward, yet another type of barbecue chicken is for sale but you may have to search it out.

Pollo A La Leña (Lay-NYA) is cooked over glowing wood coals. A person might think, so what...charcoal, wood...what's the difference?

To put it bluntly, charcoal chicken has white meat while wood fired chicken has red meat. And the taste is different. A bit more on the wild side without getting weird. Sort of like the difference between a cornish game hen and a pheasant.

The wood imparts a personality. Oak is routine and excellent. Mesquite is smokier and many people prefer it. Guisaxge or Guisache is a hardwood that imparts a taste similar to oak and apple. Sweet. There are chicken places in Chiapas that use tropical hardwood that gives the chicken a sweet flavor like orange or almond (nuts).

[MEXICOWANDERER]

Prepare beans correctly in an olla de barro (clay pot) over glowing coals of hardwood. The beans cook unevenly. From the outside edge the beans are firm and crusty while in the center they are creamy.

Spoon onto a plate. Then place a plum size hunk of queso (cheese) de cotija (ko-TEE-hah) alongside. No spoon or fork -- use pieces of tostada to scoop up the beans.

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The hardwood smoke saturates the beans in the pot. The different textures from different degrees of cooking changes the character of the beans entirely. Queso cotija has a nice tart tang, and by using tostadas more corn taste is given the dish.

On average this forms my main meal twice a week. If you think you can compare properly prepared beans to what you get on a stove top you might then want to compare Wonder Bread to genuine farmhouse oven baked bread. Don't do this with pine or fir firewood. Use charcoal briquetes, and sprinkle water-soaked hickory or apple smoker chips on top.

• Soak beans overnight
• DO NOT ADD SALT UNTIL BEANS ARE ON YOUR PLATE!
• Add lots of water
• Cook slowly over a tended cook fire
• If you add water it must be nothing less than boiling hot
• Thermal shock like salt hardens the beans
• Do not stir
• Keep the campfire barely alive by adding one or two briquets at a time. The wood chips must be waterlogged for this to work.
• Keep the pot uncovered smoke must reach the beans
• One bubble every two to three seconds is the correct boiling intensity.

I use "This Year's Beans" the fresher the better. In USA stores if the store has scoop bins of dry legumes and nuts, the beans will be fresher than packaged beans that can be years old. It makes a huge difference. A lot of Mexico's beans are imported from the USA.

[ppine]

Great idea. I really like to cook outside. Mostly I use wood to cook in Dutch Ovens, but plan to add more dishes cooked over wood coals. Selection of the wood is very important. thanks for reminding us of that fact.

[navegator]

There are some pollos a la leña stores in Mexico that cook the pollo with wood on a big roaster system and they also place small potatoes to cook with the drippings of the pollos and the heat of the wood worth the money and good tasting, I have a barrel smoker that I use with wood or charcoal to smoke the meat or pollos, a bit time consuming but worth the effort in the end.

navegator