Chicken Afritada is a Filipino chicken stew where chicken pieces are floating along with potatoes, carrot, green peace, bell pepper in a sauce made with tomato sauce, tomato paste, onion, garlic, fish sauce, chicken broth cube, salt and pepper. This dish is influenced by Spanish cuisine and is best served with rice, during different celebrations or even just on your family dinner night. Follow our chicken aftada or afritadang manok recipe to make best chicken afritada for in your home.

Chicken Afritada

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Course: Chicken Recipes

Servings

servings

Ingredients

1 kg. Chicken (cut into serving pieces)
1 medium onion (chopped)
4 cloves garlic (minced)
1 cup tomato sauce
2 tablespoon tomato paste
1 1/2 tablespoon fish sauce (to taste)
1 teaspoon black pepper
2 medium potatoes (cut into wedges)
1 small carrot (cut into wedges)
1 piece chicken broth cube (optional)
1 cup water (or chicken broth)
1/3 cup green peas
1 medium green bell pepper (squares)
oil for sauteing

Directions

Heat oil in a pan. Saute’ onion and garlic until aromatic. Stir-in the chicken. Saute’ or sear until it changes color and no longer pink. Stir occasionally to cook evenly.
Once the chicken is light brown, add ground black pepper and fish sauce. Stir to blend. Simmer for around 3 minutes to let the fish sauce to evaporate.
Then, add tomato paste, chicken broth cube. Stir to combine. Then, add water or chicken broth. Cover and let it simmer for 15 to 20 minutes using medium heat.
After simmering, add the potatoes, carrots and tomato sauce. Stir to combine. Cover again and simmer for another 15 minutes or until the veggies are tender.
Once the carrots and potatoes are tender, taste the sauce. Add sugar to taste. Add the green peas and green bell pepper (you can also add salt if needed). Stir then cook for another 3 to 5 minutes until the sauce becomes thicker.
Remove from heat and serve with hot rice. Enjoy!

Notes

If you don’t have tomato paste, you can use fresh tomatoes. You can add 4 to 5 pieces tomatoes. Chop them up and sauté’ together with the onion and garlic.
Instead of chicken cube and water, you can use 1 cup chicken broth if available.
You can add salt to taste depending on how salty you want for the chicken afritada.
Legs, thigh and wings are the best part to use for this recipe, as the breast part have a tendency to become dry when cooked longer.

Chicken Afritada

Afritada is another Filipino dish which was influence by the Spanish cuisine. The afritada came from the word “fritada” which means fried. It is a braised dish commonly with pork, chicken or beef and is enhanced with the flavors from different vegetables like carrots, potatoes and bell peppers. The modern afritada uses a lot more variety of ingredients including hotdogs, green peas and sometimes ham cubes to expand the dish.

Afritada vs Menudo vs Caldereta

Afritada is commonly confused with other tomato-based dishes like menudo, pochero and caldereta. What’s unique with afritada is that it usually uses bone-in chicken pieces and does not include chicken liver. The lack of liver or liver spread in the dish makes Chicken afritada uniquely delicious.

How to Make Chicken Afritada

Cooking chicken afritada is pretty simple. It’s more on sautéing and simmering. You just need to prepare all your ingredients and you can cook you tasty and yummy way in no time!

First, saute’ onion and garlic. Sauteing will release the aroma and flavor of the onion and garlic. Once they become aromatic, add the chicken. Sear the chicken until the color changes – from light pink to light brown. Saute’ and stir once in a while to cook it evenly.

When the chicken becomes light brown, you can add the ground black pepper and fish sauce. To avoid the fishy taste of the fish sauce, let it simmer for around 3 minutes before adding water or broth. Once the aroma of fish sauce fades, you can now add the other ingredients.

Add the tomato paste and chicken broth cube (if you are going to use chicken broth as water, you may skip this part). Stir to blend the tomato paste and dissolve the chicken bullion cube. Once dissolved, add water. Cover and simmer for 15 to 20 minutes.

After simmering, you can now add the veggies. I added some potatoes and carrots. At this point, you can also add the tomato sauce. Stir to combine the ingredients. Then, cover again and let the veggies becomes tender.

Once the veggies are cooked, you can taste test the sauce. Add additional seasoning depending on your taste. I added some sugar to balance the sour taste of tomato. I also added bell pepper and green peas. Let it cook for another 3 to 5 minutes and you’re done! Meal is ready!