Chicken Mechado Recipe

Chicken mechado is a tomato-based chicken stew wherein chicken pieces are braised and slow-cooked in tomato gravy together with potatoes, carrots and bell peppers until they are soft and falls of the bone. In this yummy kitchen Chicken mechado recipe will show you how to cook Chicken mechado in very easy and simple steps. This is a healthier version of the classic beef mechado as it uses chicken with lesser fat. Best paired with a bowl of hot steaming rice!

Chicken Mechado

More and more family games are now becoming popular in Tiktok and Facebook. Of course, di tayo papahuli jan! We have tried a lot of games like the one where you roll a ball and you get a prize where it lands, the one where you pop a toothpaste real hard and you’ll win where it lands, the surprise prize inside a large cotton candy which you will dissolve in a bowl of water, and a lot of singing and guessing games where you guess the song with just humming and the one where you get a word and you need to sing a song using that word.

We have tried a lot but there are still a lot more exciting family games we need to try! The last game and one I had really fun was last night. It was a bit of a pricey since our last game was a bit like “Guess the Dish”. As the masterchef of the house, I was the game master who cooked all the dishes. Since we are 11 in the house, I prepared 10 small portions of dishes which must be guessed correctly, with a corresponding prize. The challenge is, their nose has a pang-ipit so that their sense of smell will be gone for a while. They can only rely on their taste.

Almost all dishes are answered correctly but one dish which stood out the most is my chicken mechado. Since I was the one who cooked it, I know it was chicken mechado. But my tito, who got the dish, answered “pochero”. I was forced to compare the chicken mechado with the pochero because of the game.

I appreciated the chicken mechado more because of the game which is why I served it for lunch the next day.

If you wanna know how to make some chicken mechado at home, read and follow the simple steps below. Happy cooking!

How to Cook Chicken Mechado

Preparing some chicken mechado is super simple and straightforward.  

The first part of a savoury chicken dish is always marinating. The purpose of this is to ensure that the flavors will be already sipped in even before cooking. For this recipe, I used the simple combination of soy sauce, oyster sauce, ground black pepper and calamansi juice. Oftenly, the chicken mechado is confused with the other tomato-based dishes such as kaldereta and afritada. The uniqueness of this dish will be unveiled later as you make this as home and do the steps below. Read well as I share to you the secret of nagmamantikang chicken mechado! Yum!

The veggies we are going to use for this dish includes green bell peppers (you can also add yellow and red ones), potatoes and carrots. Simply dice them into cubes and the stir fry them until brown. They are cooked separately to make sure that they will not be overcooked for later.

Add the marinated chicken to an oiled pan with the skin side touching the pan. For the big reveal, the secret to nagmamantikang chicken mechado is to use chicken cuts with their skin still intact. While the pork has fat which renders oil, the chicken has its skin to produce all that savoury oil which will be infusing the sauce for later. After a few minutes of searing, you will notice that there are now more oil in the pan. Use this to saute the aromatics. Make the sauce base by pouring water into the pan including the aromatics and seasonings. Let the sauce cook for a few minutes before doing a taste test and then adjusting the flavor. I like mine just sour enough. If you want a stronger and more sour tomato flavor, you can simply use tomato paste to preserve the consistency of the sauce.

Accidents happen during cooking so I think it will be helpful to share with you a story. I was making chicken mechado ones and would like to balance the flavors so I planned to add a little salt, but unfortunately, the salt shaker opened out of a sudden. Although I have remove most of the sauce which are highly salty, the sauce remains saltier than what I intended it to be. A hack to save your sauce was to put chunk of potato and let it cook for a few minutes. The potassium in the potatoes will help absorb excess salt/sodium in your sauce. That potato saved my day!

After you are satisfied with your sauce, add the chicken and veggies back to the pan to complete the dish. Allow them to cook for a few minutes, just until all the ingredients come together.

Then, serve your chicken mechado as it is best when still hot. I love having this with a lot of hot steaming rice. Yum!

Chicken Mechado Recipe in Tagalog

Mga sangkap:

• ½ kilo manok
• 1 sibuyas (sliced)
• 2 butil ng bawang (minced)
• 2 green bell pepper
• 1 carrot (quartered)
• 1 patatas (quartered)
• 1 lata ng green peas
• 150 mL tomato sauce
• 2 kutsarang kalamansi juice
• ½ litrong tubig
• 3 dahon ng laurel
• 2 kutsarang oyster sauce
• ¼ tasang toyo
• asin at paminta pampalasa

Paano lutuin:

1. Hugasan ang manok at ilagay sa isang bowl. idagdag ang toyo, oyster sauce, paminta at kalamansi juice. haluing mabuti at ibabad ng 30 minuto.
2. maginit ng mantika sa kawali. Ilagay ang carrot at igisa ito hanggang maging slighty brown. alisin ang carrots at isantabi. Ilagay naman ang patatas sa kawali at lutuin din hanggang maging slighty brown. Alisin at isantabi. ganun din ang gawin sa green bell peppers, lutuin hanggang maging slightly brown at isantabi pagkatapos.
3. gamit ang parehong kawali, ilagay ang marinated na manok (skin side down) at itabi ang marinade. Lutuin ang manok nang 5 minuto at baliktarin pagkatapos. Kapag naging brown na ang balat at nagcaramelize na, alisin ito at isantabi.
4. gamitg ulit ang parehong kawali, igisa ang bawang at sibuyas hanggang mangamoy at maging light brown. pagkatapos ay dagdagan ng tubig at tomato sauce.Idagdag ang dahon ng laurel at pakuluan hanggang lumapot ang sauce. Idagdag ang tinabing marinade at haluing mabuti habang niluluto. Ilagay na rin ang green peas at timplahan ng asin at paminta.
5. Ibalik ang manok sa kawali at bahagyang pakuluan ito sa sauce. ibalik na rin ang carrots, patatas at bell peppers at lutuin pa nang isang minuto. Patayin ang apoy.
6. ilipat ang chicken mechado sa serving plate. enjoyin ito kasabay ng mainit na kanin. Yum!