Recipe
🥙 LUNCH
Pollo Guisado
Puerto Rican braised chicken stew: bone-in chicken simmered in a sofrito and tomato sauce with potatoes, carrots, and green olives, served over white rice.
Puerto Rican · easy · serves 6
prep 20 min · cook 50 min
~512 cal · 60g protein · 19g carbs · 19g fat · 3g fiber · 2g sugars · 5g sat fat (estimated, per serving)
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Pollo guisado, chicken stew, is a quintessential Puerto Rican comfort dish and a weeknight staple in Boricua kitchens. Bone-in chicken is browned, then low and slow in a fragrant base of sofrito and tomato sauce with potatoes, carrots, and Manzanilla olives until the meat is falling off the bone and the sauce is rich.
The dish is found across Latin America, but the Puerto Rican version is defined by two things: sofrito, the fresh purée of peppers, onion, garlic, and culantro that is the building block of the island's cooking, and the briny green olives (and often capers) stirred in. Sazón and season it, and the slow concentrates the flavours.
Economical, forgiving, and even better the next day, pollo guisado is always served with a mound of steamed white rice and often tostones on the side.
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Make it yours
✓ Naturally gluten-, dairy-, nut-, egg- and pork-free. No swaps needed.
Toggle a diet and the ingredients rewrite themselves with regional substitutes.
🥕 Vegetarian
🌱 Vegan
🌾 Gluten-Free
🥛 Dairy-Free
🥜 Nut-Free
🥚 Egg-Free
🐖 Pork-Free
Dietary labels are a cooking guide, not allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish; we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, read the label on every product you use, and note that a kitchen can cross-contaminate in ways a recipe cannot control.
Ingredients
US
Metric
Serves 6
3 lbs bone-in chicken pieces
1/2 cup sofrito (blended peppers, onion, garlic, culantro)
1 tbsp seasoning
1 packet or 2 tsp sazón with
1 cup tomato sauce
2 potatoes, cubed
1 carrot, sliced
1/4 cup pimiento-stuffed green olives
1 bay leaf
2 cups chicken or vegetable broth
2 tbsp vegetable oil
to taste salt
Instructions
1
Season the chicken with the adobo and let it sit while you prep, then brown it in the oil in a heavy pot and set aside.
2
In the drippings, saute the sofrito for a few minutes until fragrant, then stir in the sazón and tomato sauce and cook to deepen the colour.
✎ Chef’s note
Cooking the sofrito and tomato down before the liquid goes in builds the deep savoury base; a rushed sauce tastes flat and acidic.
3
Return the chicken, add the broth, potatoes, carrot, olives, and bay leaf, and bring to a simmer.
4
Cover and braise on low for about 35 minutes until the chicken is tender and the potatoes are soft.
5
Uncover and simmer a few minutes to thicken the sauce, remove the bay leaf, and serve over white rice.
San Juan home tradition.
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🌏 While it simmers, know your destination
📍
San Juan. The earliest written mofongo recipe is in El Cocinero Puerto-Riqueno of 1859, the island's first cookbook. Sofrito does most of the rest of the work in this kitchen, and alcapurrias, often taken for plantain fritters, are actually made from grated green banana and yautia.
🗺️
Puerto Rico. The sofrito here is recaito, and it is greener than the Cuban and Dominican versions because of the culantro and ajies dulces in it. Names matter too: pernil is the roast shoulder, while lechon asado is the whole pig turned over coals along the road to Guavate, and arroz con gandules uses pigeon peas rather than any bean.
🌍
North America. North America's table began with Indigenous foodways, the "three sisters" of corn, beans, and squash, plus chiles, tomatoes, and cacao, then layered on colonial, African, and immigrant influences. From Mexico's UNESCO-recognized cuisine to the Cajun and Creole pots of Louisiana and the fiery jerk of the Caribbean, the region turns ancient staples into something new. Barbecue, tacos, gumbo, and mole all carry stories of migration and adaptation.
The story behind this dish is up top, worth a read while the pot works.
More from Puerto Rico
MofongoFried green plantains mashed with garlic and crackling pork, mounded and filled with garlicky shrimp or stew.
MallorcaA soft, buttery coiled sweet bread, pressed warm and snowed with powdered sugar, the pride of Puerto Rican panaderías at breakfast.
Arroz con GandulesRice cooked with pigeon peas, sofrito, and pork in one pot, forming a prized crust, Puerto Rico's national dish.
Browse all Puerto Rico recipes →
Good to know
You’ll need: Pot or saucepan.
Storing it: Cool leftover rice quickly and refrigerate within an hour. Keep up to 2 days and reheat until piping hot all the way through.
Make it a Puerto Rico meal
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MofongoDinner
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Frequently asked questions
What is Pollo Guisado?
Puerto Rican braised chicken stew: bone-in chicken simmered in a sofrito and tomato sauce with potatoes, carrots, and green olives, served over white rice.
Where does Pollo Guisado come from?
Pollo Guisado is a Puerto Rican dish from San Juan, Puerto Rico.
Can Pollo Guisado be made vegan, gluten-free, or dairy-free?
This Pollo Guisado recipe includes substitution suggestions for vegetarian, vegan, gluten-free, dairy-free, nut-free, egg-free, and pork-free versions, including several at once such as gluten-free and dairy-free together. Treat them as a starting guide rather than a guarantee, and see the allergen note below.
Is Pollo Guisado safe for people with food allergies?
Our dietary labels and substitutions are a cooking guide, not medical or allergen-safety advice. We track dairy, egg, gluten, tree nuts and peanuts (we count coconut as a tree nut, following FDA labeling), fish, and shellfish, but we do not screen for sesame, soy, mustard, celery, or sulphites. If you have a food allergy, always read the label on every product you use, and remember a home or commercial kitchen can cross-contaminate ingredients in ways a recipe cannot control.
How long does Pollo Guisado take to make?
About 70 minutes total (20 minutes prep, 50 minutes cooking), serving 6.
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