Name: Pan con Pollo
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 1 h 30 min
Total time: 2 h
Yield: 6 servings
Cuisine: Salvadoran
Ingredients: 4 dried guajillo chillies, stemmed and deseeded; 2 dried pasilla chillies, stemmed and deseeded; 2 tbsp sesame seeds; 2 tbsp pumpkin seeds; 1 tsp cumin seeds; 1 tsp dried oregano; 4 whole cloves; 1 tsp black peppercorns; 1 bay leaf; 1.2 kg bone-in chicken thighs and drumsticks; 1 ½ tsp fine sea salt; 2 tbsp neutral oil; 1 onion, chopped; 1 green pepper, chopped; 5 garlic cloves, chopped; 4 tomatoes, chopped; 600 ml chicken stock; 2 tbsp Worcestershire sauce; 1 tsp caster sugar; 6 crusty bread rolls or short baguettes; 150 g curtido or pickled cabbage; 2 tomatoes, sliced; 8 radishes, thinly sliced; 1 bunch watercress; 1 cucumber, thinly sliced; 4 tbsp mayonnaise

Pan con Pollo

The Salvadoran chicken sandwich: chicken braised in a relajo of toasted spices, pulled, and piled into a crusty roll with pickled vegetables, radish and watercress. A meal, not a snack.

2 hr total Serves 6 servings Medium

The relajo is the point: a mix of whole dried chillies, sesame, pumpkin seeds and spices, toasted and ground, which is toasted rather than used raw because the volatile aromatics and the nutty flavours only appear with heat. Blending it into the braising liquid rather than sprinkling it in means the sauce thickens on the seeds themselves, no flour needed. Marinating the bread in the sauce is deliberate and is what makes it a Salvadoran sandwich rather than a chicken roll.

How to Make Pan con Pollo

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Toast all the relajo ingredients in a dry pan over medium heat for 2 to 3 minutes, shaking constantly, until the seeds pop and everything smells nutty. Do not let the chillies blacken.
Grind to a coarse powder in a spice grinder, or blend with a splash of stock.
Season the chicken with the salt. Heat the oil in a large pot and brown the pieces in two batches, 4 minutes a side. Set aside.
Cook the onion and green pepper in the same pot for 8 minutes, then the garlic for 1 minute.
Add the tomatoes and cook 5 minutes until collapsed, then stir in the ground relajo and cook 2 minutes.
Pour in the stock, Worcestershire sauce and sugar, return the chicken, and bring to a simmer.
Cover and cook gently 50 minutes, until the meat falls from the bone.
Lift the chicken out, discard the skin and bones, and shred the meat. Blend the sauce smooth with a stick blender and simmer 10 minutes until it coats a spoon, then return the meat.
Split the rolls and spread with mayonnaise. Dip the cut faces briefly in the sauce — this is the step that makes it pan con pollo.
Fill with the chicken, curtido, tomato, radish, cucumber and watercress, and eat over a plate.

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Worth Getting Right

Toast the relajo properly and grind it fresh. Bought chilli powder is not the same thing.
Dip the bread. It sounds wrong and it is the recipe.
The chicken is better made a day ahead, which also makes the assembly a ten-minute job.

Common Substitutions & Variations

Dried chilli flakes can stand in for the chillies. Heat varies a great deal between chillies and between jars, so start with a small pinch and add more to taste.
An eighth of a teaspoon of garlic powder per clove is the stand-in usually given when you are out of fresh garlic; it will not brown the same way, and it burns easily, so add it with the liquid.
Fresh herbs work in place of the dried oregano at roughly three times the quantity — a teaspoon of dried is about a tablespoon of fresh, chopped.

What to Serve With It

Curtido · A cold Pilsener · Fried plantain

Leftovers and Storage

The chicken keeps 4 days refrigerated and freezes for 3 months. Assemble the sandwiches to order.

What's in a Serving

No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.

Dairy-Free