Pollo Asado

While we don’t cook this a lot recently, there was a time when we cooked this at least once a week. Those were our ‘desert’ days in the southwest. We worked up the recipe again for old time sakes and really enjoyed it. Without a doubt, it’ll be a regular again.

Ingredients:

1 whole cut up chicken

1 Tbsp olive oil

2 Fork fulls of minced garlic or the equivelt

1 tbsp of fresh ground pepper

1 tbsp ground cumin

1/4 cup lime juice

1/4 cup orange juce

1 obsp dried oregano

1/2 cup minced onion

Directions:

In a large mixing bowl, put in the garlic, onion, cumin, olive oil, oregano lime and orange juice. Mix it well.

Put in the chicken and let it marinade for an hour…or even overnight in the fridge.

Grill  the chicken over a low heat till done, or cook in the oven at 350° for 40 to 50 minutes.

But really, you should grill it, turning a few times. No rush, turn down the heat. Avoid flame-ups. We like to put a some hickory in a smoke box on the side. If you’re clueless on how to run a grill, put down some aluminum foil and cook it on the foil…on the grill. Just DON’T burn it and have flame-ups. We cook it with INDIRECT heat. In short, a burner on the left with a smoke box, and a burner on the far right with no chicken above it. Again, the key is slow cooking. If you want your chicken done in 30 minutes, the drive to Wendy’s and asked for their ‘flame broiled home-style fillet’ and cross your fingers.

Sometimes we cook this as a whole chicken on the spit and pour the mix on top a few times.  If you want to be fancy, shortly before it’s done, slice an orange thin and lay the slices on the top for the final toss.

We serve this with a Spanish rice and green beans.