Oven Roasted Peruvian Chicken

How To Make Oven Roasted Peruvian Chicken

Start by preheating your oven to 475 degrees Fahrenheit, and then you’ll need a whole chicken, make sure there’s nothing inside.

You’ll want to place that into a roasting pan. If you don’t have a roasting pan, don’t sweat it. You can still make this chicken, just place your chicken down into a 9 x 13 pan.

The difference is that it’ll sit in its juices, so you won’t get that crispy skin on the bottom.

Next, we’re gonna make a little mixture that will coat our chicken.

You’ll need 3 tablespoons of olive oil, the juice from 2 limes, which is about 1/4 cup of lime juice, 4 cloves of minced garlic, a tablespoon each of salt and ground cumin, 2 teaspoons of paprika, 2 teaspoons of sugar, and 1 teaspoon each of black pepper and dried oregano.

Then we’ll stir this together. This has some really good flavor in it, and we’re gonna use it to smother our chicken.

For the crispiest skin, You’ll want to go in with your fingers from each end and loosen up the skin on top of that chicken breast.

Then one of the benefits of loosening up that skin is that you can then spoon some of this mixture right beneath the skin, so it’s in direct contact with the meat.

Cuz I like to have the meat have flavor as well as the skin.

Then you’ll also want to coat the outside with it as well. So just kind of spoon it onto the skin, or you can use a brush to brush it on.

Then if you want you can also tie the legs together. You don’t have to, but it does cook up a little bit better, sometimes they even come pre-tied.

You just kind of wrap it around one side, and then close them together, wrap it around the other, and tie it off.

Then we’re gonna pop this into that preheated 475-degree oven for about 20 minutes. Then after 20 minutes, we’ll reduce the heat to 350 degrees to let it finish cooking.

The chicken needs to reach an internal temperature of 165 degrees Fahrenheit, how long it takes to get there will depend on the size of your chicken, but it should be somewhere around 1 hour.

Now just before this is done cooking, you’ll want to make your Peruvian green dipping sauce, and this has 1 ingredient you may not be familiar with, It’s called Aji Amarillo paste, and it’s a yellow pepper paste.

Now if you don’t have access to this, and you can’t find it and you don’t want to order it off of Amazon, my trick for you is that it kind of tastes like pepperoncini.

So you could just slide a peperoncini into this mix too. Place 1 cup of fresh cilantro leaves into a food processor or blender.

You’ll also need 1 to 2 jalapeños, a tablespoon of that Aji Amarillo paste, 2 tablespoons of grated cotija cheese, and if you don’t have cotija you can also substitute with grated Parmesan, 1 clove of minced garlic, 1 tablespoon of olive oil, 1 tablespoon of freshly squeezed lime juice, 1 teaspoon of white vinegar, 1/2 cup of mayo, and then just 1/8 teaspoon of salt.

We’ll pop the lid on and blend until pureed. Then once it’s nice and smooth, just pour it into a bowl for serving.

Tell you what, this dipping sauce is so good. I could totally eat it with a spoon. You’ll want to refrigerate this until your chicken is completely cooked.

Once your chicken is completely cooked through to 165 degrees Fahrenheit, go ahead and pull it out of the oven, and you’ll want to let your chicken rest for 10 to 15 minutes before slicing and serving.

You are ready to eat. You’ll want to serve it up hot with that delicious Peruvian green dipping sauce.