The Gluten-free Chicano's Basic Caldo de Pollo

28 November 2004 • 28 November 2024

This Tursday marks the 20th anniversary of the universe's longest-running Chicana Chicano Latina Latino Literary Blog. Estas son las mañanitas, happy birthday to us, this Thursday.

Híjole, over 7 million devices have clicked on La Bloga since our day one post, when only the founding bloggers, Rudy Ch. Garcia, Manuel Ramos, and Michael Sedano, knew and clicked. Here's a 2012-vintage Latinopia video interview with Michael Sedano recalling the origins of this now-20 year old literary blog (link).

The Gluten-free Chicano Cooks
Caldo de Pollo / Chicken Soup With Rice 
Michael Sedano

 
In November's gusty gale I will flop my flippy tail 
And spout hot soup-I'll be a whale!
Spouting once, spouting twice
Spouting chicken soup with rice

 "chicken soup with rice " by Carole King and Maurice Sendak link: to text

 
No te preocupes no te preocupes
Cien años no dura el mal
Escúchame esta esta receta
Que aquí te vengo a cantar ah ah ah

"Caldo de Pollo," by Felipe Barrientos / Luis Manuel Lozano Pena

Performed by Grupo Mojado (YouTube link) 

 

This soup has bones. Diners pick out or spit out the bones, not a
pleasant experience. Please de-bone the soup prior to presenting.

The three- or maybe four-year old boy wandered unsupervised into the chicken yard. Las gallinas clucked and gently fled the boy's transgressions, but the giant white Leghorn gallo took major exception to the boy's intrusion and in a few moments the terrified boy was screaming at the beating wings that threatened to knock him to the ground. The boy's grandmother rushed to the noise, grabbed the rooster by the neck and swung the bird in the air. That afternoon, the small boy tasted his first caldo de pollo and learned that people are masters of their own fate and angry roosters taste great in a soup.

The Gluten-free Chicano remembers the first good soup he cooked. Caldo de Pollo, casi almost like his grandmother and mother made. Ever since that pot de caldo, his soup has inched ever closer to caldo like the women of his familia cooked. It all started with that initial venture into home made soup.

Chicken soup is a universal cure for almost any ailment. It doesn't always work but just having a big bowl of caldo de pollo reliably comforts gente in the gripa of a seasonal bug like a bad cold or flu. Like Menudo is known as a sure-fire way to treat la cruda, caldo de pollo is known to fix everything else.
 
Making caldo de pollo the right way takes a lot of effort and more than a modicum of skill. One of those "don't try this at home" things. Pero ni modo, el Gluten-free chicas patas has a wondrous way with fast and easy company cooking that comes out right.
 
Today's recipe made from the carcass of a roasted chicken and a handful of vegetables would make my antepasadas happy, it tastes so good with such minor labor.
 
The Gluten-free Chicano had friends over and he pulled the bones, más o menos, from the meat and the gathering made do-it-yourself tacos de pollo and enjoyed a wondrous plática. That grocery store roasted chicken is the key ingredient in the next day's caldo de pollo.

There's a lot of pollo chunks on a roasted bird so The Gluten-free Chicano saved the taco leftovers with the meaty bones and wings not made into tacos. All of this gets boiled down and becomes the pollo part of the caldo. Nota bene: you can boil down the carcass with onion and garlic then strain or pull out the bones to make a rich broth in which you boil the veggies.
 
Vegetable mélange varies according to availability and preference for pepper and chiloso. Bell peppers might be an acquired taste for some, plus the stores charge almost a dollar a pepper. Fresh or dried chile costs little but require light touches for some tables. Mejor, serve crushed chiles as a garnish on the side. If you own small serving ceramics all the más mejor.
 
Chop the vegetables to the same size pieces. Mince the garlic and just halve and slice the onion, it cooks down. A quarter inch on the other vegetables is just right.

Add veggies and spices and rice to the boiling bones or stock, cover and simmer at medium flame. If you don't de-bone, cook until the bones pull out of the water. Alternatively, after removing huesos, add less than a handful of rice and cook until the rice ends blossom out. 

Pulling the bones out of the water consumes the only hard labor of making the soup, and it's crucial to do. Tongs and a big spoon help to remove every bit of bone from the spine, the wings, the ribs. When eating, it's ok to spit out the bones you inevitably leave behind. Así es, but next time, do a better job.
 
There's always a next time because Caldo de Pollo from supermarket roasted chicken is a reliably good meal requiring only good knives, a big pot, an hour's wait. Every time you make it, change it. 

 
When you find "your" caldo recipe, a cook will begin developing a soup repertoire, expanding into caldo de res The Gluten-free Chicano knows as cocido, albondigas, caldo de camaron, menudo, hasta Lee's Green Soup. Then there are potato soup, lentil soup, guisados and beyond.
 
La Bloga-Tuesday and The Gluten-Free Chicano will share these soups in upcoming columns. Soup weather has arrived, people will say, pero sabes que? Soup weather is year-round! Nothing hits the spot for sensible, low-cost eating like a good caldo.
 
The Gluten-free Chicano controls celiac and diabetes by walking and eating right, featuring salads and a lot of soups. Adding a bit of culinary complexity, The Gluten-free Chicano's dietician recommends diabetics like him limit carbs to 50 per big meal. This particular Caldo de Pollo, per bowl, meets the dietician's consejos: less than 100g in the entire recipe, or 25g per bowl served to four diners.
 
The more liquid you make, the more bowls of caldo you can serve. Concomitantly, the more bowls, the fewer grams of carbs per bowl. 
 
Serve with tortilla de maíz, fresh lemon, dried chiles. Fancy, add chopped onion and cilantro. Frijoles on the side are perfection itself. Add an elegance factor serving tortilla de maíz quesadillas. (tortilla -13g ea, cheddar .4g per oz, 1 mozzarella / queso oaxaca)
 

Ingredients in A Recipe for Basic Gluten-free, low-carb Caldo de Pollo

Chicken bones from a grocery-store roasted pollo - .06g per lb

Potatoes - 15g per papa (white or red)

Carrots - 8g per cup, boiled

Celery - 4g per cup raw

Tomato - 4g each

Tomato sauce - 6g 8oz can

Onion - 10g large bulb

Garlic - 1g per clove

Cilantro - .7 per sprig

Comino (seed preferably, powdered good too) -  per tsp 1g / 2g seed

Salt - 0g

Black peppercorns (ground is just fine) - 1g per tsp

Rice - 45g cup cooked 

Water

Órale. You can count your own carbs in much of your food by doing a bit of work. The Gluten-free Chicano relies upon The Carbohydrate Counter website (link)for diet counting.