Pollo Al Carbón

Recipes from the Levee #4

It was during the peak of my restaurant days, and we had just purchased some property on a cute corner in Mid-City, New Orleans. The building was originally a gas station from a bygone era, eventually used as an office up until it became ours. We intended to turn it into a hybrid taco/BBQ joint, slinging items like smoked brisket breakfast tacos and pancakes the size of a whole pizza. It was to be named “Adios.” As part of the R&D process leading up to the eventual opening of Adios, my head chef and I took a trip to Houston to see what the guys were doing over there. We spent 2 days eating our way through Houston, hitting 4-5 restaurants in a single day. It was like restaurant heaven, but you had to be careful not to go too hard too fast. We were tempted to order every item on the menu, and perhaps a bottle of Rosé, but we had to keep in mind that we were about to leave the current restaurant and go to another immediately after.

Of all the Tex-Mex restaurants we went to, Superica by Ford Fry stuck out to me. Ford Fry is a restauranteur originally based in Texas with restaurants now in Houston, Nashville, Charlotte, and Atlanta. All of his restaurants have brilliant branding and, importantly, great food. Superica is an homage to his Tex-Mex heritage, and I highly recommend you give it a try if you find yourself near one (you can find their locations here).

The menu is full of classics such as queso fundido, enchiladas suizas, and chile rellenos, but there was one dish in particular that had a lasting impression on me: pollo al carbón. It’s a whole chicken marinated in a tangy Tex-Mex marinade and then grilled over wood coals. You can then either eat the chicken with some sides or chop it up and make tacos out of it.

We returned to New Orleans with new inspirations. Unfortunately, this was March 2020, and literally days after getting back, the Global Pandemic erupted. Fast-forward to today. I am no longer in the restaurants, and the Adios project never opened, but in its memory I will share my version of Ford Fry’s Pollo Al Carbon. The next time you are having a backyard BBQ, give this a try.

Ingredients

• 1 whole chicken

• 1 cup orange juice

• Juice of one lime

• splash of olive oil

• splash of soy sauce

• 1/2 packet of achiote paste (this is a paste made from the annatto seed. It gives the chicken a tangy flavor and deep red color. If you can’t find it, you can omit it)

• 2-3 canned chipotle peppers and some of their juice

• 2 cloves garlic

• 1/2 teaspoon ground cumin

• 1 tablespoon salt

Process

Put all of the marinade ingredients in a blender and blend until smooth. Take your chicken, remove the backbone, and then cut into two separate halves. Put the two halves in a gallon ziplock bag, pour in the marinade, and massage the bag to get the marinade in every crevice of the chicken. Put the ziplock in the fridge for at least an hour, but preferably overnight.

Get some hardwood charcoal rippin’ hot in a Weber Kettle. You want to set up your grill for zone cooking, where one side has coals and the other does not. Once your coals are hot, throw a couple of wood chunks on them. Place your two chicken halves on the side that does not have coals on it to cook the chicken indirectly.

Temp your chicken, and once the breast hits about 150-155, place the halves directly over the coals. Flip occasionally until the chicken develops an even char all around. Remove and rest for at least 10 minutes.

At this point, it’s entirely up to you. Sometimes I cut the chicken into pieces and serve it with some tex-mex sides. Other times I chop the chicken up into chunks and make tacos with it. There’s one particular taco preparation using this chicken that is my favorite which is:

• homemade corn tortilla

• avocado

• serrano/cilantro ranch

• grilled onion/jalapeño

• pickled red onion

• chopped chicken

If you want to see Ford Fry’s original recipe and many other of his great recipes, you should check out his cookbook here. I frequently flip through its pages for inspiration.

Adios!