A brown-glazed earthenware dish of pale golden, separate-grained rice with pieces of pale chicken and a few whole black peppercorns, a wooden spoon resting in it, on a worn light wooden table. — Chicken and rice with whole peppercorns in an earthenware dish.

Pollo con Arroz (1893)

Name: Pollo con Arroz
Prep time: 15 min
Cook time: 1 h 20 min
Total time: 1 h 45 min
Cuisine: American
Ingredients: 2½ lb bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs and drumsticks; 8 cups water for the chicken; 2 tbsp lard; 1 small onion, finely chopped; 1½ cups long-grain white rice; 1 tsp whole black peppercorns; 3 cups strained chicken broth; 1 tsp salt, or to taste

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Pollo con arroz from Vicenta Labadie de Chaves’s New Mexican recipe of 1893: chicken boiled until tender, folded into rice fried with onion in lard and cooked in the strained broth with whole peppercorns.

By The Forgotten MenuPublished Oct 27, 2026

Recipe makes: 6 servings
Prep: 15 min
Cook: 1 hr 20 min
Total: 1 hr 45 min

The chicken simmers for about 45 minutes and cools a little before you take it off the bone. The rice then takes about 30 minutes, including a 10-minute rest.

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Chicken and rice with whole peppercorns in an earthenware dish.

The story behind the recipe

Pollo con arroz is chicken and rice cooked the way Spanish and Mexican kitchens cook rice: fried first in fat with a little onion, then simmered in broth, here the broth the chicken boiled in. Vicenta Labadie de Chaves of New Mexico sent it in Spanish to Favorite Dishes, the 1893 cookbook of the Lady Managers of the Chicago World’s Fair, and it opens her three recipes on page 72.

Five steps, no amounts

Her recipe is a single paragraph. First boil the chicken “hasta que este bien cosido,” until it is well cooked. Then fry a little onion in lard together with the rice, add whole pepper and the strained broth the chicken cooked in, then the chicken cut in small pieces, and salt. The next recipe on the page, Pollo con Tomates, is the same thing with tomatoes in place of the rice. Neither says how much of anything, or for how long. Three years later the army’s Manual for Army Cooks gave its cooks the same first move for its Spanish Fried Rice: “Wash the rice and brown it in hot dripping.”

Making it today

We set the amounts and times. We use thighs and drumsticks, which stay moist through the boiling, and cook the rice as many modern Mexican rice recipes do: two cups of broth to each cup of rice, covered over low heat until it is absorbed. She doesn’t say whether her dish came out dry or soupy; our version cooks it dry, with separate grains. The peppercorns stay whole, as she wrote, so warn the table or tie them in a square of cheesecloth.

It is the first of the four recipes in What Did the Southwest’s Tamales Look Like in Print?, and the Calabacitos con Chile Verde (1903) is the vegetable we put beside it.

Primeramente se pone a herbir el pollo hasta que este bien cosido ...

Carrie V. Shumancomp., Favorite Dishes: A Columbian Autograph Souvenir Cookery Book (Chicago, 1893), Pollo con Arroz, from Señora Don Manuel Chaves, of New Mexico, p. 72

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Ingredients

For 6 servings. Quantities are shown as written.

Quantities as written here, for 6 servings.

Bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs and drumsticks2.5 lb
Water for the chicken8 cups
Lard2 tbsp
Small onion, finely chopped1
Long-grain white rice1 1/2 cups
Whole black peppercorns1 tsp
Strained chicken broth3 cups
Salt, or to taste1 tsp

Ingredients as written here

2½ lb bone-in, skin-on chicken thighs and drumsticks
8 cups water for the chicken
2 tbsp lard
1 small onion, finely chopped
1½ cups long-grain white rice
1 tsp whole black peppercorns
3 cups strained chicken broth
1 tsp salt, or to taste

Equipment

Large pot with a lid
Fine sieve
Wide, heavy pan with a tight lid, about 3 quarts
Instant-read thermometer

Instructions

Put the chicken and the water for the chicken in the large pot and bring to a boil. Skim off the foam, lower the heat, cover partly and simmer for about 45 minutes, until the meat is tender and the thickest piece reads at least 165°F (74°C).
Lift out the chicken and pour the broth through the sieve into a bowl. When the chicken is cool enough to handle, pull off the skin, take the meat off the bones and cut it into small pieces.
Melt the lard in the wide pan over medium heat. Add the onion and rice and fry, stirring often, for 5 to 7 minutes, until the onion is soft and the rice turns opaque and pale golden.
Add the peppercorns and pour in the strained chicken broth, hot. Bring to a boil, then cover tightly, turn the heat to low and cook for 20 minutes, until the broth is absorbed and the rice is tender.
Scatter the chicken over the rice, sprinkle with the salt, cover again and leave off the heat for 10 minutes, so the chicken heats through. Fork it all together, taste for salt, and serve.

Nutrition

350calories per serving

Recipe makes: 6 servings
Servings: 6

Estimated per serving from USDA FoodData Central values for the listed ingredients, with the chicken skin removed.

Recipe notes

When adjusting quantities

Two cups of broth to each cup of rice; keep the ratio when scaling.

Notes

Quantities mentioned in these notes don’t change when you adjust the servings.

Keep the leftover broth for soup; there is about twice as much as the rice needs. For her Pollo con Tomates, cook the chicken the same way and use 3 cups of chopped tomatoes in place of the rice, simmering them uncovered in the lard and onion with a little broth for 15 minutes before the chicken goes in. Leftovers keep for 3 days in the refrigerator; reheat until steaming hot.

Scaling changes the ingredients only; pan sizes and cooking times need their own judgment. To adapt this recipe further, try the recipe tool at TuneMyRecipe (opens in a new tab), our sister site.