Kinulob Style Afritada

I had this one whole chicken in the freezer waiting to be cooked and this time around I thought I'd do Afritada, with a few special adjustments. I would be cooking the chicken whole, stewed in my favorite Capri canned whole peeled tomatoes, pimiento, pepperoni (left over from pizza I made earlier), and the standard afridata ingredients potato and carrots.

These are my ingredients:

1 whole chicken
1 400g can Capri whole peeled tomatoes (doesn't have to be Capri, as long as it's Italian)
1 113g small can Capri pimientos (also doesn't have to be Capri), chopped
1 tsp dried tarragon
1/3 cup sliced pepperoni (cut from sausage, not the precut kind), or any smoked sausage
1 green bell pepper sliced
6 cloves garlic, crushed
1 big white onion, chopped
1 large potato, cubed
1 small carrot, sliced
2 cups water or chicken stock
1 chicken bouillon cube
1 teaspoon red pepper flakes (more or less, according to taste, also optional)
2 bay leaves
salt and pepper (to taste)
1 teaspoon brown sugar

I first sauteed the garlic and onion in oil in a medium sized deep pot or dutch oven (I actually used a rice cooker pot), added the chopped pimientos and tomatoes. Crush the tomatoes with a potato masher or if you don't have that,  a large spoon will do. Add the tarragon, bouillon cube, 2 cups water, teaspoon salt, sugar, 1 teaspoon ground black pepper, pepper flakes and the pepperoni. Now I like putting pepperoni or some other smoked sausage so it will give the afritada somewhat of a smokey flavor (which I like).

Place the chicken at the center of the pot. Most likely the liquid won't cover the entire chicken but that's OK. Add the cubed potato, sliced carrot and bay leaves around the chicken.

Put the heat on high and once it starts boiling, turn the heat down to low and continue simmering for the next 45 minutes. Turn the chicken over, and then continue simmering for another 30 minutes. Most likely you would no longer need to add any more water. Before the 30 minutes ends, maybe 5 minutes before you take the chicken off the heat, add your sliced green bell peppers. Taste the sauce to see if you still need more salt or if you want it more spicy.

Kinulob na Manok V.2 Chinese Style

Ok! It's time again to do another version of my Kinulob na Manok! This time... Chinese Style!

Ok, I'm only SAYING it's Chinese style. I don't know if the Chinese do Kinulob na Manok, at all, actually. The reason I'm calling it that is I'm adding ingredients that would play up some Chinese flavor to a dish I've done previously.

That means adding more Hoisin Sauce, and adding Chinese Sausage and Star Anise, and removing other ingredients like ketchup, and pineapple juice.

The ingredients I've used are as follows:

1 whole chicken
120 grams bacon
1/4 cup hoisin sauce
2 tablespoons sugar
1/2 cup low sodium soy sauce
3 star anise
4 bay leaves
1 chicken cube
3 cups chicken stock
1 Chinese sausage, chopped
1 big white onion chopped
1/4 kilo chicken gizzard (optional)
1/4 kilo chicken livers/hearts (optional)

As with the previous dish, put all of these ingredients in a deep casserole. Me, I put them in an aluminum pot from an old rice cooker. It comes with a lid so it's pretty handy!

Bring that to a boil on high heat, and once it's boiling, turn down the heat to medium, and boil for the next hour and 45 minutes to 2 hours.

I used low sodium soy sauce, decreased the amount of bacon and removed the need for the flavor mix because the additional hoisin sauce would bring in  a lot of additional sodium already. I only used one Chinese sausage this time because well, I only had 1 available. I would have used two if I had it.

The gizzards and livers are optional, although I think once the liver softens and bits of it disintegrate into the sauce, I think it would make for a much flavorful dish.

As always, I love boiling my food for a long time because it makes the flavor fuller and richer. I've learned that boiling chicken for a long time really makes any dish you make taste better. If you boil too long the chicken would start to fall apart, so you need to be careful.

After two hours, take the chicken out of the stew and set aside. Let the sauce continue to boil for 10-15 or more minutes, depending on how much liquid is still left.

At this point, my chicken is close to falling apart, but that makes it easier to cut into. And yeah! This one came out pretty nice as well.

Long Lasting Kinulob

My Dad loves my Kinulob na Manok recipe so much that he absolutely refuses to let go of the leftover sauce, long after the chicken's gone. He digs into that sauce for almost every meal ever since I cooked the thing. Looks like I'll be cooking that again.

Although I've written the recipe down and I know I can practically do it identically next time, I think I'll do a different version of this dish with a different set of ingredients. I'm thinking of playing up the Chinese flavor of it next time by increasing the amount of Hoisin Sauce, Chinese Sausage, and add a few star anise seeds along with soy sauce and sugar. In my mind that sounds interesting... and mouth watering!

I can most likely make a collection of Kinulob na Manok recipe variations, and of course, I'll write them all down in this blog!

Kinulob na Manok

Whenever I pass this certain restaurant near the SPC Medical Center, I see them advertising one of their specialties called "Kinulob na Itik". Being the food freak that I am, I immediately became curious. I've never heard of that dish before, and I was wondering if I could do it with chicken. (But of course.)

So I went online looking for recipes to Kinulob na Manok, and I found several. The strange thing is, they're all completely different recipes with completely different ingredients.

But the thing that was similar to all of them is that you cook the chicken whole in a deep pan or casserole, and boil it with various ingredients until the chicken is done. That's pretty much it.

So in short, "Kinulob na Manok" is in fact "Stewed Whole Chicken".


I took bits from a couple of recipes, added a few flourishes of my own, and I came up with this recipe:

1 whole chicken
1/4 kilo chicken gizzards
250 grams tomato ketchup
2 tablespoons hoisin sauce
2 tablespoons margarine
240 ml pineapple juice
250 grams bacon, chopped
2 pcs. Chinese sausage, sliced into coins
1 big white onion, chopped
4 pcs. bay leaves
1 chicken cube or 1 sachet ginisa flavor mix
2 cups chicken stock
1/3 cup soy sauce
black pepper (to taste)

As you may notice, I no longer added any salt as the sodium would come from the soy sauce, chicken cube and hoisin sauce.

Place the chicken in the center of a deep casserole or any deep pan that you can cover. Add all other ingredients in the casserole. Make sure the casserole is small enough for the liquid to completely cover the chicken. Turn on the stove at high heat. When it boils, turn down the heat to medium, and cooked, covered, for at least an hour and a half.

That's kind of long and the chicken is close to falling apart, but it tastes great!

Remove the chicken and place on a serving tray, but let the remaining liquid to boil for 10-15 minutes to allow it to reduce into a thick sauce.

On the plate, surround the chicken with the sausages, gizzards, bacon and pour the sauce generously over everything.

I must say, this particular dish came out a screaming success.