Chicken Menudo Recipe With Pickle Relish

IMAGE Riell Santos

Menudo is a classic Filipino stew. It's a pork cube stew that is simmered in tomato sauce seasoned with soy sauce. It's loaded with small cubed veggies such as a potatoes and carrots but also commonly includes liver, hot dogs, and the ofttimes dreaded raisins which is responsible for the touch of sweetness that you taste with every bite. 

While the basic recipe for menudo is made with pork and pork liver, you can make it with chicken, too. 

What Is Chicken Menudo? 

Menudo is easy to make, especially since the meat chunks are smaller than your usual stews. To make it even easier and faster to cook, chicken is swapped for the pork. This not only makes the stew even faster to cook than normal but also maintains the chunkiness of the stew. Your biggest obstacle is using chicken fillets which are normally more expensive than regular chicken cuts or a whole chicken. 

What makes this chicken menudo different from the other chicken menudo? This recipe not only uses chicken fillets or boneless chicken but it also uses pickle relish in the sauce. It adds even more sweetness to the sauce, making it even more appetizing and delicious! 

How To Serve Chicken Menudo with Pickle Relish

This chicken menudo recipe, just like the pork version, is best served with lots of steamed rice. The sauce is really flavorful so rice is a classic vehicle to scoop the sauce without making it feel like you're going to sip a thick soup. Instead, you're coating the rice in the sauce making it a much more hearty spoonful! 

So go ahead and scoop your menudo onto your plate on the side of your rice when you're ready to serve but don't forget to save some of that sauce in the ladle for your drizzling over your rice, too. 

How To Make Chicken Menudo with Pickle Relish

Chicken menudo starts with the sautéing of the aromatics in oil: onion and garlic. This is followed by the chicken cubes which need to be seared to develop more flavor in meat, courtesy of browning or the Malliard reaction. 

This is followed by adding the liquid ingredients into the pot, so you can simmer the meat until cooked through and tender. Thankfully, this doesn't take too long since it's chicken, not pork. The potatoes and carrots are next so these too can cook in the simmering liquid and absorb some of its flavors. The liver, raisins, and pickle relish are last since the liver cooks very fast and shouldn't be overcooked and the raisins and relish just need to be heated through. 

Let the stew simmer slightly until the sauce is thickened and no longer watery and you're done! 

Tip To Make Chicken Menudo with Pickle Relish

Increasing food prices is always going to be a concern so if you're looking for a money-saving tip so you can make menudo, we know this tip is almost always true, no matter what the economic situation: buy whole chickens. 

With the exception of tilapia (which continues to be the cheapest fish at P110/kilo that the Department of Agriculture monitors in its Bantay Presyo reports), whole chickens continue to be more affordable than many cuts of pork, beef, and even many popular fish in the palengke and supermarkets! It's easy to prepare thankfully, especially if you know how to break down a whole chicken into its parts. 

So our best tip for making chicken menudo affordable is to learn how to fillet a whole chicken yourself to save your food budget!  

How To Store Chicken Menudo with Pickle Relish

One of the best characteristics of menudo recipes is that, like adobo and other tomato-based ulam dishes, the longer it is stored, the more flavorful it becomes! So it's a great idea to make a batch of this even if you know you'll have leftovers. Storing menudo follows the same rules as other leftover ulam recipes:

• 1 Always simmer the dish again, especially if you return leftover menudo back into the pot.
• 2 Store the leftovers in clean and dry containers, preferably air-tight, so any aromas won't mix with other odors in your refrigerator.
• 3 when ready to eat, reheat the menudo well to kill off any bacteria that might have already developed and prevent faster spoilage later. 

Watch: Chicken Menudo Recipe with Pickle Relish 

Chicken Menudo Recipe with Pickle Relish