Baked Chicken El Pato

In America we eat a lot of chicken -- fried chicken, baked chicken, roast chicken, rotisserie chicken, teriyaki chicken, chicken cordon bleu*, chicken kabobs.... it's all so good!  But if you're cooking chicken a couple times a week, you need some variety into your chicken rotation so that your loved ones will get excited about Winner Winner Chicken Dinner every time!

This dish is cooked in the oven!  That is rare for me since almost everything I cook is made on top of the stove.  So I decided to try something different!  El Pato Tomato Sauce comes in small cans and large cans.  It is Mexican tomato sauce that has some chile added to it so that it's a little bit spicy (picante).  This dish has a LOT of juice after it's cooked, so it will be great with rice or something that can soak up all the juice!

EL PATO BAKED CHICKEN:

3 lbs. of chicken pieces - I used thighs.
4 onions - sliced
3 tomatoes - cut into 1-inch pieces
Holy trinity of spices - salt, pepper, granulated garlic, red chile powder
Butter - 2 or 3 tablespoons
Olive Oil
El Pato - small can

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees.

Coat the chicken generously with the Holy Trinity of spices.  Melt some butter in a large frying pan and brown the chicken for a few minutes on each side, till they are about 1/2 cooked.  This serves 2 purposes: browning the chicken before baking it adds flavor to the dish, and it also gets a lot of the chicken fat cooked out of it.

Meanwhile in another large frying pan or wok, saute' the onions in olive oil until they get soft, stirring often.  Add the Holy Trinity of spices to the onions as well, as they are cooking.  When the onions are cooked, add the tomatoes and stir them in.  No need to cook the tomatoes at this time.

Get a large baking pan, like 13x9 inches.  Oil it very lightly.  Spread the onions and tomatoes across the bottom of the pan.  Then nestle the chicken pieces into the onions/tomatoes with the skin side up.  Finally, pour the El Pato over the top of everything.  Sprinkle with a little more seasonings and cover the pan with aluminum foil.

Put the pan in the oven.  After a couple minutes lower the heat to 350 degrees.  Bake it for about 45 minutes until the chicken is very tender.   Mmmmmmmm!!!  El Pato Chicken is yummy!!!

* (whatever that is...)