Chef Lupita
Almendrado Oaxaqueño con Pollo
Oaxaca's eighth mole, the silky, almond-and-cinnamon almendrado, served over poached chicken. Mild, sweet, restrained, and a quiet rebuttal to anyone who thinks Mexican food has to be hot to be Mexican.
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Arroz con Chepil al Estilo Oaxaqueño
Created by
Oaxaca's everyday rice, fried in lard and steamed with chepil, the wild legume herb that grows in the Sierra and shows up in the markets only when the rains come.
Main Dishes
Mexican
Weeknight
Comfort Food
Budget Friendly
15 min
Active Time
30 min cook•45 min total
Yield6 servings
This is from Oaxaca. Specifically from the Valles Centrales and the Sierra Norte, where chepil grows wild after the first rains and where the women at the Mercado de Abastos sell it in bunches tied with a strip of banana leaf. If you have not smelled fresh chepil before, the closest thing I can tell you is that it smells like a green field after rain, faintly grassy, faintly nutty, with something herbaceous that does not quite map to anything else.
Chepil is a small wild legume, Crotalaria longirostrata, and it is a Oaxacan ingredient in the way that hoja santa is a Veracruz ingredient. It is in the soup, it is in the tamales, and it is in this rice. The rest of Mexico cooks rice with tomato. Oaxaca cooks rice with chepil. Cada estado, su propia cocina.
This is not a fancy dish. It is the rice you eat on a Tuesday next to a pot of black beans and a stack of tortillas. That is the entire dinner. It is what working families across Oaxaca have eaten for generations because chepil is cheap when it is in season and rice and beans together make a complete protein. Saber cocinar es saber vivir, and a Oaxacan cook will tell you this rice is proof.
If chepil is not at your market, do not substitute spinach and call it arroz con chepil. It is not the same dish. Wait until you find chepil, dried or fresh, or cook a different rice. No me vengas con atajos.
Chepil (Crotalaria longirostrata), also called chipilin in Chiapas and Guatemala, is a perennial legume domesticated in Mesoamerica well before the Spanish conquest, valued by indigenous communities for both its high protein content and its ability to fix nitrogen into the soil. Oaxacan and Chiapanecan cuisines preserved chepil's culinary use into the modern era while much of central Mexico abandoned it, which is why the herb today reads as a regional marker of southern Mexico's pre-Hispanic foodways. The dish arroz con chepil itself is a colonial-era construction, joining a New World herb with rice introduced by the Spanish from Asia, and it stands as a quiet example of how Oaxacan cooks absorbed imported ingredients without surrendering their own.
The technique, the tradition, and the story behind every dish.
Discover Culinary ExplorerIngredients
long-grain white rice
Quantity
2 cups
fresh chepil leaves
Quantity
1 cup
stripped from the stems, about 2 generous handfuls
hot water or light chicken broth
Quantity
3 1/2 cups
manteca de cerdo (pork lard)
Quantity
3 tablespoons
white onion
Quantity
1/4 medium piece, plus 2 tablespoons finely chopped
garlic cloves
Quantity
2
peeled
kosher salt
Quantity
1 1/2 teaspoons, plus more to taste
fresh epazote (optional)
Quantity
1 sprig
frijoles de la olla (optional)
Quantity
for serving
fresh chile serrano (optional)
Quantity
for serving
sliced
lime wedges (optional)
Quantity
for serving
hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional)
Quantity
for serving
| Ingredient | Quantity |
|---|---|
| long-grain white rice | 2 cups |
| fresh chepil leavesstripped from the stems, about 2 generous handfuls | 1 cup |
| hot water or light chicken broth | 3 1/2 cups |
| manteca de cerdo (pork lard) | 3 tablespoons |
| white onion | 1/4 medium piece, plus 2 tablespoons finely chopped |
| garlic clovespeeled | 2 |
| kosher salt | 1 1/2 teaspoons, plus more to taste |
| fresh epazote (optional) | 1 sprig |
| frijoles de la olla (optional) | for serving |
| fresh chile serrano (optional)sliced | for serving |
| lime wedges (optional) | for serving |
| hand-pressed corn tortillas (optional) | for serving |
Equipment Needed
- •Heavy 3-quart cazuela or pot with a tight-fitting lid
- •Fine-mesh strainer for rinsing the rice
- •Wooden spoon
Instructions
- 1
Rinse and rest the rice
Place the rice in a fine-mesh strainer and rinse under cold running water until the water runs almost clear. This pulls off the surface starch that turns rice gummy. Shake out the strainer well and let the rice sit for ten minutes. You want it damp, not wet. In Oaxacan kitchens this step is not skipped. Wet rice steams instead of frying and you lose the base of the dish before you start.
Some senoras in the Mercado de Abastos soak the rice in warm water for fifteen minutes and then drain it. Either method works. What does not work is throwing dry rice straight into the pot. - 2
Strip the chepil
Hold each chepil sprig by the top and run your fingers down the stem to strip the small oval leaves. Discard the woody stems. The leaves are what carry the flavor, that grassy, faintly nutty smell that tells you immediately you are eating a Oaxacan dish and not anything else. You should have about one packed cup of leaves.
- 3
Fry the rice in lard
Melt the manteca in a heavy 3-quart cazuela or pot with a tight-fitting lid over medium heat. Add the drained rice and stir to coat every grain. Fry for five to seven minutes, stirring often, until the rice turns from translucent white to chalky white and a few grains start to take on the faintest gold color. La manteca es el sabor. Vegetable oil will get you cooked rice. Lard will get you Oaxacan rice.
Listen to the pot. The rice should sizzle steadily, not pop violently. If it pops, your heat is too high and the grains will toast unevenly. - 4
Build the base
Push the rice to the sides of the pot and drop the quarter onion and the two garlic cloves into the cleared center. Let them sizzle in the lard for one minute, just until fragrant. Stir everything together. The onion and garlic perfume the fat without dominating. They will be lifted out at the end. This is not a sofrito-heavy dish. The chepil is the flavor.
- 5
Add the liquid and the chepil
Pour in the hot water or chicken broth all at once. The pot will hiss. Add the salt and the epazote sprig if using. Stir once to even out the rice. Scatter the chepil leaves across the surface. Do not stir them in. They will settle as the rice cooks and they should sit near the top where the steam pulls their flavor down through the grains. Bring everything to a gentle boil.
- 6
Cover and simmer
When the liquid is at a steady boil and you can see the rice grains starting to peek through the surface, lower the heat to its lowest setting. Cover the pot tightly. If your lid is loose, lay a clean kitchen towel between the pot and the lid. Cook for eighteen minutes. Do not lift the lid. Do not stir. The rice is steaming and any escaped vapor is flavor you lose.
- 7
Rest the pot
Turn off the heat and let the pot sit, still covered, for ten minutes. This is the step most home cooks skip and it is the difference between rice that is fluffy and rice that is mushy. The grains finish cooking in their own retained heat and the chepil settles into the rice.
- 8
Fluff and serve
Lift out and discard the onion quarter, the garlic cloves, and the epazote sprig. Fluff the rice gently with a fork, lifting from the bottom so the chepil distributes through the grains. Taste for salt. Serve hot in a clay cazuela alongside frijoles de la olla, a small dish of sliced serrano, and warm corn tortillas. Asi se hace y punto.
Chef Tips
- •Fresh chepil is the goal, but dried chepil sold in cellophane bags from Oaxacan importers is a respectable second option. Use about one-third cup dried in place of one cup fresh and add it directly with the liquid. Frozen chepil from Mexican groceries also works. Spinach does not work and neither does cilantro. Those are different dishes.
- •The lard makes this rice. If you have access to good rendered manteca from a Mexican carniceria, use it. If you only have neutral oil, the dish is still worth making, but you should know what you are missing. La manteca es el sabor.
- •This rice belongs next to frijoles de la olla, black beans simmered with onion and epazote in a clay pot. The two together are dinner across most of Oaxaca on a weeknight. Add a fried egg on top with a little salsa de molcajete and you have what they call a comida completa.
Advance Preparation
- •The chepil leaves can be stripped from the stems several hours ahead and stored in the refrigerator wrapped in a damp paper towel.
- •Cooked arroz con chepil keeps refrigerated for two days and reheats well with a splash of water in a covered pot over low heat. The flavor of the chepil deepens slightly overnight.
Frequently Asked Questions
Nutrition Information
1 serving (about 215g)
Calories
295 calories
Total Fat
7 g
Saturated Fat
3 g
Trans Fat
0 g
Unsaturated Fat
4 g
Cholesterol
6 mg
Sodium
550 mg
Total Carbohydrates
51 g
Dietary Fiber
1 g
Sugars
1 g
Protein
6 g
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