Chicken is the most common poultry dish feature in Philippine cuisine. The widespread recipes in various restaurants and by home chefs are evidences of this liking. What’s great about Pinoy delicacies is the creativity in indigenous cooking. When you get the chance to travel around places, each locality has popular specialty dishes that leave a mark in every tourist’s heart.
In the Western part of the Visayas region lies the oldest province in the country, Aklan. Along the rich heritage is their sumptuous cookery. And one of the most popular Aklan specialty dishes is the Chicken Inubaran (chicken with banana pith). It is a chicken dish cooked with coconut milk and slices of banana pith, locally termed as ubad, which is the center-most layer of the banana trunk. This tender and sweet white part is what gives the recipe a blissful flavor. The preparation of this dish is actually laborious since you have to cut down a whole banana tree to get the pith. But nowadays, you can buy canned hearts of palm or ubod (in Filipino) in local markets or grocery stores.
Chicken Inubaran is preferably cooked with native chicken as it gives the dish its real authentic taste. Since native chicken requires more cooking time than commercially bought chicken, you can make use of your best slow cooker to tenderly cook your Chicken Inubaran recipe. Slow cooker is ideal for inexpensive cuts of meat. Likewise, other ingredients are very common and within reach. It includes lemon grass, salt, vinegar, onion, garlic, black pepper and ginger as spices to taste. You can also add libas leaves, a souring ingredient, if you want your recipe to have a little bit sourly taste. Simply put all the ingredients in a crock pot. Cover and cook on low for about 6 to 8 hours, or until chicken is tender. Afterwards, you can now enjoy the creamy soup over hot steamed rice and savor a flavor rich eating experience. It perfectly goes well with your favorite grilled food too.
Aklan’s cuisine looks exotic but the taste is very much pleasing since it makes use of common ingredients. It showcases an original way of cooking that provides an appetizing experience to all the local and foreign visitors of the land. Considered as the best tasting dish in the province of Aklan, Chicken Inubaran is something that you should try to cook. Introduce an exhilarating flavor of Visayan cooking to your friends and family.
It’s quite amusing to discover the finest gastronomic flair of every region that makes cooking at its best! You can have all the opportunity to explore and enrich your cooking preferences. Truly, Filipinos have exceptional range of culinary grace which represents simplicity and resourcefulness.