In the skillet, chicken stained red sizzles as it browns. When the surface turns a deep reddish brown, take it out, soften bell peppers and onion in the same oil, return the chicken, and pour in water. Cover and simmer for an hour, and the cooking liquid turns into a thick gravy. In Belize, a small country in Central America, this chicken stew, stew chicken, is the familiar dish eaten with rice and beans at Sunday lunch. The source of the red color is "recado," a spice paste made from annatto seeds. Outside Belize, you can make it by substituting what you can get.
Sundays in Belize Mean Rice and Beans
Belize lies between Mexico and Guatemala, facing the Caribbean Sea. Though in Spanish-speaking Central America, it has English as its official language and a deeply rooted Creole culture, descended from people of African and European ancestry. Travel Belize, the website of the Belize Tourism Board, describes the Creole table as a food culture built on coconut milk and coconut oil, rice, beans, chicken, and fish.
At its center is rice and beans. According to Travel Belize, it is a staple of Belizean Sunday dinner, served as rice and beans cooked in coconut with stewed meat or fried fish and potato salad or coleslaw. As examples of stewed meat, it gives chicken as well as gibnut, a large rodent that lives in the forest. Among them, the one easy to make elsewhere is stew chicken.
Traditional Belizean Creole dishes have been cooked over an improvised outdoor stove called a "fire hearth." Travel Belize says traditional cooking is done on this hearth.
A travel blog from Chaa Creek, a resort in the Belizean jungle, writes that rice and beans with stew chicken is the meal you see most often in Belize. It says you meet this combination everywhere in the country, even when you cross to the offshore islands, the cayes.
Red Recado Decides the Color and Aroma
What decides stew chicken's color and aroma is red recado. It is a spice paste made in Belize and Central America, colored red with annatto taken from the seeds of the achiote tree. Even a small amount stains the meat a vivid reddish brown and adds a mild, earthy aroma. It has almost no heat.
In the recipe by Rosanna Stevens, a chef who lived in Belize and learned to cook there, this recado is combined with soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce to season the chicken. Soy sauce came from East Asia and Worcestershire sauce from England. The meeting of annatto, long used in Central America, and seasonings from distant countries in one pot reflects Belize's table, where many different people have passed through.
Besides the red, there is also a "black recado," made by charring chiles black. Black recado is used in dishes such as relleno negro from the Yucatán Peninsula of Mexico, Belize's neighbor, and it is the red one that is used for stew chicken.
Ingredients (serves 4)
This formula is adapted from Rosanna Stevens's recipe, replacing ingredients with ones that are easy to get. Red recado is sometimes sold as achiote paste at Latin American grocers or online. If you cannot get it, substitute the quick version made with annatto powder, vinegar, and garlic.
Annatto powder is a spice made by grinding the seeds of the achiote tree, used for coloring in Latin American and Filipino cooking. The quick version has a simpler aroma than Belizean store-bought recado, so do not skip the cumin and oregano to make up the aroma.
Annatto's red color is hard to remove once it gets on hands, cutting boards, or cloths. Wear disposable gloves when rubbing it into the chicken, and it is safest to avoid a white cutting board. Soy sauce and Worcestershire sauce contain wheat and soy, so check the ingredients for anyone with allergies.
How to Make Stew Chicken
Including the 2 hours of resting in the refrigerator after seasoning, allow about 2 hours 20 minutes of prep and about 1 hour 15 minutes to brown and simmer. If you have time, seasoning the night before lets the flavor soak in well.
In bone-in chicken, the area around the bone is the last place to cook through. If you shorten the simmering time, push a skewer into the thickest part and make sure clear juices run before eating.
Tips for a Thick Gravy
Stew chicken gravy is not thickened with flour or the like; it thickens naturally from the gelatin that comes out of the chicken and the recado and onion that cook down. Simmering with the lid slightly ajar lets the moisture escape slowly while the liquid concentrates.
If the gravy is still thin after an hour of simmering, remove the lid and reduce over medium heat for about 5 minutes. If it reduces too much, thin it by adding hot water 2 tbsp at a time.
Do not skip the browning step. Browning well first releases fat from the chicken skin, adding toasty flavor and deepening the gravy's color. Simmered without browning, it comes out pale in color and vague in taste.
Using bone-in meat keeps the meat from drying out when simmered, and the bones add broth. If you make it with breast meat, shorten the simmering time to about 30 minutes so it does not get too firm.
Serve with Coconut Rice and Beans: Variations
For a Belizean meal, prepare rice and beans in place of plain white rice. The Chaa Creek blog describes softening red kidney beans with garlic and onion, adding coconut milk, then adding rice and cooking it. Using canned red kidney beans makes it easy.
For the side, potato salad or coleslaw. As Travel Belize notes, it is an essential part of a Belizean Sunday plate. Adding sweetly fried plantain makes a plate like a Belizean eatery's, with sweetness, saltiness, and spice all together.
How to Eat It
Put rice and beans or rice on a plate, set the stew chicken on top, and ladle on plenty of gravy. The best way to eat it is to take a mouthful of the rice that has soaked up the gravy together with the chicken. If you want heat, add hot pepper sauce at the table.
For another Belizean dish, make it side by side with chimole (in Japanese), a chicken soup simmered in black recado, and the difference between red and black recado shows well. For Caribbean chicken, Jamaica's jerk chicken is also an interesting plate, with a completely different use of spices.
FAQ
Are recado and achiote paste the same thing?
Both are red spice pastes made with annatto (achiote) seeds. The spices mixed in differ by maker and region, but either works for stew chicken. Achiote paste is easier to find as an ingredient for Mexican cooking.
Is it spicy?
Red recado has almost no heat, so it is not spicy. If you want heat, serve hot pepper sauce at the table.
Can I shorten the seasoning time?
Leave it at least 2 hours. With less time, the color and aroma of the recado only reach the surface of the meat. Seasoning the night before is the surest.
Can I make it ahead?
Once cool, refrigerate in an airtight container, and when reheating, heat until hot at the center. We cannot give a firm number of storage days, so finish it soon.
Sources
- Travel Belize (Belize Tourism Board), "5 Creole Must-Eats." Accessed and checked 22 October 2026. https://www.travelbelize.org/?p=5235
- Rosanna Stevens, "Belizean Stewed Chicken," Rosanna ETC, published 17 March 2021. Accessed and checked 22 October 2026. https://www.rosannaetc.com/post/belizean-food-stewed-chicken-recipe
- Chaa Creek, "Belizean Rice and Beans with Stew Chicken Recipe," Belize Travel Blog, updated 2 May 2020. Accessed and checked 22 October 2026. https://belize-travel-blog.chaacreek.com/2015/01/stew-chicken-rice-beans-belize-recipe/
