Filipino Whole30 Eats: Slow Cooker Lechon Manok

Sunday lunch again at my mother’s place. (I promised my family I would cook for them every Sunday this month while I’m doing this Filipino-themed Whole30; they’re my first audience and taste testers for a lot of these recipes.) This time I made a party favorite: lechon manok.

Lechon manok is rotisserie slow-roasted whole chicken usually seasoned with lemon grass and other spices. It reached the peak of its popularity about when I was in college (so, way back when). I remember you could barely walk a street in Metro Manila then without passing rows of smoky, aromatic food stalls with lechon manok in long bamboo skewers slowly turning over hot coals. Other food fads have since taken its place, but it’s still a Filipino favorite, specially during gatherings when you want to serve good, homey comfort food.

Not everyone has a rotisserie or a charcoal pit, so most homemade recipes for lechon manok call for oven-roasting the chicken instead. I thought I’d go a different route and cook it in a slow cooker, to try to attain the tenderness and juiciness you get from slow-roasting. I think I got pretty close; anyway, my family loved it.

The marinade is adapted from the blog Simple Comfort Food.

My lunch plate: lechon manok and spaghetti squash pancit, with guinataang halo-halo on the side

Translations
Lechon (leh-chohn): one of our most popular foods: roasted whole suckling pig; also, the manner of its cooking (rotisserie slow-roasting over hot coals)
Lechon manok (leh-chohn mah-nok): rotisserie slow-roasted whole chicken
Pancit (pahn-sit): Filipino noodle dishes
Kalamansi (kah-lah-mahn-si): small, very tart citrus fruit (it’s sometimes translated as “calamondin,” but I’ve never seen a calamondin that looked like the kalamansi that I know)

Ingredients

• 1 4 lb. whole chicken
• 6 cloves of garlic, coarsely chopped
• 2 stalks of lemon grass, trimmed, tough outer layers peeled off, and coarsely chopped
• 1 shallot, coarsely chopped
• 1 tablespoon coarsely chopped ginger
• 1/4 cup puréed Asian pear (you can use other sweet fruit like mango, apple, or pear)
• 1/2 teaspoon salt
• 1/2 teaspoon pepper
• 3 tablespoons patis (fish sauce)
• 1/2 teaspoon tumeric powder
• 2 tablespoons kalamansi juice (or 3 tablespoons lemon juice)
• 3 bay leaves

Instructions

1. To marinate the chicken: Put all ingredients except the chicken and bay leaves in a food processor and blitz them until you end up with a smooth paste. Rub the chicken all over with the paste, including inside the cavity. Place the chicken in a pan, cover tightly with plastic wrap, and store in the fridge at least overnight and up to 2 days.
2. Pour the excess marinade and juices from the pan into your slow cooker, then place the chicken inside, breast side down. Put the bay leaves on top of the chicken. Set the slow cooker on low and the timer to 4-6 hours. (Actual time depends on the size of your chicken and the heating qualities of your slow cooker. My chicken was 4 lbs. and my slow cooker is a little underpowered, so I went for 5 1/2 hours. Do not cook the chicken more than 6 hours or it will become dry and fall apart.)
3. Pre-heat your oven to broil a few minutes before the slow cooker times out. Once the slow cooker shuts off, remove the chicken and place on a roasting pan or other oven-proof pan lined with a baking rack. Broil the chicken for 10 minutes or so, flipping it over midway.
4. Remove from the oven, let stand for 5 minutes before carving away.

Alternative cooking method: If you don’t have a slow cooker, or the time to slow cook your chicken, you can also oven-roast it at 350 degrees for 20 minutes each pound (so 80 minutes for a 4 lb. chicken), plus 10 more minutes at the end at 450 degrees to crisp the skin.

Makes 4-6 servings. Our lechon manok was picked clean by the time we finished.

How this is Whole30
Sugar was replaced with a fruit purée. Also, some lechon manok recipes call for soy sauce; this one uses patis instead.

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