Pregnant chickens for lunch
Sounds creepy, sorry for the sleazy headline.
Actually, I had no idea how sleazy pollo embarazada was until I typed it into a search engine to prepare this blog post. Don’t try it - I’m glad I have a childproof setting on my browser!
Okay, are you intrigued yet?
Asada or asado is grilled or roasted. Vara is stick. There’s a style of roasted chicken that becomes a wordplay of gallina embarazada, not because it’s a pregnant chicken (though I guess any chicken living with a rooster is perpetually pregnant).
Put the chicken on a stick and roast it over fire. Pollo en vara asado or if you say it fast enough, it becomes pollo embarazada. It’s a Michoacan speciality, and a Michoacan joke. Let me know if you’ve heard it anywhere else?
And by the way, it’s delicious. I don’t usually enjoy meat, but fresh off the fire I’ll eat seconds of this. Here’s a recipe if you want to try it, though you might as well just come visit us and let someone else do the work! They’re seriously efficient.