My Chicken Surprise

My Chicken Surprise.

When we first moved to Belize a week ago, I met this really nice lady named Gloria.  She sets up her BBQ grill on the beach a few blocks from our house and cooks chickens every day except Sunday and Monday.  She told me she rests on those two days.  You can buy a chicken plate for $10.00BZE ($5.00US) and they are really good.  I have purchased chicken from her several times especially when we still didn't have our oven working yet. 

Everything I need to bake my chicken.

Ready to go in the oven.

Now that our oven is working, I thought I would try baking a chicken myself.  I found a very simple Belize recipe for cooking a whole chicken on the Internet.  I needed one chicken, garlic powder, pepper and recado rojo.  I had heard of the recado rojo before but I really didn't know what it was.  Recado rojo or achiote paste as it is called is a blend of spices that usually includes annatto, Mexican oregano, cumin, clove, cinnamon, black pepper, allspice, garlic and salt.  The annatto seeds are what give the paste the red color.  I actually thought it was some kind of dry spice.  I went to several different grocery stores and could not find recado rojo in the spice secton.  So I finally asked for it.  I was looking for a dry spice, when instead it was a paste.  The package had no name on it and they had it up next to the cash register, so I would have never found it.

Chicken Feet

My baked chicken.

The first thing the recipe said was to wash the chicken.  So I am washing this chicken I bought.  Now grant you I have only cooked a few chickens in my life and I know sometimes they will stuff these extra body parts inside the chicken.  So I am thinking to myself, I better check to see if there is anything inside this chicken that I need to remove before cooking.  The first thing I pulled out was the liver.  I knew there was still something in there.  Then it was my chicken surprise.  I really wasn't sure what they were are first.  I pulled it out and quickly dropped them on the counter.  I had never pulled anything that looked like this out of my chicken.  It was two chicken feet or claws I guess is what they are actually called, yuck.  I mean I know chicken have them, but I just have never seen them inside a chicken before.  Seriously do people really eat this part of the chicken?  While the chicken turned out really good and had a great taste, I think I will be going back to get my chicken from Gloria.