Best Pollo Salteado Recipe (Spanish-Cuban Chicken Sauté with Veal Demi-Glace)

What Is Pollo Salteado?

Pollo Salteado is a Spanish-Cuban sautéed chicken dish found on menus at Tampa’s historic Spanish restaurants, built on a wine- or sherry-based pan sauce with vegetables, ham, and potatoes. It’s easily confused with Pollo Saltado, the popular Peruvian-Chinese (chifa) stir-fry made with soy sauce, vinegar, and French fries tossed with strips of chicken — a completely different dish from a different culinary tradition, despite the nearly identical name.

This one is a little ironic.

Lori was heading to Tampa and told me she was excited to stop at La Teresita for their Pollo Salteado — one of her favorites. I made a mental note to make it for her myself. I remembered making The Columbia Restaurant’s version from their cookbook over 20 years ago, so I dug that recipe back out and got to work.

“Pollo Salteado” literally translates to “sautéed chicken,” but it’s really a specific, well-established dish with its own lineage — one that traditionally includes potatoes, peppers, mushrooms, ham, and a sherry- or wine-based sauce. I built out that fuller version: dry-brined the chicken, used thighs instead of breasts, swapped in dry sherry for white wine, added paprika, diced ham, tricolor peppers instead of just green, and finished it with veal demi-glace instead of a basic brown sauce.

It wasn’t until later that I found out La Teresita’s version is actually pretty bare-bones — just chicken, onions, and French fries, with no peppers, no mushrooms, no cubed potatoes. It’s a stripped-down take on the dish, missing a lot of what shows up in other traditional versions, including The Columbia’s.

We both loved this version, and Lori said I should make it again.

Print Recipe

Pollo Salteado

A deeply flavored Spanish-Cuban chicken sauté, built on Madeira wine, dry sherry, and elevated with veal demi-glace.

Prep Time50 minutes mins

Cook Time35 minutes mins

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Cuban, Spanish

Servings: 4 servings

Author: Kevin Godbee

Ingredients

Chicken

• 1½ pounds boneless skinless chicken thighs, cut into bite-size pieces
• ½ teaspoon smoked pimenton Spanish paprika
• Salt and black pepper to taste

Vegetables

• 1 green bell pepper cut in strips
• 1 red bell pepper cut in strips
• 1 yellow bell pepper cut in strips
• 1 Spanish onion cut in strips
• 6 ounces fresh cremini or shiitake mushrooms sliced
• 3 garlic cloves minced
• 1 tablespoon serrano or jamon ham diced

Potatoes

• 1 cup Yukon Gold potatoes peeled and diced
• 4 tablespoons Spanish olive oil divided

Sauce

• ¼ cup veal demi-glace
• ¼ cup dry sherry fino or manzanilla
• 3 tablespoons Madeira wine
• 1 pinch saffron threads bloomed in 2 tablespoons warm sherry

To Finish

• 2 tablespoons flat-leaf parsley chopped

Instructions

• Fry the potatoes: Heat a generous pour of the olive oil in a skillet over medium-high heat. Fry the potatoes until golden and cooked through, about 8-10 minutes. Season immediately with salt while hot. Set aside on a paper towel-lined plate. Reserve the skillet.
• Sear the mushrooms: In a wide skillet or sauté pan, heat 1 tablespoon of the olive oil over high heat until shimmering. Add the mushrooms in a single layer — do not crowd. Sear without stirring until well browned, about 3-4 minutes. Season with salt, remove, and set aside.
• Sear the chicken: Season the chicken generously with salt, pepper, and the smoked pimenton. Add another tablespoon of the olive oil to the same pan over high heat. Sear the chicken in batches — do not crowd — until deeply browned on both sides, about 4-5 minutes per batch. Remove and set aside. Do not wipe the pan — that fond is flavor.
• Sauté the aromatics: Reduce heat to medium. Add the remaining olive oil to the pan. Add the onion, green pepper, red pepper, yellow pepper, and ham. Sauté until softened and beginning to caramelize, about 6-8 minutes. Add the garlic and cook 1 minute more until fragrant.
• Deglaze and build the sauce: Add the sherry to deglaze, scraping up all the fond from the bottom of the pan. Let it reduce by half. Add the bloomed saffron (in warm sherry) and the Madeira. Stir in the demi-glace, diluted slightly with 2-3 tablespoons of water or chicken stock if very thick. Stir to combine into a glossy sauce.
• Simmer together: Return the seared chicken and mushrooms to the pan. Simmer over medium-low heat for 5 minutes, allowing the chicken to finish cooking through and the sauce to cling and reduce. Taste and adjust salt and pepper.
• Finish and serve: Fold in the reserved fried potatoes at the last moment so they stay crispy. Finish with a drizzle of good Spanish olive oil and a scatter of parsley. Serve immediately with yellow rice (optional).

Notes

Peppers: the tri-color combination — green, red, and yellow — is the way to go. Green adds slight bitterness and body; red and yellow bring sweetness and visual brightness. Sherry: use a dry fino or manzanilla, not cooking sherry — quality matters here. Potatoes: fold in at the very last moment to preserve crispiness; they should contrast with the saucy chicken, not disappear into it. Saffron: bloom in warm sherry for at least 5 minutes before adding — subtle but essential to the Spanish character of the dish.

La Teresita’s version is the simplest take — just chicken, onions, and fries. The Columbia’s recipe is closer to the dish’s fuller tradition, and this version builds on that, with a few refinements of its own.