Epifurious Labs Creates 90% Pio Pio Green Sauce

As you've read, we here at Epifurious love ourselves some Pio Pio.  The pollo a la brasa, the jalea, the saffron rice and those amazing beans.  Mmm!  The real secret of Pio Pio, however, is the green sauce--a creamy, spicy confection with which you bathe everything on the plate.  Ahh, to be able to put it on everything!

Well, this week Ulrike, Idahomie, and I ordered in Pio Pio while watching the YouTube/CNN debates, which were as almost as delicious to consume as the meal.  I saved one of the little tubs of green sauce, and set about some internet research, hoping to learn the secret of making my own Pio Pio sauce.

There were a lot of recipes to choose from, all of which referred to the sauce as ají, which is also the name of the chiles that flavor the sauce.  The sauce is somewhat of a Peruvian staple, and is featured prominently in a dish called Ají de Gallina.  Most of the Google searching for ají and pollo ended up at variations on this recipe.  But the ingredients didn't seem like they would result in the desired green sauce, and the few pictures I turned up looked resolutely wrong.

I decided to use my shaky Spanish skills to continue my searching on various South American message boards.  Finally, I discovered that, indeed, this ají was not the one I was looking for.  The green sauce for pollo a la brasa is actually made with a Peruvian "black mint" called huacatay, which is available as a jarred puree at South American grocers.  I picked this up, along with a jar of yellow ají chiles, and began to craft a recipe from the varying recipes available online for Salsa de Huacatay.

The majority of these recipes called for queso fresco or feta or farmer's cheese.  Unfortunately, my crappy local supermarket was out of queso fresco, and only had some kind of scary looking Athenos pre-crumbled feta.  So I picked up a bottle of Mexican crema and I figured I could improvise something at home. 

This recipe couldn't be easier to prepare.  You literally throw all the ingredients into the food processor and whir it into oblivion.  Instead of the cheese, I used the crema and added bread crumbs.  One of the recipes I read called for mayonnaise, which I thought was some insane gringo substitution.  But once I was done with all the other ingredients, there was still a tanginess and creaminess missing from the sauce.  The answer?  Mayonnaise!

So here it is, Epifurious' 90% Pio Pio Green Sauce!

1/2 cup cilantro
2 large tablespoons huacatay puree
6 cloves garlic
3 yellow ají, whole
2 large jalapeños, whole (removing, of course, the stem)
1/2 cup lime juice
1/2 cup olive oil
4 tbsp. crema
3 tbsp. mayo
1/2 cup fresh breadcrumbs
Salt to taste

Add cilantro, huacatay, garlic, ají, jalapeños, lime juice, salt, and olive oil to food processor.  Whir until very smooth.  Add crema, breadcrumbs, mayo little by little, tasting until texture becomes thicker, creamier.  I added a little heavy cream as well, just for fun.  It seemed to make it more delicious, but heavy cream usually makes things more delicious. 

Of course, this is my first foray, but I must say that in a side-by-side comparison of the sauce from Pio Pio and my own version, the homemade one is pretty damn close!  With further tweaking, and the addition of the queso fresco, we might soon be able to post a 98% Pio Pio Green Sauce!

Comments

[Andrea]

Oh my goodness! I cant tell you how long I've been trying to recreate that damn pio pio sauce. It doesn't help that each Pio Pio location tells me something different when I ask about the sauce (one said it was jalapeno mayo; the other said it had no jalapenos in it..). I can't wait to try this.

[zp]

It is so important to work through one's mayo-trauma.

[Gina]

Have you figured out the other 2% yet? This sauce is so good that I will settle for something that just looks like the sauce...much less tastes like it. Thanks for all of the research.

[Alex Vander]

Instead of the breadcrumbs, try the saltine crackers. We know someone who knows the owners. He doesn't know exact amounts, but I do know they use saltine crackers. And also there is no mayo but Queso Blanco. Again, we don't know exact amounts, so fudge around with it. Believe me, I am addicted to the Pio Pio Sauce. My husband tried fishing and he told them I would like to buy a quart of Huacatay Sauce and they told him there is no huacatay in it, but we know different.

[Loulou]

I just made a sauce for my sweet potatoes for thanksgiving, I wanted savory not sweet, so I opted for a chipotle and here's the answer folks "heavy cream". Yup. Heavy cream, 3 yellow ají, whole 6 cloves garlic, 1/2 cup cilantro (although too much and it taste like grass). But the base, the base is heavy cream.