Aji de Gallina is Peru in its comfort-food form — creamy, bright, messy, and carrying centuries of history in every bite. It’s shredded chicken swimming in a golden sauce made from aji amarillo, that electric yellow pepper Peruvians treat like a national treasure. One spoonful and you understand why. The heat is gentle but insistent, the flavor deep, floral, unmistakable. This dish isn’t loud, but it stays with you.

Its story starts in colonial Lima, where Spanish kitchen techniques met Indigenous ingredients and African influence — a collision that created half of what makes Peruvian cuisine so extraordinary. Aji de Gallina was born somewhere in that mix. In the beginning it was made with hen, tough birds that needed long cooking to coax out tenderness. Over time, people switched to chicken because it was easier, cheaper, and modern life doesn’t give you all day to break down a bird.

The Spanish brought their sofritos, their creams, their ideas about what “sauce” should be. Peru answered with aji amarillo — a pepper that doesn’t just spice food, it colors it like sunlight. Somehow, out of conquest and improvisation, out of scarcity and abundance, Aji de Gallina emerged as a dish that tastes like survival turned into comfort.

You’ll find it everywhere now: in Lima’s home kitchens, in market stalls, in restaurants that think they invented nostalgia. Usually served over rice with boiled potatoes, olives, maybe a hard-boiled egg tossed in for good measure. It’s the kind of dish that doesn’t need theatrics. It knows exactly who it is.

Aji de Gallina is more than shredded chicken in a yellow sauce.

It’s a snapshot of Peru’s past — Indigenous farmers, Spanish colonizers, enslaved cooks, immigrant traditions — all simmered into something warm enough to bring people back to the same table again and again.

Eat it slowly. Taste the pepper. Taste the history. This is Peruvian comfort at its finest.