Portuguese Chicken Breast with Pimenta Moída

Juicy dry brined chicken breast roasted with smoky pimenta moída and served with Portuguese garlic rice. A simple, flavour-packed family dinner built from a few beautiful basics.

Portuguese chicken breast roasted with red pimenta moída, served with garlic rice.

Portuguese cooking has always understood something that other cuisines sometimes overlook: that a great condiment does not just accompany a meal, it builds it. Pimenta moída, the fermented red pepper paste found in kitchens across Portugal, is exactly that kind of ingredient. Spooned over dry brined chicken breast midway through roasting, it caramelises into the skin, soaks into the meat, and fills the kitchen with something warm and deeply savoury. Served over Portuguese garlic rice with a spoonful of the pan juices and a little extra sauce, it becomes the kind of dinner that earns a permanent place at the table.

Prep: 10 min · Cook: 25 min · Serves: 4 · Cuisine: Portuguese Australian · Category: Dinner

Ingredients

The Chicken

To Serve

Method

  1. Pat the chicken breasts dry with paper towel. Sprinkle the salt evenly over both sides. Place uncovered on a tray or plate and refrigerate for 2 to 4 hours. You do not need to brine overnight — a few hours is genuinely enough for the salt to move through the meat and the flavour to hold.
  2. When you are ready to cook, remove the chicken from the fridge. Preheat the oven to 200°C fan forced. Lightly pat the chicken dry if any moisture has formed on the surface.
  3. Place the chicken in a roasting dish. Drizzle with olive oil, scatter over the oregano and season with black pepper. Rub lightly so the chicken is evenly coated.
  4. Roast for 15 minutes.
  5. Remove the dish from the oven. Spoon the pimenta moída generously over each breast, covering the top and sides. Return to the oven and roast for a further 10 minutes, or until the chicken is cooked through and the pimenta moída has caramelised into the skin. The internal temperature should read 74°C, or the juices should run clear.
  6. Rest the chicken for 5 minutes. To serve, spoon some of the roasting pan juices over the top and add a little extra fresh pimenta moída alongside.
  7. While the chicken roasts, prepare the Portuguese Garlic Rice (Arroz de Alho) according to the recipe.
  8. Spoon the garlic rice onto plates. Slice the rested chicken and lay it over the rice. Finish with the pan juices and a little extra pimenta moída at the table.

Serving Suggestions

This meal is built on three foundational recipes from this site. For the dry brine method and all the detail behind why it works, visit Dry Brined Roast Chicken Breast. The sauce is made from scratch using the Pimenta Moída (Portuguese Red Pepper Sauce), which keeps well in the fridge for weeks and works across many dishes. The rice is Portuguese Garlic Rice (Arroz de Alho), cooked simply in garlic oil and chicken stock.

Notes

Two to four hours of dry brining is all you need for this recipe. The pimenta moída adds its own depth of flavour during roasting, so a long overnight brine is not necessary.

Add the pimenta moída at the 15 minute mark, not at the start. This gives the chicken time to colour first and prevents the paste from burning. At 15 minutes it caramelises beautifully rather than darkening too fast.

Do not skip the pan juices. The roasting dish collects the flavoured oil and chicken juices combined with the pimenta moída — spooning that over the sliced chicken at the table is one of the best parts of this meal.

A spoonful of fresh pimenta moída served alongside is worth doing. The roasted sauce and the fresh sauce taste noticeably different and both earn their place on the plate.

The Grace Table Tip

If you have pimenta moída already made and sitting in the fridge, this dinner comes together in well under 40 minutes. The dry brine does its work earlier in the day, the rice cooker handles itself, and the oven does the rest. Keep a jar of pimenta moída in the fridge and this becomes one of the easiest Portuguese meals you can put on the table.

Leftover chicken stores well in an airtight container in the fridge for 3 to 4 days. Reheat gently in a low oven at 160°C covered with foil, with a small splash of water or stock in the dish to keep it moist. It also slices beautifully cold for lunches the next day.