Moroccan-inspired Chicken Tagine
A delicious, Moroccan-spiced dish to give a nice twist to the usual chicken thighs. We recommend it along with a healthy and zingy couscous. It'll make an excellent leftover lunch if you have any left.
Equipment
- Dutch Oven
- Chef's Knife
- Small Pot
Ingredients
For the Chicken Pot
- 6-8 chicken thighs
- 1/3 tsp ground saffron
- 1/2 tsp ground ginger
- 1/2 tsp cumin
- 4 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1 tsp paprika
- 1/2 tsp turmeric
- 2 onions, thinly sliced around their orbit
- 20 green and black olives, halved (plus more for snacking while you cook)
- 2 preserved lemons, roughly chopped
- 250 ml chicken stock (1 cup)
- 1 lemon's juice
Instructions
- Start by salting the chicken thighs and cracking some black pepper on them while you heat up half of the vegetable oil. When hot, brown the chicken thighs skin-side down for 3-4 mins. Flip and cook for another 3-4 mins. It's important not to crowd the pan (you'll end up steaming more than pan-frying). A standard 5qt dutch oven can comfortably cook 4 chicken thighs at a time. Once all thighs are cooked, set them aside on a plate.
- Wipe the oven clean if desired and heat up the other half of vegetable oil in the dutch oven. Add the sliced onions and let them caramelise on a low heat for approximately 10 to 12 minutes until slightly caramelised. Caramelised onions will add a sweeter and apparently more authentic flavour to the dish, so if you'd prefer something more savoury, cook for 5 mins or so.
- Increase heat to medium-low. Add the chopped garlic and cook for 1 min. Add ground ginger, tumeric, cumin, and saffron and cook for 1 min. Add the chicken back to the dutch oven, and add the halved olives, the preserved lemons, chicken broth and lemon juice. Cover and let cook for 30 minutes. You can go ahead and chop the parsley now before moving to the couscous which you should totally have with this dish while the chicken is in the pot.
- Once ready, plate and serve with parsley and ideally couscous.