Lemon Chicken Tagine

Lemon Chicken Tagine

Tagine is the name of a traditional Moroccan pottery cooking dish.  The term may refer to the actual piece of pottery, to a tagine-specific recipe, and/or to this style of cooking.  I hope to blog more about this unique, healthy, natural, quick, and delicious way of cooking in the future.

This recipe is for Lemon Chicken made in a tagine pot.  If you don’t have a tagine, I’d think you you could use a stoneware cake pan, or even a cast iron skillet, but I haven’t tried it this way.  Some Moroccan women like to take a modern approach and use a pressure-cooker with great results.

If I am at home in the convenience of my kitchen, I place my tagine pot in the stove top burner on Med-Low heat.  Never exceed this temperature.  If we are camping in the Northern woods of Minnesota, as we were a weekend ago, we dig a small hole in the ground, fill it with hot coals, ring with stones, and place the tagine pot on top of the coals:

Our Moroccan Tagine in Northern Minnesota

Here’s our version of a basic, traditional recipe.  Have fun modifying it with your own spices, meats, and veggies!  Volumes, weights, and quantities are very loose, this is tagine, not science class!  FRESH herbs and ingredients make a HUGE difference in flavor!

Lemon Chicken Tagine

• Olive Oil
• 3 onions, chopped
• 3-4 cloves garlic, chopped
• 2-4 split chicken breasts (We use free-range halal chicken raised on Amish farms), cut in chunks (you can use whole chicken pieces, legs, whatever you’d like.  We’ve placed a whole chicken on)
• 3-5 carrots, cut in various size pieces (or just break them with your hands, or leave whole!)
• 1/4 c parsley, chopped
• 1/4 c cilantro, chopped
• 1/4 c basil, chopped
• 2 t paprika
• 1 t fresh crushed ginger root
• 1 t coriander, ground
• 1 t cumin, ground
• a pinch of saffron (if desired, or cheat and use tumeric to make the yellow color
• 1/2 c – 1 c water or broth
• 10-20 olives, any Middle-Eastern or Medittranean variety, even better with the pits!
• 3-5 lemons, wedged or sliced

Place your tagine pot on med-low heat stovetop or over red-hot coal pit.  Pour in a few tablespoons of olive oil, the onions, garlic.  Saute.  Add clean, skinned chicken.  Place carrots on top.  You can leave the carrots in full length, uncut, or split lengthwise, and assemble them teepee style over the chicken.  Or just place carrot pieces on top of chicken.  Top with all of the herbs and spices, sprinkled evenly over.  Pour 1/2 c of the water or broth over the top.   Add olives and lemons.  Cover.

Just let it cook.  No need to stir, baby-sit, or lift the lid.  After about a 1/2 hour, check the liquid level.  If the bottom of the food is getting dry, add more water or broth.  Cover and continue to cook until chicken is completely done.  Cooking time can be 45 min to an hour.  Serve!

Want to eat it Middle Eastern style?  Just set the tagine pot in the middle of the table or floor cloth.  Give your everyone in your family some pieces of naan or pita bread.  Everyone uses ripped pieces of the bread as a utensil to scoop into the pot and eat.  Use your right-hand only and no reaching across the pot dragging your sleeve through!

Here is the tagine we made while camping over the coals pictured above.  We added fresh sweet peas from the garden. Sadly, we forgot lemons for the trip, so we improvised with by pouring on a bit of fruit juice!

Chicken Tagine over hot coals with garden veggies

I hope to share another recipe for Lamb Tagine with Artichokes in the future.  Enjoy!  I’m sharing this recipe on the Tuesday Twister Blog Carnival:

Check out the GNOWFGLINS blog for healthy eating!