Poulet Yassa Recipe
Poulet yassa, or more simply chicken yassa, is a chicken dish from Senegalese cuisine. It is a flavorful dish with plenty of onions, mustard, and lemon. I generally love chicken dishes and will eat anything with chicken and I've eaten quite a lot of chicken in my life, but poulet yassa is a completely different experience. It’s hard to describe without sounding like I'm exaggerating, but I’ll just say this: I wish everyone could taste this dish at least once.
A lot of onions are used for poulet yassa, and because they are caramelized and then cooked for a long time, they give the dish a very subtle sweetness. When Dijon mustard and lemon come together, you might think they’d give a sharp taste, but they do not. These two ingredients combined with the onions create a unique flavor. It has a distinct flavor that, if I had to compare, I would liken to the rfissa recipe.
For poulet yassa, chopped onions and flavorings are first mixed together. Then the chicken is added and marinated. Some recipes do not include onions in the marinade, but onion and onion juice are excellent marinating ingredients. Döner and chicken döner are great examples of this. If you remove the onions from these recipes, the flavor is reduced by half. So, to fully benefit from the flavor of the onions, I added them to the marinade.
I used chicken thighs for yassa. You can use just drumsticks or chicken legs, but chicken breasts are not suitable; you should use bone-in chicken.
The marinated chicken is then fried in a pan. Since chicken thighs take up space, you might not fit them all in the pan at once if you're making the same amount as me. In that case, you can fry them in batches. It's okay if the first batch waits while the second batch cooks. After frying the chicken, the onions are caramelized, and then all the ingredients are combined and cooked for a long time. You can use a pressure cooker to shorten the cooking time, but in this case, you should use less chicken broth.
If you don’t have chicken broth, you can use water, but there will be a significant loss in flavor and consistency.
Bon appétit...
Poulet Yassa Recipe with Video
Ingredients
- 6 chicken thighs,
- 2.5 cups chicken broth,
- 3 large onions,
- 2 teaspoons Dijon mustard,
- 1/2 lemon juice,
- 1 teaspoon smoked paprika (if available),
- 1 chilli pepper or 1 teaspoon of chilli flakes,
- 3 tablespoons olive oil,
- Salt to taste.
Preparation
- Slice the onions into half-moons and place them in a deep bowl,
- Add Dijon mustard, lemon juice, and smoked paprika, and mix well,
- Add the chicken and mix thoroughly,
- Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours,
- Heat the olive oil in a large pan, place the chicken pieces without the onions, and fry them, turning until golden,
- Set the chicken aside,
- Add the onions to the same pan and sauté until they change color and soften slightly,
- Take the chicken, onions, hot pepper, and chicken broth into a deep pot,
- Cover and cook until the chicken is tender and the broth is significantly reduced.
Bon appétit!