Yassa Poulet
Chicken with Onions and Lemon Juice
I got married young and while I have lived on my own while in college, my cooking skills were minimal. I had grown up eating very simple meals, but once I had to cook for someone other than myself, I wanted to go beyond the very few dishes I knew how to make. Enter the Berkeley Public Library. Here, I found an enormous section of cookbooks which included offerings of food from all over the world. Something drew me to Caribbean and African food first of all - perhaps because I didn't know anything about it -, and yassa became one of my first successes. It's a simple dish of chicken cooked with plenty of sliced onions and lemon juice, but surprisingly delicious.
With the internet and the increase of African immigration to America, yassa has been having a moment in America as well. Indeed, it was one of the meals I've ordered from Shef during one of my cooking strikes. Like that version and the Gambian one I cooked before, this Malian version of yassa calls for mustard, which seems to marry French flavors with African ones. Unlike those versions, and the Senegalese one I've been cooking for years, this recipe didn't call for vinegar. Unsurprisingly, it was nowhere near as successful as the others. It's the sweetness of the vinegar which penetrates deep into the muscle of the chicken and brings all the flavors together. In all, it was fine for a weeknight meal, but the proportions were wrong and the vinegar is indispensable.
Serve over rice, millet, fufu or couscous.
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Malian Yassa Poulet
Ingredients
- 4 - 5 lbs chicken pieces
- 5 yellow onions, thinly sliced
- 2 lemons, thinly sliced
- 3/4 cup fresh lemon juice
- 3 Tbsp Dijon mustard
- 1 Tbsp ground mustard
- 2 tsp cayenne pepper or to taste
- salt & pepper to taste
- 1/2 cup peanut oil
Directions
In a large bowl, mix the chicken with the onions, lemons, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, ground mustard, cayenne and salt and pepper to taste. Cover and refrigerate for 2 hours.
Heat the oil in a large sauté pan over medium heat. Working in batches, brown the chicken on both sides, about 5 minutes per side. Set aside the chicken, remove the onion and lemon slices from the marinade, reserving the rest, and add to the hot oil. Sauté stirring frequently, until they brown and soften, about 10 minutes. Return the chicken to the pot. Add the rest of the marinade plus 2 cups of water. Reduce heat to a simmer and cook until the chicken is fully cooked, about 45 minutes.
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Adapted from a recipe at Together Women Rise
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