Yassa Poulet or Chicken Yassa - a West African cuisine loved by many; it probably was the most popular choice at the Christian international school we worked at for staff and students alike. You serve this tangy/spicy onion sauce over rice with chicken and optional veggies. It was one of our family’s go to’s while running errands in Dakar and needed a quick lunch. My husband grew up most of his life in Senegal, West Africa and after serving for 4 years in Senegal, I wanted to make sure we can bring back some of these recipes and be able to modify it for wherever we are at.
This is a dish that involves a lot of onions, flavors and spices, but you can adapt this recipe to make it to your likening. My hope is to give you the most basic ingredients so you can adapt it to your preferred taste of this dish. With three littles in our home, we try to keep the spice down, so we will put less peppers and dijon.
Tips:
If you or any of your household members are chicken members, I would make more chicken than what's called for in the recipe. My almost 3 and 4 year old devoured most of it!
If your sauce seems too thick after cooking everything, you can add a little more broth or water to thin it out. If it seems too thin, like mine, I added a some flour (or corn starch).
The amounts of flavor is what works for our family, so play around with the flavors until you find something that works for you!
How to Make Yassa in 4 Steps:
Marinade the chicken and onion (the longer the better; 6-7 hours or overnight) - no matter the precautions I take, my eyes water and burn cutting up the onions. That's my warning to you so you are prepared, but it is so worth it, ha!
Brown the chicken -You can either heat up oil in a pan and get the chicken brown and crispy or grill it for that smokey flavor. It's going to end up being thrown in the pot and cooked longer, so this part is just to get that chicken nice and brown.
Caramelize onions - 5-10 minutes depending on how caramelized you want it.
Combine and cook everything - add the browned chicken to the cooked down onions along with the remaining marinade and chicken stock. Cook further until ready and then serve over rice!
Thank you for joining along. Making this meal made me really miss the home and roots we established in Senegal! Comment below if you tried this dish and share your twist on it, I'd love to know. A little reminder to myself and those that might need a reminder: find the joy in the little things - my kiddos and their love for the outdoors and using their imagination and playing for hours has reminded me to do just that.
Love,
Tam
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