This Moroccan dish is called ‘tagine’ because that is what it is traditionally cooked in. Like this:
I cook mine in a dutch oven, but same concept. This dish is best with chicken on the bone. I used a whole chicken, but it would be great with just thighs. It’s a bit time consuming, but totally worth it. Serve over rice or with crusty bread.
Chicken Tagine
Prep/marinate: 2 hrs
Prep tagine: 15 mins
Cook: 2.5 hrs
Whole chicken, cut up (or 3# thighs on bone)
Marinade:
1/3 cup olive oil
2 Tbl garlic paste (or paste up 8 cloves)
1 tsp salt
.5 tsp pepper
1 tsp ginger (dried)
1 tsp coriander
1 tsp cumin
1 tsp paprika (sweet or smoked)
1 tsp cinnamon
.5 tsp turmeric
.25 tsp cloves
Tagine:
1 white onion, large dice
5 cloves garlic, diced
4-6 slices preserved lemon, sliced thinly (clean away fibrous bits and seeds)**
12 dried apricots, sliced
1/2 cup gold raisins
12 oil brined or kalamata olives, sliced
2 Tbl brown sugar
2 cinnamon sticks
2 cups chicken stock
Optional: You can add a heaping Tbl of cornstarch dissolved in some water if you want the sauce thicker. I usually do.
INSTRUCTIONS:
Mix up the marinade and slather it thoroughly on the chicken pieces. You can leave skin on or not, doesn’t really matter. Cover chicken and let sit in the fridge for at least 2 hours.
Pull chicken from fridge and set aside on the counter. Preheat oven to 350F.
In a large dutch oven, spray with nonstick spray then put about 1 Tbl of olive oil in bottom. Put onions and half the sliced lemons on the bottom of the vessel. Layer chicken on top of onion/lemon layer. Put all the rest of the ingredients on top of chicken then pour on stock. Nestle the chicken down into the stock, which should be about halfway up the chicken. Cover and bake at 350F for 2-2.5 hours or until chicken reaches 165F.
**If you don’t have preserved lemons, I encourage you to make a batch! It’s easy, but you have to wait a couple of months to use the lemons. Recipe HERE. If you don’t have preserved lemons and want to make the dish anyway, just use the zest of two lemons, peeled with a potato peeler. Make sure there is no pith (white part). It will be similar, but not exactly the same.