Recipe: Chicken Stewed with Tomatoes, Cinnamon, and Preserved Lemon

This is another recipe I adapted from a Moroccan tagine recipe since I don't have a tagine. It's a wonderful stewed chicken dish that's very good served over couscous or rice.

Chicken Stewed with Tomatoes, Cinnamon, and Preserved Lemon

Ingredients:
Chicken thighs and drumsticks, about 8 pieces
1 onion, chopped
4 cloves garlic, minced
1 tbsp. coriander seeds
2 tsp. paprika
2 tsp. oregano
1 tbsp. tomato paste
1 14-oz. can chopped tomatoes
2 preserved lemons, rinsed and chopped (pulp discarded)
1 stick cinnamon
1 cup water
2 tbsp. chopped parsley
2 tbsp. olive oil
Salt & pepper to taste

Preparation:
In a deep skillet or a French oven, saute the onion in the olive oil until soft. Add garlic, coriander seeds, paprika, and oregano. Saute for another minute.

Add the tomato paste, tomatoes, water, cinnamon, and preserved lemon. Mix well. Add the chicken. Cover the pan and simmer for 30 minutes.

Add the parsley. Taste first to see if it needs salt - it shouldn't, because of all the salt in the preserved lemons, but taste to be sure. If needed, add salt and pepper to taste. Cook another 5 minutes without the lid.

Serve with rice or couscous.

(Image: Kathryn Hill)

Comments (10)

Looks delicious! Is there a way to sub in fresh lemons if I don't have preserved ones?

1) I second IndigoEllen's question

2) How "deep" of a deep skillet do you think is necessary? The deepest one I have is a 2-3 inch deep cast-iron... but french ovens look to been much deeper than that. Could I use a shallow pan in lieu of either? Or should I just save this recipe for when I have the proper equipment?

I don't know how fresh lemons would work in this, honestly. I suppose you could chop them up and try them and see what happens.

Skillet depth ... I would say 3 to 4 inches?

No, fresh lemons cannot be substituted for preserved lemons -- they are totally different.

Fresh lemons are highly acidic with hard rinds; preserved lemons have very soft rinds, are salty-lemony, and are not very juicy or acidic. Substituting one for the other would destroy the dish. Wait to make it until you can find preserved lemons -- they are not that hard to find. Or make some yourself; I believe a recipe was posted on AT a while back.

I think you could use fresh lemons. Instead of chopping them, slice them very, very thinly.

I like to saute chard and very thinly sliced lemons. After 30 minutes or so of sauteing, the lemon slices lose their bitterness and fibrous texture and are quite delicious.

This dish will cook long enough and with enough juices to make the fresh lemon soft and yummy.

where's the chicken in this recipe? i don't see it mentioned in the preparation steps.

@ratita: fixed. thanks for pointing that out.

I just tried this dish with fresh lemons (I simply couldn't wait for 3 weeks, but I will definitely try it again as soon as my preserved lemons are finished!) and it came out quite well.

I sliced the fresh lemon into teeny slivers, so small that they were translucent and sometimes not even whole slices, but little tissue paper-like slivers. I added the lemon in with the onions to start breaking them down (as heather77 suggested) and then cooked the recipe as directed.

The lemon flavor was a bit overwhelming when I taste-tested it near the end, so I added another cinnamon stick and it balanced out. The only thing I would definitely add to this recipe is raisins, which I think would make it even better!

Just made this and it is awesome! It's such a flavorful dish for cooking only 30 min.
Mine came out a bit soupy which surprised me but it was fine. I served it with couscous which soaked up some of the liquid.

This was dinner tonight - so delicious! I was so happy to be able to use the preserved lemons that I made on a whim some months ago. I used just chicken thighs and removed the skin (too much fat for our tastes). I then browned the chicken and removed it from the pan before proceeding with the recipe as written. Oh, another thing, because it seemed to have a lot of liquid, I didn't add the full cup of water - even then I found that I needed to let it simmer with the lid slightly askew so that more of the liquid could evaporate as it cooked (there was still plenty of liquid for the rice). Also, I added the parsley after removing the pan from the heat instead of cooking it for another five minutes. This recipe was a departure from my usual cooking style and it was fabulous! A real keeper - thanks so much for sharing it.