Succulent juicy, spiced and aromatic chicken tagine with apricots and preserved lemons.
Make this Moroccan dinner recipe at home and learn how to use a tagine pot.
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📕 What is a Tagine?
Tagine, or also Tajine, is an earthenware clay pot and also the name of a Moroccan meal that is slow-cooked in this traditional cooking utensil.
The Tagine Clay Pot
The clay pot consists of 2 parts.
A flat base rounded at the corners where the dish cooks, and a dome-shaped cover that sits on the lower part during the cooking process which is simply put the lid.
The specially shaped cover serves to circulate the condensation down in the cooking process.
Physics is doing an excellent job by cooking the meat extremely tender on the inside of a tagine.
The Tagine Meal
The tagine meal is a traditional slow-cooked one-pot meal. It's great to serve this to a crowd!
There are a couple of different tagine types, in fact, Moroccan and Tunisian tagines are known to be two totally different dishes.
Since I have little knowledge of the Tunisian tagine, I'll focus more on the Moroccan Tagine dish.
I have tried Mutton Tagine, veg tagine, and chicken tagine in the past and our favorite is definitely the chicken version of this North African dish.
Other versions of this dish may include fish, prune and even oranges.
🔪 How to cook it?
Using a tagine is actually quite simple. I'm going to clarify things here!
Find the complete recipe with ingredients and instruction details at the bottom of this post.
Step 1
Marinate chicken and cook in the pan on all sides.
Step 2
Assemble tagine by cooking first onion in oil in the tagine.
Add all the other ingredients including vegetables, dried fruits, chicken, preserved lemon and nuts.
Step 3
Allow the tagine to cook for at least 90 minutes on a slow flame
Turn the chicken and ingredients during the cooking process.
Serve hot when done.
🥣 Serving
We love our Moroccan chicken served with fluffy couscous, as it is the norm in Morocco.
Giant Israeli style couscous can be used as a side dish too.
Another idea is to serve your chicken apricot tagine with cooked plain rice or lemon rice or cooked ebly wheat berries.
Sometimes we serve roasted vegetables with our chicken tagine recipes such as potatoes, butternut squash, chickpeas and brussels sprouts.
🔪 How to eat it?
To do it the traditional way, move the Tajine clay pot into the center of a table.
The cover is removed and everyone around the table starts to directly dip with three fingers into the warm dish.
The index finger holds a piece of flatbread and the thumb pushes the food onto the bread before eating it all.
The other fingers shouldn't touch the dish!
A while back I had mentioned in the Moroccan Tea experience, that Moroccan people follow traditional food and drink preparations to the T.
Old traditions have been preserved over time and were passed over to the generations.
💠FAQs
Tagines may include apricots, dates, prunes, almonds, pickled lemons. Aromatic spices such as paprika and cinnamon are added for flavor.
We usually serve white wine or rose with our chicken tagine. A fruity rose makes a great addition. Moroccan wines are surprisingly fruity aromatic and perhaps worth a try with this Morrocan chicken tagine.
📖 Recipe
Moroccan Chicken Tagine Recipe
Ingredients
For the Seasoning and Chicken:
- 1 Teaspoon Salt
- ½ Teaspoon Cumin Seeds Ground
- ½ Teaspoon Coriander Seeds Ground
- ½ Teaspoon Turmeric Ground
- ½ Teaspoon Paprika Powder
- ¼ Teaspoon Black Pepper Ground
- 4 Chicken Legs
- 2 Tablespoon Olive Oil 1 for marination + 1 for cooking
To assemble Tagine:
- 2 Tomato quartered
- 1 Potato roughly diced
- 2 Small Carrot sliced
- 4 Preserved Whole Lemons *See Notes for substitution
- 1 Tablespoon Olive Oil
- 2 Onion sliced
- 5 Pieces Garlic Cloves chopped
- ½ Inch Ginger Fresh chopped
- 5.3 Ounces Dried Plums or Apricots
- 5.3 Ounces Raisins presoaked
- 1 Tablespoon Honey
- 5.3 Ounces Almonds
- 2 Bay leaves
Instructions
For the Seasoning and Chicken:
- Combine salt, cumin powder, coriander powder, turmeric, paprika and black pepper.
- Place chicken legs into a large bowl, season with the spice blend and sprinkle olive oil over chicken.
- Mix to coat the chicken legs with the spice blend and olive oil. Keep marinating for 10 mins at least.
- Heat up a pan with olive oil and place chicken legs into the hot pan.
- Cook chicken on all sides just so that the chicken gets some color. Take out and keep aside.
To assemble Tagine:
- Prepare and cut potato, tomato, and carrot. Slice preserved lemons. Keep aside.
- Place tagine bottom part on the stove and pour olive oil in.
- Throw in sliced onions and saute for a minute or two.
- Add ginger and garlic chopped to the tagine.
- Assemble the tagine by adding the cut potato, tomato and carrot.
- Add dried prunes or apricots to the tagine, as well as previously soaked raisins (without the water). Mix everything while it's all slowly cooking on super slow heat.
- Place chicken into tagine and don't forget to add some honey over the vegetables.
- Spread sliced lemon over the chicken, as well as the almonds.
- Stick the bay leaves in between the ingredients in the tagine and cover the tagine with the lid.
- The tagine needs to cook for at least 90 minutes over slow heat. Open it once or twice during the cooking process and turn the chicken and ingredients a bit.
- Serve hot when done.
Notes
- If you can't get whole preserved lemons use 2 teaspoon Lemon juice instead
- You can use apricots or prunes or even both mixed.
- Keep raisin in water for 30 minutes to soak. Strain.
- Never add water to the tagine. The liquid that you see in the video at the end came from the vegetables.
Yeah I know what you mean, I am kind of facing the same problem. The tajin in this picture is my mothers, she got it from her sisters, who has 4 big tajine eaters in her house. She needed a bigger one so she gave my mum that one, otherwise there is no way to get a tajine in Austria where we live.
hehe... We eat it with cutlery in Europe too. But if I had a tajine in Goa, I d eat it with some flat bread/with the hands. Its always weird to eat with hands in Europe. Everyone looks at me like I was mad when I try to do that. In India its totally normal.
Lucky you! I d love to visit this mysterious country one day. Everyone is telling me tales of Marakesh. I bet you learned some really good tricks there, cooking tajines. =)
From the Land Down Under: I personally have loved N African cuisine for many years: and I have never owned a proper taginier! Cook it very naturally 2-3 x/week! This is a lovely recipe: thank you! May I possibly suggest that the Tunisian varieties of the dish may be the most delicate and satisfying of all. After all, Berber and Persian cooking styles are now regarded as the most 'artistic' in any form of world cooking. Personally, I'm learning Ethiopian ways every week [may I suggest Burmese as second choice?!] and that is not so far affoot 😀 !