While we were travelling in Senegal and the Gambia, we had many dishes with variations of yassa, which is a tasty onion sauce on top of some protein. Both chicken (poulet) and fish (poisson) yassa are popular in a number of West African countries. This recipe for Poulet Yassa is simple and tastes very much like the ones we tried during out trip. I think that the lime juice brings out the sweetness of the onions. In fact, when I first tried the onion sauce I thought it was made using sweet onions. However, our guide told us that they just use normal white onions.
You can add chili if you like a little spice. This dish is usually served with broken rice. Since I couldn’t find that easily in London, I served it with normal rice. Now I figured out that Vietnamese also eat broken rice, so I am going to check an Asian supermarket.
Ingredients
8 chicken drumsticks
6 medium onions (preferably sweet onions)
1 tsp mustard powder
2 garlic cloves, peeled and minced
2-3 limes
1 red chili, de-seeded and minced
2 Bay leaves
200 ml vegetable oil
Pinch of salt
Pinch of freshly ground black pepper
2 c broken rice, cooked
Instructions
First, peel the onions. Next, for two of the onions, chop them finely. Then for the other four onions, cut them in half then slice them. Set aside the sliced onions in a bowl and cover them.
In a medium bowl, prepare the marinade by combining 100ml oil, juice from the limes, the chopped onions, and minced garlic. Add salt and pepper to taste. Next, add the chicken pieces, cover and chill in the marinade for 2 hours.
For the chicken, you can either grill / BBQ the chicken or bake in the oven at 200C for about 40 minutes. If you are baking the chicken, then place the pieces onto greaseproof paper on a baking sheet with sides. Shake of the extra marinade, and reserve the marinade for the onions.
In the meantime, prepare the sliced onions. First, heat the remaining 100ml oil in a large frying pan. Then add the onions, chili, mustard powder and Bay leaves. Cook the onions until the are soft and caramelised. Add the liquid marinade and cook until most liquid has evaporated. Finally, remove the Bay leaves before serving.
Serve the chicken with a scoop of broken rice and a portion of the onions.
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