🍲 Chicken tagine with olives
Chicken tagine with olives is slow-cooked chicken in a fragrant onion sauce coloured with saffron and warmed by ginger, finished with plenty of olives and a little preserved lemon. The chicken becomes very tender, and the olives give the sauce a savoury, slightly briny depth. It is served hot in the cooking pot as a centrepiece of a Moroccan meal.
Diets
Allergens
None of the 14 major allergens in a typical recipe.
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 1.2 kg chicken pieces
- 2 onions, grated
- 3 garlic cloves, crushed
- 1 pinch saffron in 3 tbsp warm water
- 1 tsp ground ginger
- 1 tsp turmeric, salt, pepper
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 preserved lemon, peel cut into strips
- 120 g green or violet olives
- Chopped cilantro and parsley
Method
- Mix the onion, garlic, saffron, ginger and turmeric, saffron water, salt, pepper and oil with the chicken and leave for 30 minutes.
- Put everything in a tagine or heavy pot with 250 ml water, cover and cook over low heat for about 50 minutes, turning the chicken occasionally.
- Add the preserved lemon and olives and cook uncovered for 10–15 minutes until the sauce thickens.
- Sprinkle with cilantro and parsley and serve hot from the pot.
How to make it lighter
- Remove the chicken skin before cooking — most of the fat sits there.
- Use 1–2 tbsp of oil for the whole pot; 1 tbsp oil ≈ 120 kcal.
- Olives are salty and fairly rich: a small handful is enough for flavour.
History
Chicken with preserved lemon and olives is one of the best-known tagines of Moroccan cooking, which developed in cities such as Fez and Marrakesh. The tagine itself is the conical earthenware pot in which the dish is traditionally cooked. Today it is a standard dish at Moroccan family meals and celebrations.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →