Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Recipes

Chicken Tagine for the Time Pressed

I’m not going to encourage you to whip this up on a work night. The prep takes about 45 minutes and is followed by 30 minutes of pressure-cooking time. But if you’re interested in making what tastes like a proper slow-cooked tagine — a spicy, complex North African-inspired stew with meat that’s moist and tender — in a fraction of the time it would normally take, I encourage you to try this. And if you don’t have a pressure cooker, go ahead and simmer the stew on the stovetop in a heavy pot, covered, until the chicken is very tender, about an hour and a half.

Related article:

1 medium onion, very roughly chopped
3 garlic cloves, very roughly chopped
1 bell pepper, very roughly chopped
2 carrots, very roughly chopped
1 2-inch piece of fresh ginger
3 tablespoons grapeseed or other neutral oil, divided
4 pounds of boneless, skinless chicken thighs
2 teaspoons Chinese 5-spice powder
¼ teaspoon turmeric
¼ teaspoon cayenne pepper
½ teaspoon salt
½ teaspoon black pepper
1 cup dry white wine
32 ounces low-sodium chicken broth or stock, divided
2 15.5-ounce cans of chickpeas, rinsed
8 dried figs, quartered
1 preserved lemon, rinsed, pulp removed, and diced
½ cup pitted olives, such as calamata (green olives are good here too)
1 cup diced tomatoes
Chopped parsley or cilantro for garnish
Toasted slivered almonds for garnish

1) Place the first five ingredients into the bowl of a food processor and pulse until medium-fine. Heat the oil in a large pan over medium-low heat and add the vegetables. Cook, stirring, about 5 minutes.

2) Meanwhile, heat oil in pressure cooker pot over medium-high heat. Sprinkle chicken with the 5 spice, turmeric, cayenne, and salt and pepper and brown, in batches, until golden brown.

3) When all the chicken has browned, remove from pot and add the wine and one cup of the broth broth and scrape up all the brown bits stuck to the pot. Return chicken and add vegetable mixture, along with chickpeas, figs, preserved lemon, and olives.

4) Add remaining broth and the tomatoes, secure the lid, and cook on high pressure for 25 minutes. Turn off heat and let pressure subside naturally. When pressure has been released, remove lid, spoon chicken and sauce over rice, couscous, or quinoa and garnish with herbs and almonds.

Related article:

Liza Schoenfein is food editor of the Forward. Contact her at [email protected], or on Twitter, @LifeDeathDinner

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you go, I’d like to ask you to please support the Forward’s award-winning, nonprofit journalism during this critical time.

We’ve set a goal to raise $260,000 by December 31. That’s an ambitious goal, but one that will give us the resources we need to invest in the high quality news, opinion, analysis and cultural coverage that isn’t available anywhere else.

If you feel inspired to make an impact, now is the time to give something back. Join us as a member at your most generous level.

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

With your support, we’ll be ready for whatever 2025 brings.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.