This Moroccan Chicken Stew is packed full of nothing but goodness. The ingredient list is a nutritionist’s dream: bone broth, kale, sweet potatoes, tomatoes, chick peas, garlic, and cinnamon to name a few. It is also extremely
Optional: Get your chicken stock from boiling roasted chicken bones
economical if you prepare this in the same way as I do, as it’s made from only the carcass of a rotisserie chicken. You can actually get a lot of meat off of the boiled bones if you don’t mind taking the time to strip them. Its actually kind of therapeutic to sit there and zone out while sifting through the cooled chicken bits from the stock. I throw away the bones, skin and cartilage and reserve the broth and the meat that I’ve picked out from the stock. If you want a meatier stew, save up the carcasses from two chickens (store in the freezer until ready). I am very hasty when I initially pick the meat off the bones from my rotisserie chicken anyway, because I know that I want to make a delicious soup or stew with the carcass on another day, and the more I leave behind, the better it will be!
The smell of this stew wafting through the house as it cooked was mesmerising. There is something magical about the smell of spices cooking. I’ve often been walking down the street and stopped dead in my tracks to keep smelling a curry cooking from an apartment window above. I think once you start cooking and tasting food this way, it becomes addicting. I love spices without chili sometimes – because if a dish is really hot, that flavour just seems to take over the experience. Don’t get me wrong, I love spicy heat too, but in
Fragrant and warming.
moderation and balance. A subtle blend of warming spices can be so comforting and give you a certain cozy kind of feeling, like at Christmas time.
This stew is very warming from the cinnamon. I was a little heavy with the it here because that is one of the main spices I tend to associate Moroccan food. Some chopped apricots were thrown in, and as the stew cooked they plumped up to sweet sticky morsels. I added two types of sweet potato, because I like the contrast of flavour and the fact that the purple sweet potato isn’t as sweet as the gold we are typically used to. Kale adds a touch of green – both in colour and in making the stew feel clean.
Serve this stew with cous cous or quinoa, or just eaten on its own as a vibrant, chunky soup.
- 3 cups chicken broth (with meat picked from the bones)
- 1 onion, chopped
- 2 carrots, chopped
- 2 cloves garlic, chopped
- 1 red capsicum (bell pepper)
- 1 teaspoon cumin seeds
- 1 teaspoon coriander seed
- 1 teaspoon cinnamon
- ½ teaspoon paprika
- 1 can of tomatoes
- 1 can of chickpeas, drained
- 1 small golden sweet potato, cut into chunks
- 1 small purple sweet potato, cut into chunks
- 1 cup kale, chopped
- ⅓ cup dried apricots, cut into quarters
- olive oil, salt and pepper
- In a large stock pot, sweat the onion and carrot until soft.. Add the red pepper, garlic and spices and fry for another couple of minutes.
- Add the rest of the ingredients and bring up to a low boil.
- Cook for a further 30 minutes. Keep the lid off so that the liquid reduces and thickens slightly.
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