Ivorian Chicken Stew / Poulet Kedjenou

Poulet Kedjenou, Cote d'ivoire's national dish, is basically a chicken stew. Mostly made with country chicken this chicken recipe is easy as hell. Mix everything in a pot and simmer until done. My maid showed me the process and now I make this stew pretty much very often. In West Africa, people eat this stew with rice or cassava. But it goes well with chapatti as well. In some recipes of the poulet kedjenou lots of veggies are added along with eggplant. But I don’t find the addition of eggplant amusing...so I just make it plain and simple. 

And try to use ripe plum tomatoes, as that will give this stew a nice red hew. Canned tomatoes just work great...but I find them excessively sour so I am not very fond of using them in such a simple recipe like this.

Throw all the ingredients inside the pressure cooker.

Mix them well and simmer with closed lid on low flame until the chicken is cooked.

Ivorian Chicken Stew / Poulet Kedjenou

Serves 6

Ingredients:

1 and ½ kg chicken on bone (preferably country chicken. But poultry will do also.)

1 large onion – finely chopped

1 capsicum – chopped

2-3 tomatoes – chopped / 1 can of tomatoes

2 tbsp freshly ground black peppercorns

6 cloves of garlic – minced

½ inch ginger – minced

4-5 green chillies – slit

Salt

2 tbsp white oil

Method:

In a pressure cooker put together the chicken pieces, chopped tomatoes, chopped onion, chopped capsicum, minced ginger and garlic; slit green chillies, salt, pepper and oil.

Mix them well with hand and close the lid.

Take off the venting bulb from the lid and put the cooker on low flame.

Shake the cooker occasionally in cictular motion so that they don’t stick to the bottom of the cooker.

Cook in this way for 45 minutes.

Open the lid and check whether the chicken is cooked.

If not, then add 1 cup of water and cook again. The cooking process generally takes 1 and ½ hour approximately.

If you find the dish has become dry in the end, add some water and simmer for 3-4 minutes more.

Once done, switch off the flame and serve hot with some steamed hot rice.