Lemon and Garlic Chicken Stew

Lemon and Garlic Chicken Stew is a tangy and delicate dish served on a kamut couscous to soak all that tangy lemon-garlic sauce. Comfort food with a certain zing!

I’m a big citrus fruits fan, also a big comfort food one. Mix up those two and you get a nice stew dish! Lemon and garlic are a great pair, the garlic will be turning sweet after a long cooking period and the lemon giving a nice tangy flair to the dish. Garlic is such an undefined ingredient in the sense that its taste and texture change a lot whether you cook it for a short or long time and also quite different raw. For example, in this particular dish you add the garlic right at the beginning of the cooking processed so this way you’ll end up with a smooth, sweet garlic flavor although if you want to add an extra “spicy, sharp” garlic taste to it, you could always add an extra garlic in the end of cooking. Just this small extra in the end would make the dish quite different, but for this particular stew, I’ve kept the garlic sweet.

As for the lemon, I highly recommend to choose organic ones because this recipe uses the zest from a whole lemon. Residues on citrus fruit is practically impossible to eliminate completely, so make yourself a favor and buy organic. If not, let the lemon soak in warm water for an hour before usage.

Casserole vs Stew

Big dilemma… I have a hard time figuring out which I should call the recipe; a stew or a casserole? In theory the casserole and stew are the same, long cooking process of meat in a broth but the stew is done on the stove while casserole is done in the oven. In cooking classes they would often start the stews on the stove and finish it up in the oven, which gives this nice extra caramelize layer on top. While the cooking on the stove makes it easier to control the temperature and the amount of liquid you want in the dish. So this dish is a mix of both, and I have no idea how to call this process, nor how to call this recipe. Basically the dilemma got solved with the help of a coin and a “tails” being the stew.

So let’s make this zesty stew!

Lemon and Garlic Chicken Stew

Makes 5-6 portions | Difficulty: easy | Preparation: 1h45

Ingredients

• 500ml chicken broth
• 150ml of white wine
• 4 drumsticks of chicken with skin
• 4 thighs of chicken with skin
• 1 onion finely chopped
• 4 garlic cloves finely chopped
• 1 organic lemon
• 1 mandarin
• 2 laurel leave
• rosemary branch or 1 tsp of dried rosemary
• olive oil
• salt and pepper

Directions

1. Salt and pepper the chicken pieces
2. Cook the chicken legs, strong medium-high heat, in olive oil until crisp light brown skin on each sides
3. Add the onions, garlic, laurel leave, small rosemary branch, pepper and the wine
4. Scratch the bottom of the pan to take off the bits of chicken stocked on the bottom
5. Add the broth, bring to a simmer
6. Wash the lemon, zest it all, add the zest and the juice from the lemon directly into the stew with the juice or the mandarine
7. Let simmer for an hour, half covered
8. Finish the meal in the oven at 180°C (350F) for 30 to 45 minutes or until well crusted on top of the chicken (uncovered)
9. Serve on a kamut couscous and extra sauce to let the couscous soak it up.

Serve with extra lemon slices! Enjoy!