Chicken Chorba
Chicken Chorba
This is Moroccan in origin and popular across North Africa. Simple ingredients and delicious! I made this on 18 July 2018, very well liked by the family. Although the photos show my pressure cooker, this is NOT a pressure cooker dish, I was simply using the cooker as a thick walled, heavy pot.
Ingredients
- 1 tablespoon olive oil
- 2 onions, halved and finely sliced
- 1 kilo chicken wings, (2 lbs)
- 2 teaspoons ground turmeric
- 1 pinch saffron threads, (6-7 threads)
- 1 teaspoon salt, or to taste
- ½ teaspoon black pepper
- 150 grams dry chickpeas, (5 oz), see Step 1
- 2 medium tomatoes, grated, if using plum tomatoes, use 4-5
- 1½ tablespoons tomato paste
- 2 large potatoes, scrubbed and diced
- 100 grams dry spaghetti, broken into 1½ inch pieces, (3 1/2 oz)
- 3 tablespoons fresh parsley, chopped, and more for serving
- 6⅓ cups water
Instructions
- For the dry chickpeas, 150 grams (5 oz), soak overnight then drain. For canned chickpeas, use a 400 g / 14 oz can, drained.
- Potatoes and onions prepped. For the potatoes, I use a french fry cutter first, then a knife to cut the cubes from the "fry" shapes.
- This was a first for me, grating tomatoes, and I will say, it does a perfect job. Simply cut the end opposite the stem end, off and start with the cut end on the largest holes on a box grater. The tomato is grated and the leftover part is the skin and stem end. I grated 3 plum tomatoes.
- In a large pot, heat the oil on medium high heat, when hot, add the onion, turmeric, saffron, salt, pepper, and chicken, and give the pot a stir. Cook the chicken for 8-10 minutes, stirring the chicken once in a while, this is to just brown the chicken a bit, not trying to cook them through.
- Add the chickpeas, potatoes, and water and bring to a boil then reduce to a low simmer. Cover the pot and let simmer for about 40 minutes, stirring occasionally. (I cheated and cooked the chickpeas first in the pressure cooker and used those, not cooked in the liquid.)
- Add the grated tomatoes and tomato paste to the pot and stir in. Bring to a boil, then reduce to a low simmer for 15 minutes to blend that in.
- Stir in the broken spaghetti and parsley and let simmer until the spaghetti is tender. Here, the pasta is done, I used linguine, and the kitchen was smelling great!
- Ladle into bowls, garnish with parsley if desired, and serve.
Notes
Chicken wing sticks (the drumettes) cost about 66 Baht/kilo. The chickpeas, canned are 69 Baht. When I get dry chickpeas I will do a price comparison between canned and dry. For 6 servings, this is about 71 cents per serving.
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