5 medium carrots or 3 cups, sliced 1/4-inch thick on bias
4 cloves garlic, mashed
1-inch peeled ginger
1 1/2 cups chopped tomatoes (fresh or canned)
6 cups chicken stock or other broth, divided
2 ounces fresh thyme leaves
1 habenero, pierced with a knife or fork
1 cup smooth natural peanut butter
2 tablespoons tomato paste
1/2 cup roasted unsalted peanuts, chopped for garnish
Preparation
Heat 2 tablespoons oil in a large saute pan. Season chicken pieces with salt and pepper and brown in the hot pan, then remove chicken from pan and set aside. Drain off excess fat.
Add butter and saute onions for five minutes or until soft.
Add carrots (and any additional vegetables*), garlic, ginger and tomatoes.
Add 4 cups of hot chicken stock, thyme and habenero.
In a separate bowl, whisk peanut butter and tomato paste into remaining 2 cups of stock and add to the pan.
Add the chicken back to the pan. Bring to boil, then simmer for 2 to 2 1/2 hours or until the chicken falls from the bones.
Season with salt and pepper to taste.
Can be served with rice, potatoes or noodles.
*Optional vegetables to add: eggplant, okra, sweet potatoes, pumpkin, cabbage, turnips, or bell peppers.
Ceru notes: I just use any peanut butter, and if it’s a crunchy one, I’ll skip the peanut garnish.
This is one of those recipes that’s kind of…vague about the chicken. You can approach this in a lot of ways. I strongly recommend using all dark meat chicken for this, since white meat does not hold up to extended cooking times. Boneless chicken thighs are easy to find, and you’d probably want approx. 3 pounds of that, although most stew recipes are forgiving for a little bit of variation in the proportions. (If you use skinless chicken parts, you are not going to have any excess fat to drain off, btw.) Skin-on, bone-in chicken thighs will produce even tastier meat, but you’ll have to decide how to handle the skins and and bones—just leave them in OR remove the skins from the thighs and discard (no!) OR save the skins for stock (if you think chicken fat in chicken stock is a good thing, which I do) OR, my favorite, fry the skins in their own fat until they’re crispy and delicious, drain them on paper towels, and lightly sprinkle them with salt while they’re still hot, and fight off your family members about who gets to eat these.
If you do bone-in chicken, regardless of what you do with the skins: falling-off-the-bone meat means falling off the bone AND the occasional lil knuckle of free-floating cartilage in the stew. If you would prefer not to have the bones/cartilage in the stew come serving time, I recommend, as with a lot of these kinds of stews and soups, fishing out the whole chicken pieces at the end of cooking, letting them cool until they’re safe to handle, and removing the meat from the bones (it will be very easy) and adding it back into the stew. YMMV.
You can substitute dried chili flakes or jalapeños for the habanero, depending on your heat tolerance (and with the understanding that most jalapeños these days are not very hot). I would recommend including it unless you are very heat-averse, though—this is a rich stew, and I think it benefits a lot from the spicy kick against the peanut butter.
