Yassa Spice-Rubbed Grilled Chicken
Casamance's grilled chicken: bird steeped overnight in a tart mustardy onion marinade, grilled smoky and served back into its slow-cooked onion sauce.
Overview
Yassa is one of the foundational dishes of Senegalese cooking, born in the Casamance region in the south of the country and carried by the Wolof and Joola diaspora across West Africa and beyond. At its heart it is a study in three things: acidity, alliums and smoke. Chicken is rubbed with a spice mix and marinated for hours in lemon juice, Dijon mustard, garlic and a heap of sliced onions, then charred over fire so the marinade caramelises in patches on the skin. The onions, meanwhile, are cooked low and slow in the leftover marinade with a little stock until they collapse into a glossy, tangy sauce that is both sweet and sharp. It is not a fiercely spicy dish, though a Scotch bonnet usually rides along in the pot for backbone, and the flavour profile is closer to a French-North African pickle than to the chilli-heavy stews further east. Difficulty is moderate: the cooking itself is easy, but yassa rewards patience at two stages, the marinade and the onion reduction. Serve over plain white rice or attieke so the sauce has somewhere to go.
Ingredients
Chicken and marinade
- 1.2 kg bone-in chicken thighs and drumsticks (skin on)
- 4 yellow onions (large, about 700 g, thinly sliced)
- 120 ml fresh lemon juice (about 3 lemons)
- 3 tbsp Dijon mustard
- 6 garlic cloves (minced)
- 30 ml neutral oil
- 1 Scotch bonnet chilli (left whole, pierced once)
- 2 bay leaves
- 1 tbsp Dijon mustard (extra, for finishing)
Spice rub
- 2 tsp sweet paprika
- 1 tsp ground black pepper
- 1 tsp ground white pepper
- ½ tsp ground cumin
- 1 tsp salt
- ½ tsp dried thyme
To finish
- 250 ml chicken stock
- 30 ml neutral oil (for the pan)
- 1 tbsp Dijon mustard
- Salt to taste
- Steamed white rice (or attieke), to serve
Method
Stage 1 - Marinate
- Mix all the spice rub ingredients in a small bowl.
- Pat the chicken dry. Rub the spice mix all over each piece, working it under the skin where you can.
- In a large bowl, combine the sliced onions, lemon juice, Dijon mustard, garlic, oil, Scotch bonnet and bay leaves. Stir to coat the onions.
- Add the chicken, turn through the onions until every piece is buried, cover, and refrigerate at least 4 hours, ideally overnight.
Stage 2 - Grill the chicken
- Heat a charcoal grill, gas grill or a heavy cast-iron griddle to medium-high.
- Lift the chicken pieces out of the marinade, brushing off any onions clinging to them (reserve all the marinade and onions).
- Grill 6-8 minutes per side until the skin is charred in patches and the chicken is almost cooked through. It will finish in the sauce.
Stage 3 - Cook the onions
- Heat 30 ml oil in a wide heavy pan over medium heat.
- Tip in the reserved onions and all of the marinade liquid, including the Scotch bonnet and bay leaves.
- Cook 20-25 minutes, stirring often, until the onions are soft, glossy and golden and most of the liquid has reduced.
- Stir in the chicken stock and the extra tablespoon of Dijon. Bring to a gentle simmer.
Stage 4 - Bring it together
- Nestle the grilled chicken into the onions, spooning sauce over each piece.
- Cover and simmer 10-12 minutes until the chicken is cooked through and the sauce has thickened to a loose, jammy consistency.
- Taste and adjust salt. Remove the Scotch bonnet (or break it open if you want more heat).
- Serve over white rice or attieke with a generous spoonful of the onion sauce.
Notes
- Don't skip the long marinade: yassa's character is built overnight. Anything less than 4 hours and the lemon and mustard never reach the meat.
- Scotch bonnet whole, not chopped: piercing it gives perfume and a slow background heat without overwhelming the dish. Chop it only if you want a much hotter result.
- Char matters: the smoky edges from the grill are part of the flavour. If using a griddle indoors, get it properly hot first so you get colour, not steam.
- Onion volume: the recipe looks onion-heavy because it is. The onions are half the dish, not a garnish.
Storage
- Keeps 3 days refrigerated in a sealed container; the flavour deepens overnight.
- Reheats gently on the hob with a splash of water or stock to loosen the sauce.
- Freezes well for up to 2 months; defrost in the fridge before reheating.
More like this
Jerk Chicken
A wet jerk paste: scotch bonnet chillies, garlic, ginger, spring onions, thyme, allspice (whole or ground), brown sugar, soy sauce, lime, oil, salt and pepper, pureed in a blender. The chicken (bone-in skin-on thighs and drumsticks, or spatchcocked whole bird) marinates for 12 hours minimum. Slow-grilled over indirect heat with a pile of pimento wood chips or allspice berries on the coals for the signature smoke; alternatively, an oven-bake at 180°C with a final blast under the grill, supplemented with allspice in the marinade.
Gai Yang
Gai yang ("grilled chicken") is one of the cornerstones of Isaan cooking, the cuisine of north-eastern Thailand that has spread across the whole country and into Thai restaurants worldwide. The defining flavour is coriander root, an ingredient barely used in Western cooking but central to Thai marinades. Pounded in a granite mortar with garlic, white peppercorns and a pinch of salt, it forms an aromatic paste that's then mixed with fish sauce, oyster sauce and a touch of sugar. The chicken is butterflied (spatchcocked) so it lies flat on the grill, marinated for at least 4 hours, then cooked slowly over moderate charcoal. The proper Isaan technique is patient: 30 minutes or more, turning often, sometimes pressed flat between two bamboo splints, so the skin slowly crisps and the meat takes on smoke without burning. The flavour is savoury-funky from fish sauce, peppery-warm from white pepper, deeply garlic-and-herb from the paste, with no chilli in the marinade itself; heat comes from the dipping sauce. Difficulty is low for the home cook: a good mortar or a small food processor makes the paste in 2 minutes, butterflying a chicken is a single cut down the backbone, and any covered grill or kettle does the cooking. Eaten by hand with balls of sticky rice and dipped into nam jim jaew, the toasted-rice-and-tamarind dipping sauce.
Mafé
Bone-in beef or lamb is browned, then simmered with onions, garlic, tomato and stock. Smooth peanut butter is whisked in halfway and the stew thickens to a velvety coating. Chunks of cassava, sweet potato and cabbage cook in the sauce towards the end. Serve over plain steamed white rice.
Piri Piri Chicken
Piri-piri chicken is the dish that travelled from Mozambique to Portugal to the high street, and the original is still the best: a whole chicken spatchcocked flat, marinated overnight in a vivid red paste of bird's-eye chillies, garlic, paprika, lemon and olive oil, then grilled hard over charcoal until the skin is darkly blistered and the meat just-cooked through. The marinade itself takes five minutes in a blender. The bird wants a minimum of four hours in it, ideally overnight. A home broiler on max works if you do not have a barbecue, but the smoke from the coals is half the dish. Serve with a second bowl of the same marinade as a sauce, a green salad, and chips.