Musakhan (Palestinian Sumac Chicken with Taboon Flatbread and Onions) 🍽

Name: Musakhan (Palestinian Sumac Chicken with Taboon Flatbread and Onions)
Prep time: 28 min
Cook time: 42 min
Total time: 70 min
Yield: 2-4 servings
Cuisine: Palestinian
Ingredients: 1 whole chicken (~1.5 kg), jointed into 8 pieces, or 8 bone-in thighs; 4 large onions, halved and sliced into half-moons; 3 tbsp ground sumac, plus extra to finish; 1 cup extra-virgin olive oil (Palestinian producers are worth hunting); 4 sheets taboon or markouk flatbread (or Lebanese flatbread); 1 tsp allspice; 1 tsp cinnamon; salt and black pepper; 1 tbsp pine nuts or sliced almonds (optional, for toasting); Juice of 1/2 lemon

Palestine's national plate, and arguably the most poetic use of sumac in the world: chicken pieces slow-roasted under a mountain of onions pooled with olive oil and toasted sumac, then spooned — onions, dark ruby juice and all — over taboon flatbread that has been griddled crisp and layered with more of the same. The onion-sumac sauce (the dish's real protagonist) cooks long enough to collapse into a sweet-sour jam stained near-black by the sumac. Served at weddings, harvest tables and Friday lunches; every Ramallah grandmother has an opinion about how much extra oil belongs in it, and all of them are correct.

Levant Palestinian ⏱ 70 min Easy

Method

1

Rub chicken pieces with salt, pepper, allspice and cinnamon; rest 20 minutes while you prep.
2

Warm 3/4 cup olive oil in a wide roasting pan over medium-low. Add onions, a good pinch of salt, and spread them into an even bed. Cook 25-30 minutes, turning once or twice, until utterly soft and beginning to caramelize at the edges.
3

Sprinkle the sumac over the onions, stir the bottom layer gently so it stains everything deep burgundy, and cook 5 more minutes. Taste: it should be sweet-sour and savory at once.
4

Nestle chicken pieces into the onion bed, skin up. Pour remaining oil over everything. Roast at 190 C / 375 F for 40-45 minutes, spooning the dark onion-sumac juice over the chicken twice, until the thickest thigh runs clear.
5

Squeeze lemon over the pan juices; finish with a dusting of sumac. Toast pine nuts dry in a small pan.
6

Lay flatbread on a serving tray, brush lightly with olive oil and warm it (griddle or oven). Spread half the onion-sumac mixture over the bread.
7

Pile chicken on top, flood with the remaining onions and all the pan juice, scatter pine nuts and a final snow of sumac. Tear more bread for mopping. Eat with hands, at speed, surrounded.

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