Vermicelle Poulet
Overview
Vermicelle poulet is Senegalese celebration food that happens to be very easy to make, which is an unusual combination. Broken rice vermicelli is toasted in butter and steamed, and braised chicken in a mustard and onion sauce is served over it. That is the whole dish. It appears at weddings, baptisms and the gatherings that mark occasions, and it is found in the most modest Senegalese households and in the country's best restaurants without much changing between them. Its status comes from the vermicelli rather than the technique, since imported wheat and rice noodles carried a cost and a cachet that plain rice did not. The sauce is the Senegalese signature. Yellow mustard and onion cooked down together, sharpened with vinegar, is the same base that carries chicken yassa, and it is one of the most recognisable flavour combinations in the country's cooking. The mustard is not a French borrowing so much as a French ingredient absorbed completely into a Senegalese idiom. Thickened lightly with flour and spooned over toasted vermicelli, it makes a dish that looks like far more work than it is.
AFN Heritage Note
Vermicelle poulet belongs to the Senegalese celebration repertoire and is served at weddings and baptisms. Its mustard, onion and vinegar sauce is the same base used in chicken yassa, one of the defining flavour combinations of Senegalese cooking.
Ingredients
Directions
- 1
Heat a large pan with the butter over medium high heat and sauté the vermicelli lightly until it turns pale golden brown.
- 2
Add 2 cups of water, bring to a boil, cover and cook for 3 minutes.
- 3
Remove the vermicelli and set it aside.
- 4
In the same pan, heat the oil and add the chicken.
- 5
Mix the flour into cold water to make a slurry, then add it and all the remaining ingredients to the chicken.
- 6
Cover and simmer for 25 minutes, until the sauce has thickened.
- 7
Serve the chicken and its sauce over the vermicelli.
Africook’s Notes
- Toast the vermicelli properly before any liquid goes in. That nutty colour is what separates this from plain boiled noodles and it takes only a few minutes.
- Use the same pan throughout. The browned bits left by the vermicelli feed into the chicken sauce.
- Mix the flour into cold water before it goes in the pan. Adding dry flour to hot liquid gives lumps that will not blend out.
- Four onions for four chicken legs looks excessive and is not. They cook down into the body of the sauce.
- The dish is not gluten free as written, since the sauce is thickened with wheat flour. Rice vermicelli plus cornflour in place of the wheat flour makes it so.
Reviews
5 reviews
We don't really do vermicelli like this back home in Zim where it's mostly sadza, but I picked up the rice noodles from the Asian market in Luton town centre to try it out. Sautéing the noodles in butter until pale golden brown smelled amazing! Only giving 4 stars because chopping four large onions took me forever, though the sauce was really tasty.
Made this last night for my wife and kids. I was a bit confused by making a flour slurry with cold water to add straight in with the garlic, onions, and mustard mix, but the sauce thickened up nicely as the chicken legs simmered. Quick question though: should the pan be covered while the chicken cooks in the sauce?
abeg four large onions is not a typo people, that heavy onion base with the maggi and ground red pepper is what gives this dish the proper flavor! Couldn't find maggi cubes at Publix so I had to drive to the African shop in Decatur. That vinegar and mustard kick with the fried vermicelli was spot on.
i couldnt find the exact broken vermicelli rice noodles at my local Kroger so i just used regular angel hair pasta and broke it up by hand before frying in butter. worked like a charm sha! the mustard and vinegar onion sauce brought back serious memories. e sweet no be small thing.
That yellow mustard and vinegar combo with all those diced onions gave the chicken sauce such a nice tangy taste. I was worried browning the vermicelli in butter first would make it soggy when adding water, but 3 minutes covered was exact. My husband loved it o.