What’s Yassa?

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Yassa is a West African dish made from chicken or fish that has been seasoned with lemon juice, spices and lots of onions. Basic yassas are simple to make and require only a few ingredients. Cooks with more resources at their disposal often augment the standard yassa with a variety of other vegetables and flavors. The dish is almost always served with rice.

Most food researchers believe that yassas first developed in Senegal, a country on the west coast of Africa. However, almost every country and culture in this region has a version of yassa that they claim as their own. Yassa’s basic ingredients make the dish accessible and easy to prepare, requiring no special skills or expensive components. It is a “common” food, but is nevertheless presented as a regional icon. Senegalese and West African restaurants around the world often feature yasa prominently on their menus.

There are two main ways to prepare the dish: one with chicken or fowl, called poulet yassa, and the other with fish, called poisson yassa. The most authentic preparations call for the meat to be caught and killed fresh, then marinated in lemon juice. The meat of many wild West African creatures is particularly tough, especially birds. Marinating in acidic liquids such as lemon juice often helps speed muscle breakdown, softening the meat and making it more palatable. Most yassa chicken dishes call for marinating the meat at least overnight, though fish is usually best left to sit for a few hours.

Lemons and onions often grow well and wild throughout Senegal and neighboring countries. This makes them good additions to yassas, as they are both easy to find and inexpensive. Yassas can be made with little more than sauteed onions and lemon beef with rice, usually with locally available spices added to taste. Mustard and mustard seeds are often considered a base flavoring.

Even with a minimalistic approach to ingredients, yassas tend to be quite spicy. It’s not uncommon for cooks to add dried chiles, cayenne powder, or other flavoring agents to the meat as it marinates, resulting in spicy fish or spicy poultry right from the start. Adding dry seasonings such as pepper flakes and grated herbs to the finished product is also popular.

Serving these marinated dishes with rice helps sustain them. The rice soaks up the juices from the meat and onion and helps the dish stretch farther and feed more people. Families often cook yassa as dinner one night, but serve it incrementally over rice over a number of days.

Depending on where the cooks are and what they have available, yassas can hold much more than lemons and onions. Carrots, cabbage and garlic are some of the most popular additional yassa ingredients. Sometimes these are braised and cooked alongside the meat, but they can also be added raw, just as a side dish would be.

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