Skillet Herb Chicken with Lentils and Dill Skyr
Strips of chicken breast browned with turmeric and onion, then finished with three fistfuls of parsley, cilantro, and dill wilted down over lentils, with cold dill skyr spooned on at the table.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
I built this on a Tuesday when I wanted the taste of a long-simmered Persian herb stew and had less than half an hour to get dinner on the table. The trick turned out to be the herbs. In the slow version they cook for hours until they go almost black and sweet, but a very hot pan and a very large quantity of chopped parsley, cilantro, and dill gets you a surprising distance in ninety seconds. The color is different, brighter and more alive, and the flavor is still unmistakably that green, faintly bitter, deeply savory thing I was after.
Eating it is a study in temperature. The skillet comes to the table steaming, the chicken strips still sizzling faintly at the edges where the turmeric caught, the lentils soft and coated in lemon and pan juices. Then the skyr goes on cold, straight from the refrigerator, stirred with the reserved dill and nothing else. Where the two meet you get a streak that is neither hot nor cold, and that is the best bite in the bowl. The walnuts and sesame seeds go over last, so they stay crisp and give every forkful something to break against.
This belongs on a weeknight when the refrigerator has a sad half-bunch of three different herbs in it and you want to use all of them at once. It is a one-skillet dinner with a bowl of sauce beside it, which means one pan to wash. I make it most often in early spring, when herbs are cheap and good and the weather has not quite decided what it is doing, but it is honestly a year-round dinner in my house and my kids eat it without argument as long as the lemon wedges are on the table.
Ingredients
- 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut across the grain into 1/2-inch strips
- 2 tbsp olive oil, divided
- 1 large yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced
- 4 garlic cloves, thinly sliced
- 1 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
- 1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
- 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
- 2 cups cooked brown lentils, drained and rinsed
- 1 1/2 cups flat-leaf parsley leaves and thin stems, chopped
- 1 cup cilantro leaves and thin stems, chopped
- 3/4 cup dill fronds, chopped, divided
- 3 tbsp lemon juice, from 1 large lemon, plus wedges for the table
- 1 1/3 cups plain skyr
- 1/3 cup walnuts, chopped
- 3 tbsp sesame seeds
Instructions
- Chop the herbs first: Wash and dry the parsley, cilantro, and dill well, then chop them together on one board, thin stems included, so you have one big mound. Set aside a generous 2 tbsp of the dill for the sauce. Wet herbs steam rather than wilt, so give them a real spin in a salad spinner or a firm press between two towels.
- Make the dill skyr: Stir the skyr with the reserved dill, 1 tbsp of the lemon juice, and a pinch of salt in a small bowl. Keep it in the refrigerator until the moment you serve. It should be thick enough to hold the mark of the spoon, and if yours is stiff, loosen it with a teaspoon of cold water rather than oil.
- Brown the chicken: Pat the chicken strips dry and toss them with the turmeric, black pepper, and salt. Heat 1 tbsp of the olive oil in a 12-inch skillet over medium-high until it shimmers, add the chicken in one layer, and leave it alone for 2 minutes so the underside turns deep gold. Turn and cook 2 minutes more, until just firm and opaque through, then move it to a plate.
- Soften the onion and garlic: Add the remaining 1 tbsp oil to the pan with the onion and cook for 4 to 5 minutes over medium heat, scraping up the turmeric stuck to the bottom, until the slices are limp and edged with brown. Add the garlic and cook 30 seconds more, just until it smells sweet rather than sharp.
- Wilt the herbs and warm the lentils: Turn the heat to high and add the whole mound of chopped herbs at once. Toss constantly for 60 to 90 seconds, until they collapse to a fraction of their volume and the pan smells green and slightly bitter. Stir in the lentils and the remaining 2 tbsp lemon juice, and cook 2 minutes more until everything is hot through.
- Bring it together: Return the chicken and any juices from the plate, toss once, and take the pan off the burner. Toast the walnuts and sesame seeds in a dry small pan for 2 minutes while the skillet rests, shaking often, until the sesame goes pale gold and smells nutty. Scatter them over and serve with the cold dill skyr and lemon wedges.
Variations
- Dried lime: Pierce a dried Persian lime twice and simmer it in the pan with the lentils, then fish it out before serving for the sour, faintly smoky note the slow-cooked version is known for.
- Ground chicken: Use a pound of ground chicken browned hard and broken into craggy pieces, which turns the dish into something closer to a hash and takes about the same time.
- Kidney beans in place of the lentils: Swap in two cups of drained kidney beans for a rounder, softer bowl that sits even closer to the traditional stew.
- More green: Add three big handfuls of chopped collard greens or kale to the pan two minutes before the herbs, so they have time to soften.
- Sour cherry finish: Scatter a small handful of dried sour cherries or cranberries over the top with the walnuts for little bursts of sourness against the herbs.
Storage & Leftovers
The skillet keeps four days in a sealed container in the refrigerator, and the herbs hold their color better than you would expect because they were only in the heat for a minute. Store the dill skyr in its own covered bowl. Keeping the two apart is the whole trick, since sauce stirred through hot lentils overnight turns the leftovers watery and pale.
Reheat the chicken and lentils in a skillet over medium with a splash of water, three or four minutes, stirring once or twice. The microwave works and is faster, but the herbs go a duller green. Add the cold skyr and a fresh squeeze of lemon after reheating, never before, and toast a few more sesame seeds if you want the crunch back.
The chicken and lentil base freezes for up to three months in flat sealed portions. Do not freeze the skyr, which separates and turns grainy on thawing. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator, warm it in a pan, and make a fresh spoonful of sauce, which takes about one minute and is worth doing properly.
Notes & Tips
- Buy more herbs than feels sensible: Two and a half cups of chopped herbs cooks down to about half a cup. If the mound on your board looks reasonable, it is not enough, and the dish will taste like chicken and lentils with parsley on it.
- Dry the herbs properly: Water is the enemy here. Damp herbs drop the pan temperature and stew into a khaki mush rather than wilting bright and dark. Spin them, then spread them on a towel while you cut the chicken.
- Bloom the turmeric on the meat: Tossing the turmeric with the chicken rather than adding it to the pan later puts it in direct contact with hot oil, which is what turns it from dusty to fragrant and gives the strips their color.
- Keep the sauce cold: Skyr spooned on warm goes slack and loses its tang. Straight from the refrigerator onto a hot skillet is the contrast the whole dish is built around.
- Toast the seeds separately: Sesame seeds thrown into the main pan disappear into the lentils and go soft. Two minutes in a dry pan of their own, then scattered at the last second, and you can hear them.
- Lemon twice: Some goes into the pan with the lentils and some into the sauce, and wedges go on the table. Acid fades fast against warm starch, so the third round is not redundant.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- The chicken, the lentils, and the skyr split the work three ways here. The chicken strips give the bowl its protein and its savory backbone, the lentils bring the fiber and the soft body that carries the lemon, and the cold skyr on top adds both calcium and another round of protein in a form that tastes like a sauce rather than a supplement.
- Brown lentils are one of the quiet workhorses of a weeknight. They hold their shape, they soak up whatever acid you give them, and they carry plant iron along with a lot of fiber, which is why two cups of them turn a plate of chicken and herbs into an actual dinner.
- Parsley, cilantro, and dill go in by the cupful rather than the pinch, and at that quantity they stop being a garnish. Dill in particular brings calcium and a real amount of iron, and its faint anise sweetness is what makes this taste Persian rather than simply green.
- Skyr is strained until it is thick and close-grained, which concentrates the protein and the calcium into every spoonful. Stirred with dill and lemon and left cold, it does the job of a cream sauce while tasting sharp and clean against the turmeric.
- Toasted sesame seeds and walnuts go on at the very end for crunch, and they are quietly carrying a good deal of the calcium in the bowl along with the walnuts' omega-3 fats. Toasting is not optional, since it is what wakes up the oils and makes three tablespoons taste like more.
- As you eat, notice the moment the cold sauce meets the hot lentils and how the lemon keeps lifting the herbs back up, and let the last few bites be slow ones rather than the fastest of the meal.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use chicken thighs?
You can, and they stay juicier, though the pan will be richer and the herbs will taste less bright against them. Cut boneless thighs into the same 1/2-inch strips, give them an extra minute per side, and cook them through to 175°F. Drain off any fat in the pan before the onion goes in so the herbs do not go greasy.
Do I have to use all three herbs?
The parsley is the backbone and I would not skip it, but the other two are movable. Cilantro and dill in any ratio work, and if cilantro tastes like soap to you, use all parsley and dill and add a handful of chopped scallion greens. What matters is the total volume, which should look like far too much herb before it hits the pan.
Can I make this with dried lentils?
Yes, if you start them first. Brown or French green lentils take about 22 minutes to cook from dry, which puts the recipe past the half hour mark, so I use canned or a cooked pouch on a weeknight and dried on a Sunday. Cook them in plain water, salt them at the end, and drain them well so the skillet does not go soupy.
My skyr is too tart. What do I do?
Grate in a little garlic and add another pinch of salt, which rounds it out more effectively than sweetening does. A tablespoon of cold water and an extra spoonful of chopped dill also soften the edge. Some brands are considerably sharper than others, so taste yours before you decide how much lemon goes into the sauce.