Walnut and Pomegranate Chicken over Cold Skyr
Chicken breast browned with cinnamon and turmeric in a pan thickened with toasted ground walnuts, kale wilted through it, pomegranate seeds scattered over, and cold garlic skyr spooned underneath.
Why You'll Love This Recipe
The Persian stew this comes from cooks for hours, and the walnuts are the reason. Ground and simmered slowly, they give up their oil and turn the pot dark, thick, and faintly bitter under all that sourness. I wanted that flavor on a weeknight, so I moved the walnuts to the front of the recipe and toasted them hard in the dry pan before anything else went in. Three minutes of real heat does a surprising share of what three hours does, and grinding them coarse rather than smooth means you still get texture rather than only body.
It eats sweet, sour, and savory all at once, which is a combination Persian cooking is better at than almost anyone. The cinnamon and the onion make the sweet part, the pomegranate seeds and lemon make the sour, and the toasted walnuts sit underneath holding the whole thing together. Kale goes in near the end and keeps a little chew, which the dish needs, since everything else is soft. Then the cold garlic skyr goes on the plate first and the hot skillet lands on top of it, so the sauce warms only where the two touch.
I make this in late autumn when pomegranates are piled up at the store and I want something that tastes like it took all day. It is a good dinner for company because it looks far more elaborate than it is, and because most of the work is chopping. If you are cooking for one or two, the walnut base holds for a week in the refrigerator, so you can brown a piece of chicken on a Wednesday and have most of the dish already made.
Ingredients
- 1 lb boneless, skinless chicken breast, cut into 3/4-inch pieces
- 1 cup walnuts
- 2 tbsp olive oil, divided
- 1 large yellow onion, halved and thinly sliced
- 4 garlic cloves, 3 sliced and 1 grated for the sauce
- 1 1/4 tsp ground cinnamon
- 1 1/2 tsp ground turmeric
- 1/2 tsp coarsely ground black pepper
- 1/2 tsp fine sea salt
- 1 large bunch lacinato kale (about 9 oz), stemmed and torn into wide pieces
- 2 tbsp lemon juice, from 1 lemon
- 1 cup pomegranate seeds, from 1 pomegranate
- 1 1/3 cups plain skyr
- 1/3 cup mint leaves, torn
- 1 cup flat-leaf parsley leaves, roughly chopped
Instructions
- Toast and grind the walnuts: Put the walnuts in a dry 12-inch skillet over medium heat and toast for 3 to 4 minutes, shaking the pan often, until they smell nutty and the cut faces have gone one shade darker. Tip them onto a board, let them cool for a minute, then chop them coarsely, or pulse in a food processor to something between gravel and sand. Do not take them all the way to a paste, because the sauce needs some grit left in it to taste like walnuts rather than gravy.
- Stir the garlic skyr: Grate 1 garlic clove into the skyr with 1 tbsp of the lemon juice and a pinch of salt, stir well, and put the bowl back in the refrigerator. Grated garlic gets stronger as it sits, so if you are sensitive to it, make this last rather than first.
- Brown the chicken: Toss the chicken pieces with the turmeric, cinnamon, black pepper, and salt. Heat 1 tbsp of the olive oil in the same skillet over medium-high, add the chicken in one layer, and leave it undisturbed for 2 to 3 minutes until the underside is deep gold. Turn and cook 2 minutes more, until firm and opaque through, then lift it to a plate.
- Build the walnut base: Add the remaining 1 tbsp oil and the sliced onion to the pan and cook over medium for 5 minutes, until soft and browning at the edges. Add the sliced garlic for 30 seconds, then the ground walnuts and 1/2 cup water. Stir and let it bubble for 2 minutes, until it thickens into a loose, glossy paste that coats the back of a spoon, which is the oil coming out of the walnuts and binding with the water.
- Wilt the kale: Add the torn kale a handful at a time with another splash of water if the pan looks dry, turning it through the walnut base for 3 to 4 minutes until the leaves are deep green and tender but not limp. Stir in the remaining 1 tbsp lemon juice.
- Serve it over the cold sauce: Return the chicken and any juices, toss for a minute to warm through, and taste for sourness, adding more lemon if it needs it. Spread the cold garlic skyr across four shallow bowls, spoon the hot skillet over the middle of each, and scatter the pomegranate seeds, mint, and parsley over the top.
Variations
- Squash in the pan: Add a cup of small-diced butternut squash with the onion for a sweeter, more autumnal version that needs about five extra minutes.
- Ground turkey: Brown a pound of ground turkey in place of the breast pieces, breaking it into craggy bits, which turns this into something you can pile on greens.
- Herb-heavy: Double the parsley and add a cup of chopped cilantro at the end for a greener, sharper plate.
- Warmer spice: Add a quarter teaspoon of ground cloves with the cinnamon for the deeper, almost medicinal warmth some Persian cooks prefer.
- Chickpeas: Stir a drained can of chickpeas into the walnut base with the kale to stretch the pan further.
Storage & Leftovers
The chicken and walnut base keep four days in a sealed container in the refrigerator, and the flavor deepens overnight the way most walnut sauces do. Store the skyr separately and add the pomegranate seeds and herbs only at the moment you serve, since both go dull and soft once they sit in a warm sauce.
Reheat gently in a skillet over medium-low with a splash of water, four to five minutes, stirring now and then. Ground walnuts tighten as they cool and will look claggy straight from the refrigerator, which the water fixes. Take it off the heat before it bubbles hard, since a fast boil can make the sauce taste bitter.
The base without the kale freezes for up to three months in flat sealed portions. Thaw overnight in the refrigerator, warm it in a pan with water, and add fresh greens and a fresh spoonful of skyr. Pomegranate seeds also freeze well on a tray and can go on straight from the freezer, where they turn into little sour beads.
Notes & Tips
- Toast the walnuts before anything else: The dry pan step takes three minutes and is the difference between a sauce that tastes deep and one that tastes like ground nuts in water. Do it first, while the pan is clean, and use the same skillet afterward.
- Grind coarse, not smooth: A food processor will take walnuts to butter in about fifteen seconds. Pulse in short bursts and stop while you can still see individual pieces, since the texture is half of what makes this dish interesting.
- Keep the heat low once the nuts are in: Walnut oil turns bitter over high heat. A lazy bubble is what you want, and if the pan starts spitting, add water and pull it down.
- Season for sourness at the end: Pomegranates vary enormously from sweet to face-puckering. Taste the finished pan and add lemon by the teaspoon until it makes you sit up.
- Deseed the pomegranate underwater: Halve it, submerge it in a bowl of water, and break the seeds out with your thumbs. They sink, the white pith floats, and your shirt survives.
- Put the sauce down first: Skyr spread across the bowl before the hot food goes on stays cold in the places it matters. Spooned on top, it slides off and warms through in seconds.
Nutrition & Mindful Eating
- The chicken, the walnuts, and the cold skyr are the three things doing the work in this bowl. The chicken carries the protein, the ground walnuts give the sauce its body and most of its richness, and the skyr underneath adds calcium along with another round of protein while keeping everything tasting bright.
- Walnuts are the only nut that carries a meaningful amount of plant omega-3 fat, and toasting them concentrates the flavor so a cup of them can thicken a whole pan. Ground into the sauce they bring fiber as well, which is unusual in something that eats this richly.
- Kale torn into wide pieces holds its shape in a heavy sauce and quietly contributes calcium of its own, on top of the vitamin K and the mild bitterness that keeps the cinnamon and the onion from tipping the dish toward sweet.
- Pomegranate seeds go on cold and unheated, so their sourness stays sharp and their polyphenols, the compounds behind that deep red color, arrive intact. They are also the reason this dish tastes finished rather than heavy.
- Cinnamon, turmeric, and black pepper are a small amount of powder doing a large amount of flavor work, and turmeric in particular brings iron along with the color it gives the chicken. The pepper is there for taste and also helps the turmeric along.
- As you eat, look for the bites where a pomegranate seed bursts against the walnut sauce and the cold skyr at the same time, and let that be a reason to put the fork down between mouthfuls.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I use pomegranate molasses?
Yes, and it is the traditional sourness in this dish. Stir 1 tbsp into the walnut base along with the water, then cut the lemon juice in the pan back to a teaspoon and taste. It makes the sauce darker and rounder, and you will still want the fresh seeds on top for the burst.
My sauce went grainy. What happened?
Almost always the walnuts were ground too fine and then cooked too hard. A coarse grind holds together better, and the pan should barely bubble once the nuts go in. Adding the water in two stages rather than all at once also helps the sauce come together smooth.
Can I use chicken thighs?
You can, and they suit the sweetness of this sauce well. Cut boneless thighs into the same 3/4-inch pieces, give them an extra two minutes, and cook them to 175°F. Pour off any fat that collects before the onion goes in, since the walnuts bring plenty of richness on their own.
What if I cannot find a good pomegranate?
Buy the seeds already picked, which most stores carry in the refrigerated case from October through January, or use a handful of halved red grapes and an extra squeeze of lemon. The point is small bursts of sour fruit against the walnuts, and more than one thing does that job.