Confit Wambo Chicken

A few months ago I ate Wambo chicken for three days straight: six meals in total. I was in the North and with enough free time on hand, I was determined to get my head around this iconic, traditional dish.

I made an appointment with the chef, but she refused to part with her personal recipe. She even declined my promise of extensive media coverage and possible countrywide celebrity and fame.

But I did learn a few things about the dish, which I think is worth reflecting on. Thus far, I have established that:

The dish is known by not one, but quite a few names. Wambo chicken, roadrunner chicken, marathon chicken or athlete chicken are all different names for the same dish. All these names are inspired by the core ingredient, the chicken. Incidentally, the names also carry reference to the cooking time.

There is not one, but a thousand or possibly more recipes for this dish.

The most sought after Wambo chicken recipes share three common elements: A real free roaming, socially independent, omnivorous, werf hoender that has thick dense bones that do not bend or break – even when hit by a car or taxi; marula oil that is as brown and cloudy as the typical Namibian sandstorm; the chicken has to be boiled until soft and palatable and this, some of my sources insisted, could be as long as two or three hours. Wambo chicken is not fast food.

All remaining elements – the type of pot; the spice mix; additional aromatics etc. – are at the chef’s discretion. Very often, these are not a matter of choice. Cooks making Wambo chicken often make do with what they have got.

So I started thinking, just how would I cook my version of Wambo chicken?

The typical werf hoender is tough and it has almost no fat, but it has a lovely, intense chicken taste. As a result, the chicken is boiled long and hard to get it soft. This means the chicken is often very dry (especially the white meat) and most of the chicken flavour is in the sauce and not the chicken.

Almost all of the versions I tried had a thin tomato-and-onion-based sauce. It contained no herbs (fresh or dried), no additional aromatics (not even wild garlic or the local dried chilies) or additional vegetable content (eg carrots). All contained marula oil, and some contained a very small amount of butter as well.

Overall, I am more concerned with the chicken than the sauce.

For my experiment, I obtained one adult werf hoender from an aunt on a farm. Thin and tough as nails, she was. I also bought some cloudy marula oil from a very friendly lady at the Ongwediva market. She assured me, it was the real McCoy. I added a few bits and bobs to the ingredients table, and then it was time to cook.

It makes sense to boil meat or fowl in water if you are after the flavoured liquid as a soup or stock. Because boiling transfers flavour from the meat into the liquid, meat or fowl boiled for any prolonged period of time is dry and relatively flavourless. So I did not want to boil my chicken.

Cooking your Wambo chicken pieces sous vide* makes infinitely more sense. The relatively low temperature at which the chicken will be cooked will ensure that the meat remains moist, whilst the prolonged cooking time will make sure it is tender. So I portioned my werf hoender into quarters and put them in a vacuum bag. The marula oil is a key flavour component that I want to retain, so I added about a quarter cup of marula oil to each of the four bags with the chicken.

Now, given that werf hoenders have little or no fat of their own, I decided to boost the fatty chicken flavour even more by adding a table spoon of Schmaltz to each bag with chicken. Schmaltz is nothing but rendered animal fat (chicken or goose or pork) that is sold in local supermarkets specialising in traditional German ingredients. Just make sure you ask for chicken Schmaltz.

Next, the bags are vacuum sealed and put in a pot with water heated to precisely 65.5°C. It is now cooked for two to two-and-a-half hours, depending on the size of your chicken. Once cooked, open the bags, and if you like, use the liquid from the chicken as the base for your sauce. I made my sauce with this liquid, tinned plum tomatoes, tomato paste, garlic, thyme and oregano.

I wish I could claim I invented this technique for cooking tough meat and poultry, by I did not. The technique of cooking meats in loads of fat at very low temperatures is commonly known as confit, and is of course very French. Back in the old days, confit was used to preserve meats. The cooked meat would be added to glass containers and their cooking fat would simply be poured over. This would last for a few months in a cool room. Confit fruits were preserved in a similar manner but in concentrated sugar syrup (and now you know the origins of the Afrikaans word “konfyt” meaning jam).

Once your Wambo chicken is cooked, you could decide to store it or serve it immediately. If you choose the latter, prepare your sauce and sear the cooked chicken in a hot pan with a little more marula oil to colour the skin. Then add the chicken for a few minutes to the sauce just to absorb the flavour. Do not boil it. Done this way, the werf hoender becomes a thing of luxury and beauty and well worth its national iconic status. In my view, it is right up there with that timeless French bistro classic confit de canard. But that might just be my view. Let me know what you think.

*Last year, two Curious Kitchen columns dealt with sous vide cooking in more detail. If you want to refresh your understanding of sous vide, you can access those articles on The Curious Kitchen Blog (the-curious-kitchen.com).

• 1 chicken (preferably werf hoender), divided into quarters

• 1 cup marula oil

• 4 tablespoons Schmaltz

• 4 bay leaves

• 4 juniper berries

• 4 twigs fresh thyme

• Pre-heat a water bath to 65.5OC. Put each the four pieces of chicken in its own vacuum bag.

• Divide the herbs among the four bags and add a quarter cup oil and one tablespoon Schmaltz to each bag. Vacuum and seal the bags. Add them to the water bath and cook for two to two-and-a-half hours. If you are not going to serve the chicken immediately, place the bags in an ice bath to cool down.

• Once cooled, the bags can be refrigerated until needed. If you’re going to serve the chicken, add about one tablespoon of marula oil to a hot pan. Sear the chicken until the skin is golden brown and crispy. Add the chicken to your sauce and leave for about five to 10 minutes at a low simmer. Garnish with fresh basil and serve with mahangu porridge or mahangu sponge breads.

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