How to boil Shaki Khanate-style chicken

Ingredients are very simple.

• Hard chicken, 1 or 2. Some halal butchers, food markets and even some supermarkets, like Tesco, can have hard chicken for boiling. If you will use standard chicken – everything will go wrong. Therefore, do remember that proper hard chicken is crucial for Shaki Khanate-style boiled chicken.
• Onion – 5 kg. Use cheapest one.
• Lemon – 1 fruit.
• Spices:
  • Cinnamon – 1 stick.
  • Cloves – 3-4 per chicken.
  • Black pepper corn – 1 tbsp.
  • Salt – to taste, 3/4 tbsp.

Clean all onion, skin off lemon. Also clean chicken from left over feathers and large fat bits.

Chop onion and lemon into parts, suitable for juicer.

Make juice from all onions and lemon.

Because onion is not very easy to process with standard juicer, at the end of processing, you will have a mixture of juice with very fine minced onion. Separate pure onion juice from the hard bits with fine mesh-sieve.

Place chicken into a suitable bowl and add all onion juice. Do not use very large bowl, because you will not cover all chicken with onion juice. If it is necessary, add up to 1 pint of water to cover chicken. Add cinnamon, cloves and black pepper. Boil under lid with very low heat. It will take between 2 and 3½ hours to cook it completely. Add salt after 2 hours of boiling. If the meat on legs start to separating from the bones – this is a good sign, that chicken is completely ready.

Serve chicken and enjoy. Unfortunately the stock is not very tasty, because all taste is concentrated in the chicken.