Chicken thiébou — broken rice cooked in tomato-stained chicken stock with whole pieces of stuffed chicken. The Sunday-special form.
Adaptation of ceebu jën for inland regions where fresh river fish was hard to source. The Wolof «guinaar» means chicken; the form spread inland from Saint-Louis with the railroad to Thiès in the 1880s. Often called thiébou yassa when the chicken is yassa-marinated first.
Dakar restaurant Chez Loutcha (Plateau, since 1992) serves ceeb u guinaar Sunday lunch only; reservations needed by Friday. The chicken is always pintade (guinea fowl, Numida meleagris) in the Saint-Louis purist version, not commercial broiler.
Same red rice as thieboudienne, but the chicken pieces are bigger and richer than fish, the skin browned dark before braising. The rof paste (parsley-garlic-onion-chili) goes under the skin. Cabbage, carrot, eggplant arrayed the same way.
Whole chicken (1.5kg) jointed into 8, browned hard 8 min per side, then braised in tomato-onion-stock 35 min till cooked; removed, rice cooked in the same broth 25 min absorbing all liquid. The rof under-the-skin step is what differentiates it from a lazy chicken-thiéb.
Variations
Ceeb u guinaar standard (red, rof stuffed), thiébou yassa (chicken pre-marinated yassa-style), Casamance version with palm-oil rice, and the Gambian crossover that adds peanut paste at the end.
On the Palate
Where Ceeb u Guinaar sits in the Senegalese flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 6
How it's made
5 steps · 50 min active + 50 min waiting
- 115 min
Stuff 1 whole chicken with onion + garlic + parsley + salt + lime juice.
- 210 min
Brown chicken in oil all sides.
Watch outBrown the chicken hard and dry — a deep golden crust on every side is what gives the broth its color and depth later.
- 345 min
Simmer with tomato + onion + spices in 1.5 L water 45 min to flavor stock.
Watch outLet it simmer the full time until the broth turns deep red-brown and tastes rounded — this liquid becomes the rice's only seasoning.
- 425 min
Add 500 g broken rice; cook 25 min absorbing stock.
Watch outThe rice is done when it has drunk up nearly all the broth and the top looks dry with small steam holes — too wet and it turns to porridge.
- 55 min
Place chicken on rice; cover and rest 5 min before serving from platter.
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