Shabbat Recipe: Yemenite Step Honey Rosemary Chicken

Just in case you have no time to cook for Shabbat, here is my very favorite recipe that takes about half an hour TOTAL work time and cook time.

The Yemenite Step was a fabulous restaurant on Yoel Solomon in Jerusalem, just off the midrachov. It had been closed for some time, and I don't think it has reopened, so really this is their honey rosemary chicken of blessed memory. I discovered the Yemenite Step in a search for date-worthy restaurants during my junior year of college at Hebrew U, and logged many hours there with my then unrequited love, now my husband. This chicken has special memories for me. And I have cooked it a zillion times, getting raves each time.

In the dorms at Hebrew U, there weren't any ovens, so all chicken had to be pan fried. Hence, this recipe, perfected in the Reznick dorms, and with a very forgiving procedure.


Honey (8-10 oz or so, or whatever you have left in the bottle)
Fresh rosemary (sprigs, torn off a bush near a dorm because it grows like weeds in Israel--oh wait, you may have to go to the grocery store)
Some olive oil (depending on how much you like to use for cooking, this can be done with Pam too)
About 8 chicken breasts (preferably from Machane Yehudah--just kidding)

Tomatoes and Cucumbers


Dice the chicken breast into smallish pieces.
Heat up a frying pan with some olive oil in it.
Put in the chicken and fry it up a bit.
After a minute or two, when the chicken is losing its' translucency, add some honey, maybe 3 tbsp or a short pour.
Strip a full sprig of rosemary and add the leaves to the liquid at the bottom of the pan,
Keep stirfrying the chicken in the oil/honey mixture.
Keep pouring on the honey.
Cook until it's finished. You may want to cut open a larger piece of chicken to check for done-ness.

Garnish with more sprigs of rosemary and tomatoes and cucumbers in slices.

Obviously, you can scale back the ingredients if you want to make fewer chicken breasts for fewer people. Or increase if you're having a ton of company.

I imagine this would taste nice with some rice, or better, mallawach (but that would require a lot more work).

Shabbat shalom!


Here's a link to an article from the New York Times that has a description of the Yemenite Step.