Chef critique

Tunisian Chicken & Butternut Stew

The recipe offers a flavorful, well-spiced profile with efficient workflow, but suffers from extreme oversalting of the vegetables and incorrect formatting of the preparation steps.

Score: 4/10

Suggested fixes

Reduce the salt in Step 4 for the onions and carrots to 3/4 teaspoon.
Reduce the salt on the squash in Step 2 to 1 1/2 teaspoons, and consider lowering the rice salt in Step 3 to 1/2 or 3/4 teaspoon so it balances better with the flavorful stew. Update the total salt in the ingredient list.
Convert the bulk vegetable prep bullet list in Step 2 into prose, or move the preparation instructions into the respective steps where the ingredients are cooked.
Remove the 175°F temperature check in Step 6, simply instructing the cook to simmer until the chicken is cooked through and the squash is tender.

Issues

high / flavor: The recipe is severely oversalted, using 7 1/2 teaspoons of Diamond Crystal kosher salt for two servings. In Step 4, adding 2 1/2 teaspoons of salt to just 10 ounces of onions and carrots results in over 2.5% salinity by weight, well above the 1% guideline. The squash in Step 2 is also slightly overseasoned with 2 teaspoons for 1 pound.
medium / clarity: Step 2 uses a bulleted list for general mise en place (squash, onion, carrots, tomatoes, garlic) that are cooked in later, separate steps. Bulleted lists should be reserved for mixtures of more than three ingredients placed exactly where they enter the action.
low / clarity: Step 6 instructs the cook to temp the bite-size pieces of chicken to 175°F. Probing small, individual chunks of chicken in a simmering stew is physically impractical; a 15-minute simmer is more than sufficient to cook them through safely and tenderize the meat.

Strengths

Plausible overall cooking time and efficient parallel execution with the rice.
Properly accounts for a 10-minute resting time after presalting the chicken.
Good utilization of spices and finishing acid to build a complex, balanced flavor profile.