The Gulf and Arabia · Volume 06, The Khaleeji Pearling and Bedouin Coast
Kabsa / Machboos
The Gulf coast and Najd (contested)
Illustration
- Time
- 2 hours
- Researched
- 3 sources cited
The peninsula's rice-and-meat centrepiece, claimed by every country in the Gulf and, by its own Saudi food writers' honest disagreement, not reliably traceable to any one of them.
As tradition built it
Serves 4 to 6. Around 2 hours.
Ingredients
Chicken and stock
- 1 whole chicken, jointed into 4 pieces
- 2 large onions, finely chopped
- 4 cloves garlic, minced
- 1 tsp fresh grated ginger
- 2 medium tomatoes, diced
- 2 tbsp vegetable oil or ghee
- 1 tsp baharat
- 1 tsp Kuwaiti bizar
- ½ tsp turmeric
- 4 whole cardamom pods
- 4 whole cloves
- 2 cinnamon sticks
- 2 dried loomi
- to taste salt
- to taste black pepper
- to cover hot water
Rice
- 3 cups basmati rice, washed until clear, soaked 20 to 30 minutes, drained
- 4 cups strained chicken stock, reserved from above
- 1 small onion, diced
- 1 pinch saffron, soaked in ¼ cup rosewater
- 1 tsp oil
- to taste salt
Garnish
- 1 large onion, thinly sliced and fried golden
- ½ cup cooked, crushed chickpeas
- ¼ cup raisins
- ½ tsp mixed spice
- a pinch turmeric
- a small handful fried almonds and pine nuts
- to taste parsley
Method
- Brown the onion in ghee, add the garlic and ginger and cook 1 minute, then add the cardamom pods, cloves and cinnamon sticks and loomi, followed by the chicken, browning on all sides.
- Season with the baharat, Kuwaiti bizar and turmeric, add the tomatoes, cover with hot water, season, and simmer covered 45 to 60 minutes until the chicken is cooked through.
- Remove the chicken, strain and reserve the stock. Brush the chicken with oil and a little tomato paste and roast until golden and crisp.
- Sauté the diced onion in the oil until soft, add the drained rice and sauté briefly, add the reserved stock to roughly 1cm above the rice, add the saffron-rosewater, bring to the boil until surface holes appear and most of the liquid is absorbed, then cover tightly and steam on the lowest possible heat 20 to 25 minutes.
- Fry the sliced onion until deep gold, add the chickpeas and raisins, cook 2 minutes, season with the spice and turmeric.
- Plate the rice, top with the roasted chicken, scatter the onion-chickpea-raisin mixture and the fried nuts and parsley over the top. Serve with a light tomato sauce and yoghurt.
Notes
The recipe below is sourced to a Kuwaiti coastal majboos, because no equally detailed, quantified recipe specifically credited to Najd could be located; the dish's exact geography is an open question.
A genuinely attributed, unadjudicated country difference. Bahraini majboos is described as more often using sliced chicken breast rather than a whole jointed bird, its spices cooked with the meat in one pot before the rice joins it directly, garnished simply with almonds and parsley; Kuwaiti majboos, the version above, more typically boils the chicken separately with vinegar and lemon before oven-roasting it gold, and garnishes more elaborately, sometimes finished with a smoked note from burning charcoal and oil briefly over the finished rice. Neither we nor the sources adjudicate which is prior.
What a modern chef changes
A clear stock, a controlled steam
Rung 1
Method
- Season the chicken thighs with the same whole-spice mixture and loomi, then cook sous vide at 68°C for 4 hours, keeping the meat and its liquid in one bag so nothing is lost to evaporation.
- Strain the released cooking liquid through a chinois before using it to steam the rice, giving a genuinely clear, unclouded stock rather than one carrying spent aromatics.
- Crisp the chicken skin under a very hot grill or with a Big Green Egg's direct heat just before serving, so the sous vide bag's precision never costs the dish its roasted, charred surface.