Chicken Kabsa
am on a mission to find the greatest version of chicken and rice, if such even exists. We now travel to Saudi Arabia, where we experience chicken Kabsa. When doing my research on chicken and rice dishes around the world, this dish really stood out to me above the others. I loved how resourceful it is–we make a thick, spiced, tomatoey, broth from the chicken then use it to not only cook our rice but to glaze our chicken with before throwing it into the oven. I loved the use of whole spices toasted in ghee as the base of the entire dish–which also included dried limes, an ingredient I’ve only seen in Persian cuisine. I was excited to try kabsa and I was not let down in any way. We infuse ghee with whole spices like cinnamon, cardamom, and clove then we fry our onion in there with some garlic and ginger before throwing in dried limes, which is one of the main characteristics highlighted in kabsa. Tomato puree and tomato paste join the party and we cook it down with some more spices like turmeric, paprika, and coriander. In goes our half chicken and we want it to absorb all of those flavors before simmering it in water to get a luxurious, spiced, tomatoey broth. Similar to the hainanese chicken rice this broth our foundation to everything. We mix it with tomato paste and olive oil for the perfect glaze for our chicken as it finishes in the oven. While that goes, we use the rest of our broth as the jacuzzi for our rice. As we wait on those two, we make our topping–fried slivered almonds with golden raisins in ghee to give our dish life and texture. I first learned of this dish while researching what to make for this series and I was instantly excited to make it. It lived to my expectations and more–it was comforting and aromatic, and that topping so perfectly tied everything together. We have a new runner up with an 8.8/10.
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