Kabsa (Arabic Chicken and Rice) + Video | Silk Road Recipes (2024)

Kabsa is a comforting, one pan chicken and rice dish with layers of flavorful Middle Eastern spices. I hope you’ll make this recipe for Saudi’s national dish; it’s fantastic!

Eating pork is forbidden by Muslim law, and because beef isn’t widely popular in the Middle East, chicken and lamb are a big part of their cuisine.

With popular regional dishes like Joojeh kabob, kafta, and koobideh, there are plenty of easy, flavorful and comforting chicken and lamb recipes to make and love.

But if you’re looking for one of the best comfort food recipes around the Arabian Peninsula, Saudi Arabia’s national dish has you covered.

Kabsa

Cuisine: Middle Eastern / Saudi Arabian

When you’re in the Middle East, there are some wonderful foods to be enjoyed. Because rice was traded often in those parts of the Silk Road, it is incorporated into many of the dishes, including this Arabic chicken and rice dish.

One Pot Chicken and Rice Recipe Video

To see the process from start to finish, watch the video in the recipe card at the bottom of this post. If you’ve never baked rice in the oven, you will love this method; you never have to worry about the rice boiling over!

Ingredient Notes and Substitutions

• Chicken– Although you can use any chicken pieces you’d like, you’ll save the most money by purchasing a whole chicken to cut up yourself. Packages of pre-cut pieces are always more expensive.

🎯 PRO TIP!
If you aren’t comfortable breaking down a chicken yourself, no worries! Most grocery stores and meat market butchers are happy to do this for you at no extra charge.

• Spices– Please don’t be intimidated by the long list of spices that are in kabsa. If you have most of the individual spices already on hand, that’s fantastic. Otherwise, there are a few brands of premade kabsa spice blend available. One by Zamouri is sold under the name Baharat spice blend.
  
• Dried Persian Limes – Also sold under the names brown limes or black limes, this ingredient adds a lot of tart flavor beyond what the fresh fruit offers. If you can find fresh Persian limes in your area, you can even make dried Persian limes yourself.
  
• Basmati Rice – Although many Middle Eastern recipes use short grain rice, this recipe is an exception. Long grain basmati cooks up beautifully in an oven, with less chance of clumping like shorter grain rices often do.
  
• Broth – You’ll notice that this recipe calls for 4 cups of hot water and a chicken bouillon cube. I can’t think of any reason why you couldn’t use 4 cups of chicken stock or broth instead.

  One benefit to using a broth cube is, unless you already have homemade chicken stock on hand, cubes are less expensive to buy than 4 cups of chicken stock would be.

• Shatta Sauce– I may be biased, but I think my recipe for shatta sauce is better than any Middle Eastern chile paste you can buy in a bottle!

  If you don’t want to make it and you don’t have any on hand, feel free to use any hot chile paste or sauce of your choice.

The remaining ingredients for making chicken kabsa are common vegetables and pantry staples like canned tomatoes, onions, fresh garlic, butter, etc.

Tips For Making Kabsa

1. Stir the rice once during cooking.
   About 45 minutes after the dish has been in the oven, you’ll want to remove the pan from the pan from the oven. Stirring the rice is important to ensure that it all cooks evenly, and it also helps prevent any from sticking to the bottom of the pan.
   
2. Let the meat rest before serving.
   Resting allows the juices in the meat to redistribute, so each bite will be juicy and tender.

FAQ