Cooking Bahrain’s National Dish: Machboos

Welcome to Grand Prix Gastronomy! This week, I’m cooking machboos, the national dish of Bahrain — and several other Arabian Peninsula countries.

This project is pretty simple. As a complement to each race weekend, I’ll be cooking the national dish of that race’s host country and sharing information about the process and that dish’s history along the way in an effort to grow more deeply immersed in the local culture from my own home.

What Is Machboos? 

Machboos (also called kabsa, majboos, makbus) is a spiced rice dish that hails from the Arabian Peninsula — which means it’s largely considered the national dish of four countries on the F1 schedule: Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and the United Arab Emirates. Don’t worry; we’re only cooking it once — I’ve selected other recipes for those regions (but if you really love machboos, there are plenty of regional variations you can make!).

Elizabeth Blackstock @eliz_blackstock

The final installments for Bahrain's #GrandPrixGastronomy is here! Watch as I chop, spice, and simmer my way through machboos to create an amazing, complex final product.

Basically, this is the ultimate one-pot dish for when you’re craving tons of incredible spices (black pepper, cloves, nutmeg) but aren’t super keen on making a mess. It’s kind of like biriyani.

This Week’s Recipe

This week, I selected a chicken machboos recipe from Daring Gourmet, which you can find here. I picked it largely because the author walked us through a really brief history of the dish and tried it out on a couple who were familiar with the flavors of Bahrain specifically; I’ve been trying to stay more authentic (read: not ultra Americanized), and this felt like a great recipe for that.

There are also a ton of variations based on region and meat preference (or lack thereof), so feel free to poke through the internet to find a recipe that more adequately suits your needs!

If you’re cooking along, you’ll have to go to Daring Gourmet’s website for the recipe; I didn’t develop my own, and I’m not copying someone else’s hard work here!

Cooking Machboos

I’ll let you consult with Daring Gourmet on the full cooking process, but since I’m cooking these recipes for the first time, I thought I’d give you a fairly general rundown of how it all went for me.

The main thing I want to note is that the prep for this recipe is the most tedious part. Yes, everything will simmer in the dutch oven for a good long while, but that’s fairly hands off. You will, however, spend a decent amount of time chopping, slicing, and dicing (at least if you're me and have deeply mediocre knife skills).

The second thing I need to note: get a goddamn spice grinder.

I don’t care what you use. An electric coffee grinder. A mortar and pestle. A grinder for “other" “”herbs.”" Something. I realized in the throes of my cooking process that I did not have one available, but I just assumed I could throw everything into my mini food processor and be fine, since I didn’t want to use my $75-coffee-grinder-that-I-got-on-sale-for-$40-and-actually-use-for-coffee-grinding-purposes for pungent spices. If you use a food processor, you will kinda-sorta be fine — but most bites you take will be greeted by the reedy bark of a half-chopped cinnamon stick or the pungent crunch of a black peppercorn. I loved the dish. I would have probably loved it more if I was not navigating a minefield of half-ground spice. 

The Daring Gourmet recipe starts with toasting and grinding the spices, followed by all your chopping; I usually start with the chopping. Part of that is because I was taking photos of all my ingredients in one place, but that’s also generally the way I do things because I do a lot of prep ahead of time. I find that I usually don’t have a ton of free time after work, so for dishes like this, I'll dedicate one evening to prep and the next to cooking. It’s not going to ruin anything!

All the cooking, though, takes place in a single dutch oven on the stove — just make sure you have a larger one (because I did not). You’ll brown up the chicken, remove it, then cook the onions, add your aromatic veggies, then toss in the spices, chicken, stock, and dried limes to simmer. Then you’ll add the rice (you’re definitely going to want to rinse and soak it for a while ahead of time; I was skeptical that this would do anything, but after I tasted the final dish, I was like, “oh, right, so this is exactly why recipes tell you this is a crucial step”) and fresh herbs. Cover that bad boy up, and before you know it, you’ll have an exceptional meal waiting for you.

Traditionally, you’d serve transfer the contents of the dutch oven to a large platter for serving, but I am merely one human being, so I scooped myself a single portion for dinner and then portioned out the rest as leftovers. I also am unclear if I perhaps erred somewhere along the way, because most photos show a pile of rice topped with whole pieces of chicken; my chicken did not hold up to any sort of gentle scooping action, instead falling right off the bone. I couldn’t really care too much about that, because it was still amazing.

To be fully authentic, sprinkle your dish with a bit of rosewater before you eat it. I’m really not a big “rose" person when it comes to anything that goes beyond “being a pretty looking flower," be that its flavor or its smell, but just a light sprinkling was nice. It has a more delicate aroma than the intense spices used in this dish, so it rounds out all the flavors, and a light sprinkling won’t be overpowering. (That being said, I never added it to my leftovers, and I honestly didn’t really miss it.) 

So, What’s the Verdict?

I’ll be honest — while I was pretty excited to try machboos, I was also a little nervous. I probably should have tried out my recording setup with a different meal, but I decided I was just going to send it and dive right in. Nothing says “Elizabeth Blackstock” quite like doing nine totally unfamiliar things all at once because send it.

I think the biggest measure of success for a meal is whether or not you’d make it again because, even if you’d do it a little differently, you at least enjoyed the basic tenets of the recipe. 

I would gladly make machboos again.

There are definitely things I’d change. First of all, I would use a goddamn spice grinder (never fear, reader, for I have acquired one since this debacle). I’d also cut down the recipe, since I ate machboos leftovers for like a solid week (sidenote: the leftovers were fucking amazing because the spices had more time to mingle) and still have some hiding in my freezer. I’d also probably cook my chicken pieces in the oven, since my dutch oven is too damn small to fit a considerable amount of pieces, and frying both made a mess and also left a lot of char residue in the bottom of the pan. 

All things considered though, I was really stoked for this first dish, and I was glad it came out well (i.e.: I didn’t totally screw up and have to remake it in order to share my results with the class). I’m actually really excited to find more ways to use loomi, the creepy black dried limes you add to the recipe. 

Since this was my first dish, I didn’t come too prepared with any ideas for sides, drinks, or other serving suggestions. I did read that this is a great meal to serve with pickled vegetables. I guarantee that serving suggestion did not mean “literal pickles and pickled ginger,” but those were the only two pickled things I had in the fridge. Mainly what you’re looking for is the fresh bite of vinegar to help cut through the spices. 

Let’s Chat!

If you cooked machboos, or if you have any questions about Grand Prix Gastronomy, use the tag #GrandPrixGastronomy on social media, or leave me a comment. Food is all about community, after all!

That being said, I want to answer a few of the Qs that have come in since I announced the project:

I live on the West Coast; when should I cook these dishes?

Personally, my answer is: Whenever suits you best! Obviously I’ve been cooking a lot of these dishes well ahead of time, but if I were following along, I’d probably put them together on the Friday or Saturday of the Grand Prix. That way, I’m still enjoying the local flavor within the race weekend, but I’m also not trying to scramble on Sunday morning (or Sunday evening).

What do I do with all the leftover spices?

If you, like me, ordered a formidable shitload of spices to put together the toasted spice blend, then you’re probably looking at a lot of leftovers. If you’re going to keep cooking along with me, keep those bad boys tucked away: We’ll be using most of them again. If you liked the flavors those spices imparted, you’ll also have about five years of leeway to use up the whole, unground spices. If you weren’t a fan or just don’t see yourself using up that much spice, grit your teeth and hit up your town’s local Facebook page or Nextdoor; I bet there’s someone out there who would love the leftovers!

Can I replace X with Y?

I am not a full-blown chef, and there’s a good chance I’m not intimately familiar with whatever the dish of the week is, so I won’t presume I can answer some of these questions. Recipes, though, are generally just guidelines to point you in the right direction with a handful of suggestions. If you don’t like cilantro, replace it with parsley. If you like garlic but the recipe doesn’t call for it — fuck it: add the garlic. No one is stopping you! 

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Next up: Saudi Arabia!