Hey guys! Welcome back to Dede’s Mediterranean Kitchen. Today, I’m going to be making a dish that’s traditionally Mediterranean. It’s actually a golf dish. It’s called Kabsa. Now, this involves rice, some vegetables and either lamb or chicken. If you don’t like lamb or you don’t like chicken, you can use beef, you can use turkey, you can use whatever you want to make it your own dish. You can get this recipe and all of my other recipes at www.DedeMed.com. Don’t forget to join my social network, you’ll have a lot of fun. And if you need any of the spices in this video or ingredients in any of my videos, check my store link on my website and you can just order stuff from there. I’m going to go all over the ingredients we need and I’m going to show you how to put together.

Now, what we’re going to need is about a cup and a half of chopped tomato. It’s actually one whole tomato but it turns out to be about cup and a half. Two cups of chopped onions, I have a half cup of white risen that I soak it some water just so that there are little bit more moist. We’re going to use for garnish. For also for garnish, we’re going to use some slivered almond, pistachios and some pine nuts. We’re going to toast this all up and put them on top. I have two cups of long green rice. This is Uncle Ben’s rice. It’s amazing for this dish because it always turns out fluffy. I also have some yogurt here. We’re going to serve it with some yogurt. The spices we need for this, I have teaspoon and a half of salt. I have tablespoon of ground coriander. I have about ten cloves. I have a half teaspoon of nutmeg, half teaspoon of 7 spices, quarter teaspoon of black pepper, quarter teaspoon of cinnamon. I also have a chicken that I pre-cooked with and a pot with water. I had half of onion in here, two cinnamon sticks, two bay leaves and a teaspoon of water. And I pre-cooked the chicken when it take it a part and put it on top. I also have some butter and some water. I’m going to show how to get this all done.

I’m going to empty the rice into a large bowl because I’m going to actually rinse the rice and that, I’m going to mix it with all the seasoning. Now, the reason why I’m going to do that is because I want the rice to get nicely coated with the seasoning and then prepping all the other ingredients after it starts to absorb some of the flavors from the seasoning. So just rinse this with some water. Give it a quick rinse, pour off the excess water. Don’t loss too much of your rice while you’re doing this. So I have the rice there. See, it’s nice and rinsed. I’m going to pour in all of the seasoning.

I know some of you are probably thinking why she keeps mixing the seasoning. And now some people put the seasoning in when they actually cook the rice in the pot. Now, I always want to talk about why I’m making a golf dish while this is a Mediterranean food show. The reason is a lot of the countries of long Mediterranean actually serve this dish. It’s very popular. There are lots of different variations of this dish, some people put carrots, some people peas, some people use lambs, some people preferred chicken. It’s pretty much a rice dish with seasoning and vegetables. That’s the main purpose and the main point of this dish. So I’ll mix it all up just like that. I’m just going to set this to the side.

Okay, we have a nice big pot. We want to use a nice big pot because you’re going to put the rice in this and we’re going to cook it all up. So I’m going to add two tablespoon of olive oil and about tablespoon of butter. We’re going to add the onions and the tomatoes until they all cooked down. Let’s say probably about five to eight minutes. Well, let’s just shoot for ten. Stir it up, let it go until the vegetables have cooked down and tomatoes have cooked down. Let it stir every couple of minutes.

Okay, we have here the tomatoes and the onions have cooked down. Now, remember when you pick a tomato for cooking, something like this, you want to make sure it’s really right tomato. You don’t want to cook anything that’s green or really too firm because it won’t cook down as well and if the flavors aren’t as developed. So to this, we’re going to add our rice. I’m going to just fry up the rice a little bit before we add the chicken broth to cook it up.

I’m going to turn down the heat, keep it on medium low. Different ovens are different. I’m going to bring my chicken broth over. And when I cook the chicken—I want to show you, I did use two sticks cinnamon, half onion, two beefs and a teaspoon of salt. I put the chicken and I use two chicken ties with the bone and two chicken drumsticks. I put some water. I let it cook for hour, hour and 15 minutes until the chicken is very tender. The bone is great for the broth.

So we’re going to add every cup rice, we want two cups of moisture, so here. One, two, now don’t forget, this has cinnamon in it so it’s going to add even more flavor to the seasoning that is already in the rice. If you want, you can taste the broth now to make sure that the seasonings are good. So I’m just going to grab a spoon, perfect. You’re going to let this come to a boil and as soon as it comes to a boil, we’re going to leave too low. I’m going to let this cook for about 40 or 45 minutes.

Give it a stir after 20 minutes and let it grow for another 20 minutes and it will check in on it. I’m going to put some butter on top of this. Now, if you want to use brown rice, you can use brown rice. Traditionally, it’s made with Uncle Ben’s long grain rice. If you’re on a diet, you don’t have to use a butter and you can use extra vegetables or you make the dish a little bit more healthy. So you see here, it’s coming to a boil. We’re going to turn it down and then discover. We’re going to brown for 20 minutes. We’re going to toast our nuts and raison right now and some butter. I have about a tablespoon and a half of butter in here. Butter just makes everything better. But then again, you’re on a diet, you don’t like to have butter, you can use some olive oil, you can even dry toast this in the oven. We’re going to toaster oven for a few minutes until they’re nice and brown. So just like that. Add our nuts to it. And you want to keep a close eye on it because guess what, this toasts up really fast. So as soon as they toast up, I’m going to through in the raisons.

Don’t add the excess water, just like that, on medium heat. I want to keep stirring them because it gives even color. You don’t want one side toasted more than the other. They’re all nice, brown, toast it up and they have a wonderful smell. They’re going to have a great nutty flavor, even the raisons. I’m going to put this on the side. I’m going to place on top of the rice and we’re ready.

After 45 minutes, I turned rice, I fluff it up a little, I let it stir for like 10 minutes so that the rice really fluff up. Remember, I toasted my nuts and my raisons and I have my chicken that I pulled apart, de-boned about all the bones, and the skin and now it’s just nice chickens. If you want to use chicken breast, you can use chicken breast. I like to use the thighs for this dish because they’re really moist and they just go great. Look at the rice, how nice and fluffy this. You want to use a nice large dish, if you’re plating this up for a large number of people, if you want it that great at very nicely.

Now, the cloves that are here, it’s okay. I mean you can eat the cloves because they are very tender. Your guess like it will full your mouth. I mean the smell from this fish is seasoning. It’s just amazing. Spread it out like that. Next, we’re going to put the chicken on top. I just cut the chicken with my fingers into edible size pieces. Again, you can keep this vegetarian. You can use vegetable broth that not used any meat instead. It’s all depends on your liking. We’re going to get the nuts and they add such pretty colors.

All the flavors of the dish, there are so many dynamics of all the flavors of sweetness from the raisons, the tomatoes, the onions, the nuts. You can use any kind of nuts that you’ll like. And if you’re allergic to nuts, you don’t have to use nuts at all but they do add wonderful flavor to this dish. I want to make sure I get some all. The butter is amazing. So just like that. I’m going to give this a taste because I cannot wait any longer.

It’s hot but it’s so good, strip with the yogurt. The yogurt cools the dish down. It’s great because it has some acidity in it. It’s wonderful. This is our Kabsa dish. Enjoy it, love it. Your family is going to love it. It’s a great dish all by itself. Join me again for Dede’s Mediterranean Kitchen. If you have any questions, you have any comments, you have any recipes you want to share, email me, let me know and I will see you again.