This Easy Chicken Mandi is a family staple all through the Arab world & will soon become your family’s favourite dinner. Chicken legs baked in an aromatic spice blend until fall-apart tender, best served with a scoop of fragrant smokey rice. Best yet, this is an easy Chicken Mandi recipe. A fail-proof & delicious dinner that’s always satisfying & perfect for a family gathering or any time you want to spoil your loved ones!
A Winner of a Dinner.
This Easy Chicken Mandi came about after many failed attempts of making the Oven-baked version of Yemeni Mandi. I was testing & tweaking this recipe for years, I managed to learn to make this recipe is one-pot as most creators recommend, however, Mandi has a very high failure rate for people new to Middle Eastern cooking. I would never want you to have a recipe fail if I can avoid it by simplifying the techniques to make the recipe approachable for everyone.
I promise you if you’re craving a simple, tasty, & fail-proof recipe for chicken mandi, This is the recipe for you. I tossed some Hawaij dry-rubbed chicken into the oven. Once the chicken was halfway cooked, I started cooking the rice and finished with a few secret tricks that give this chicken Mandi recipe its signature taste.
And let me tell you, it was absolutely fantastic. The interplay of juicy savoury chicken & smokey rice is somehow so satisfying yet authentic tasting all at once, & so easy for beginners, making this the perfect recipe hack. In fact, I love this chicken mandi so much that always bring it to potlucks or any other food-type gathering! It’s such flawless chicken & rice recipe, that I’m sure you’ll love it.
What is Chicken Mandi?
Maybe you’re wondering, Mandi, what? This dish isn’t from the Mediterranean! It’s from Yemen.
And you’re 100% correct! This dish is originally a Yemeni recipe, but it’s so delicious and popular, that it migrated to Turkey, Levant, & Egypt and become a regular household recipe. Therefore in my humble opinion, it’s an Eastern Mediterranean dish now!
Mandi is cooked in a special kind of oven which is usually a pit dug up in the ground and covered with clay all around its sides. The Meat is marinated in a traditional spice blend called Hawaij. Hawaij spice blend gives the rice and chicken a beautiful colour and its signature savoury taste. The rice is lower onto the coals and the seasoned meat is suspended over the rice. The oven is covered and the mandi is left to cook for a few hours. The meat’s fat and the smoke from the charcoals give the dish its delicious rich & smoky flavour to the dish.
Traditional Mandi is often made with lamb, goat, camel and chicken. Its most often served during feasts and holiday celebrations.
Here’s the deal on making Mandi at home:
The Trademark taste of mandi is its smoky essence from the tandoor oven. However, I don’t know many people who have access to a traditional tandoor oven. So instead home cooks use a red piece of charcoal, oil, and a small heatproof bowl to recreate this flavour.
Other recipes recommend cooking the chicken over top of the rice in the oven⏤this can result in a high recipe failure and I don’t want that to happen to you.
How to Make Hawaij spice mix:
This chicken mandi recipe calls for a spice called Hawaij. Hawaij is a popular spice blend in Yemen, Somalia and Isreal, and there are a few different versions of the hawaij spice blend⏤savoury for rice and meats or sweet, delicious blend for sweets and drinks. Luckily for us, making this hawaij spice blend is super easy to make at home.
You’ll probably have most of these spices on hand:
- Turmeric.
- Indian bay leaf or regular bay
- Cardamon
- Cloves
- Black peppercorns
- Ginger
- Cinnamon
- Nutmeg
How Do You Make this chicken mandi?
Chicken Mandi may seem challenging to make, but the truth is told, it isn’t difficult to master, so don’t let it intimidate you.
The perfect Chicken Mandi is as easy as:
- Buy a chicken—any size or cuts will do! I’ve chosen to use drumsticks to speed up cooking time and make this a weekday meal.
- Prepare the Hawaij spice mixture.
- Season the chicken with the Hawaij.
- Bake the chicken in a preheated oven. Roasting the chicken in the oven doesn’t take terribly long, but the cooking time does depend on the size and or cuts of meat you’ve chosen.
- Make your rice, add the onions, ghee and spices. Then add the rice give it a stir, pour in the water and cover.
- Use the chicken’s pan drippings to create a fabulous “flavour booster” by adding it to your rice.
- Place the cooked chicken on top of the cooked rice.
- To create the signature smokey flavour. You’ll need a small piece of hot charcoal. Place a small heat-proof dish with oil in the middle of the rice and chicken. Drop the hot coal in the metal dish and very quickly cover the rice with a tight lid.
Recipe tips:
- Use less oil. The chicken pan dripping add a lot of oil to the rice so when sauteing the onions just use enough oil to stop the onions from sticking.
- Pan dripping makes this dish—you must scrape all of the flavorful dripping bits from the bottom of the pan and add it to the rice. It may seem like a strange techinque, but it adds so much flavour to the rice.
- Sella basmati rice is the best rice to use for this dish or anyone who tends to over-cook or over-stir when making rice. This type of rice is also great for people with diabetes since it doesn’t spike blood sugar as quickly as regular basmati. And the best part is Sella Rice rice so it cooks perfectly every time!
More Rice Recipes To Try
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Easy Chicken Mandi
Ingredients
- 8 pieces Chicken drumsticks, thighs, etc.
- 2 medium onions finely chopped
- 1 tsp ghee
- 1 ½ cup Sella Basmati rice wash and presoaked 30 minutes.
- 1 cup tomatoes peeled & diced
- 2 ½ tsp sea salt please don’t use table salt!
- 1 cup golden raisins
- 1 cup Mixed Nuts pinenuts, almond silvers, & cashews
- 1 tsp ghee
Hawaij Spice mixture:
- 1 tsp ground cardamom
- 1/4 tsp ground cloves
- 1 tsp ginger
- 1/4 tsp nutmeg
- 1/2 tsp freshly ground pepper
- 1/2 tsp turmeric
- 1/4 tsp cinnamon
- 1 Indian bay leaves ground into powder* see notes
Instructions
- Prep Chicken: wash your chicken and give it a little scrub with fresh lemon,⏤skip the lemon if you don't have it on hand. Dry the chicken with a paper towel so the spices will stick to the meat.
- Let's spice it up: Rub 1-2 teaspoons of the Hawaij spice and a pinch of salt onto each piece of chicken. Once all of the chicken is coated with spice, add a drizzle of olive oil, and rub everything together. Allow the chicken to marinate well your oven is heating up.
- Start your oven: Pre-heat your oven to 400°. Once heated transfer, the chicken to a baking pan and cover with tin-foil⏤bake for 40 minutes. You should have a lot of broth on the bottom of the pan, which you're going to use to flavour the rice. After 20 minutes of cooking the chicken, start the rice.
- After 20 minutes of cooking the chicken, start the rice: Heat a large pot, add ghee & onions. Sautee. Occasionally stir the onions until they're totally cooked through but not brown, add 2 teaspoons of the Hawaij spice, then continue cooking until the spices start to stick to the bottom of the pot, about 90 seconds.
- Add the tomatoes: Once you add the tomatoes, then scrape up any bits on the bottom of the pot. Season with salt generously with 1 ½ tsp, and reduce heat to a medium-low. Cook until the tomatoes start to break up and thicken.
- Add the rice: Stir, the rice into the tomatoes, until the rice is really well coated⏤the tomato mixture should be sticking to each individual grain of rice. Add approximately 3 cups of hot water and ½ tsp more salt. (taste the saltiness of the water at this point and decide if more salt is needed-the water should be slightly salty to the taste but NOT as salty as the sea) Bring the water to a boil. Then reduce to low heat and cover for 20 minutes. No peeking, just let it be.
- After 20 minutes of the rice cooking: Remove the chicken from the oven. Open the tin-foil, remove the chicken and pour all the chicken dripping into the rice. Give it one a good stir! Place the chicken back into the baking pan and continue cooking uncovered until the chicken reaches 165°f, and the skin is nice and crispy.
- Time for some magic! You'll need a small piece of charcoal and a small metal dish (see notes) for this part of the recipe. Place the chicken in the pot with the rice, add the small metal dish in the centre of the rice. Pour 1 tsp of oil into a mini heat-proof bowl. Heat the charcoal on the element of the stove until the coal is red. Add the hot charcoal into the mini bowl with oil. You're going to see a lot of smoke! Quickly, cover the pot with its lid and wrap-around with a kitchen towel to stop any smoke from leaving the pot. Wait 5-8 minutes for the smoke to disappear in the rice. Open the lid, remove the chicken, and stir the smoky flavour.
- In the meantime: Fry your nuts in a 1 tsp ghee until they're just about to turn golden brown.
- Set the table! Place the rice on a serving platter, top with the chicken and then the nuts and raisins.
Notes
Time-saving hacks:
Marinate the chicken the night before. You can also freeze the chicken in the spice mixture. To wash your rice or not to wash rice, that is the question, I’ll let up to you. I personally always wash my rice, but others don’t. So I leave that step up to you. I don’t usually soak my rice. If you choose to soak your rice you’ll need to increase the prep time.- I use Instant Charcoal Quality Hookah for the smoking step, you also can use a broken piece of charcoal if that’s what you have available.
- If you do not have a metal dish then you can use a foiled-up piece of tin-foil. Fold the tin-foil into a square about 3 times, so the square fits into the palm of your hand. curl the corners into a bowl-like shape so the oil won’t pour out and the coal will fit perfectly.
Wow, this sounds incredible! I like that I can use the whole chicken in this.
This looks so hearty and delightful. So glad to see the similarity in the spices of Yemen and India. I bet it tastes delicious.
We had this chicken for dinner last night and it was incredible! Thanks so much for sharing the recipe!
This looks like something I’ve got to try! Thanks for sharing.
This was so delicious. I made it for my family for Sunday dinner and they could not get enough of it.
INCREDIBLE INCREDIBLE !!!!! absolutely full of flavour!!!!!!!!!!! sahtein!!!!!!!!
I’m so glade you enjoyed the recipe!
Tried the recipe and its delicious, thank you for sharing 😊
I’m so glade to hear you enjoyed the recipe!