Yemeni Chicken Mandi easy recipe

Merhaba From Türkiye 👋

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Today I am going to share one delicious middle eastern dish calls, Chicken Mandi. It's one of popular traditional dishes from Yemen.

Mandi is now popular among other Arab countries as well. Traditionally, the meat is slow-cooked in a tandoor (underground oven) which makes the meat extremely tender and delicious and served over aromatic rice.

The spice rub used to marinate the meat (lamb or chicken) is called Hawaij– coriander seeds, cumin seeds, cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, whole black peppercorns are roasted till aromatic and made into a powder. See also how to make hawaij spices mixture in my previous post.

This is a very mild dish, not spicy at all. The rice was extremely aromatic and tasted very flavorful. Enjoy this Mandi in its authentic way! 

My husband loves it and me as Asian also enjoy it very much. And since it's not hot spice at all, my kid eat her portion happily.

You may be interested in my CHICKEN BIRYANI EASY RECIPE

There are many recipes around the web to make this chicken mandi. And as I mentioned before traditionally Mandi dish slow-cooked in tandoor (underground oven). Some method is cooked inside the oven for slow cooking method nearest to the tandoor method, which cooks chicken on a grill rack over the rice to let chicken dripping drops to the rice and enrich its flavor.

But for our weekend dinner yesterday I went with a simple recipe and method I found. Even though I still got a delicious and very satisfying dish.
The recipe I copy from MunatyCoking.com. Please do visit her page to see her Chicken mandi recipe.

If you want to experience this Yemeni Chicken Mandi as well for your family or friends, here I rewrite the recipe for you.

Yemeni Chicken Mandi and rice

Adapted from MunatyCooking 

Recook by me

Serve 3

Ingredients:

For chicken

• Half whole chicken (about 700 gr)
• 2 Tbsp Hawaij spice mix, recipe here
• about 2 tbsp butter, room temperature
• Salt to taste

For Rice

• 1 cup long-grain rice (about 225 gr), washed and soaked
• 2 cups boiling water
• about 3 tbsp olive oil
• 1 medium onion, finely chopped
• 1 large tomato, wedge
• 1 green chili 
• 1 ½ teaspoon Hawaij spice mix
• salt to taste
• Raisins and almond sliced for serving ( I skipped this)

Method:

1) For the chicken; season the chicken with salt. Mix hawaij spice with butter. Rub evenly the chicken with the spice and let it rest for about 10 minutes. I made the chicken the night before, so I kept my chicken marinated the whole night before and cooked it the day after.

2)Preheat oven at 180°C (me, 190°C). Roast the chicken cover with aluminum foil for about 30~40 minutes. Then continue to roast without cover for about 25 minutes and golden brown and chicken cooked.

3) Making rice; heat olive oil in a pan, saute the chopped onion until translucent. Stir in green chili and tomatoes, continue to cook for about 3 or 4 minutes more. Add the yemeni spice mix, stir for couple minutes more. Add in rice, stir to combine with the spices. Add in boiling water and mix once. Cover with the lid and lower the heat.

4) Let the rice cook for about 10 to 15 minutes. Lowest the heat and uncover the pan, gently scoop or fork the rice from the bottom up to make rice fluffy and prevent browning the bottom part. Then continue to cook over the lowest heat you can get with tightly cover for about 7 minutes more. Turn off the heat and without openinging the lid, let the rice sit for few minutes more to absorb all the steam to get yummy fluffy rice. That's my way to cook rice generally.

Serve Chicken mandi over the rice and sprinkle with raisins and almond slices if using.

Mandi (Arabic: المندي‎) is a traditional Yemeni dish from Hadhramaut, Yemen. It is also eaten in many other Yemeni cities, such as Sana'a and Aden. It is now very popular in other areas of the Arabian Peninsula, and it is also common in Egypt and Jordan. It is also popular among the Hadhrami people in the Malabar region of Kerala, India. The word "mandi" comes from the Arabic word nada, meaning "dew", and reflects the moist 'dewy' texture of the meat.

Mandi is usually made from rice, meat (lamb or chicken), and a mixture of spices. The meat used is usually a young and small sized lamb to enhance the taste further. The main thing which differentiates mandi is that the meat is cooked in the tandoor (taboon in Hadhrami), which is a special kind of oven. The tandoor is usually a hole dug in the ground and covered inside by clay. 

To cook mandi, dry wood is placed in the tandoor and burned to generate a lot of heat turning into charcoal. The meat is then suspended inside the tandoor without touching the charcoal. After that, the whole tandoor is closed without letting any of the smoke out. Raisins, pine nuts, or peanuts can be added to the rice as per one's taste.

Mandi is considered the main dish served during special events, such as Eid, weddings, and feasts.

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