Fish Machboos (Machboos Samak)

Khaleeji

Fish Machboos (Machboos Samak)

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Fish Machboos (Machboos Samak) is Khaleeji home cooking, eaten at lunch and dinner. On the plate it is the dish at the centre. Below is what usually sits beside it, what it does and does not contain, and what else to cook once you have made it.

55 min Medium Halal Pescatarian Dairy free Gluten free

Ingredients

Serves
6

The quantities follow this count.

How to cook it

  1. Season the fish fillets with salt, a squeeze of lemon and a little baharat, then set aside to marinate 15 minutes while you start the rice.

  2. Heat the oil in a wide pot and fry the sliced onion until golden, about 6 minutes. Stir in the garlic, the remaining baharat and the turmeric and cook 1 minute.

  3. Add the chopped tomato and tomato paste and cook 3 minutes, then add the pierced dried limes, cardamom, cinnamon stick, bay leaf and water and bring to a boil.

  4. Rinse the rice and stir it in, cover, reduce the heat to low and cook 15 minutes until the rice is nearly tender.

  5. Meanwhile pan-fry the marinated fish in a separate skillet, about 3 minutes per side, until just cooked through and lightly browned.

  6. Fluff the rice, lay the fish over the top to finish warming for 2 minutes, scatter with cilantro, and serve straight from the pot, the simplified everyday version of the Kuwaiti layered mutabbaq samak.

Watch how to cook Fish Machboos (Machboos Samak)

Someone making it start to finish, so you can see what the steps look like.

Serve it with

A Khaleeji dinner is a plate rather than a single dish. These are the courses that normally sit beside Fish Machboos (Machboos Samak), read from the same composition Dinejot builds a real meal from.

Safe at your table

Dinejot tracks ten allergens and tags every one of them by hand, so the absences below are as deliberate as the presences. Fish Machboos (Machboos Samak) carries fish. It is free of the remaining 9 allergens on that list.

Every tracked allergen in Fish Machboos (Machboos Samak)
Allergen In this dish Cook this instead
Peanuts No
Tree nuts No
Dairy No
Gluten No
Shellfish No
Eggs No
Soy No
Fish Yes Balaleet (Sweet Vermicelli with Omelette)
Sesame No
Coconut No

These tags are set by a person rather than inferred from an ingredient list, and they describe the recipe as written here. Read the labels on whatever you actually buy.

What it brings to the plate

Estimated, per serving

Calories
450 kcal
Protein
35 g
Carbs
57 g
Fat
9 g
Fiber
2 g
Sugar
3 g
Sodium
640 mg
Saturated fat
1 g

Estimated values. Actual nutrition varies with ingredients, brands, and how you cook.

When to cook it

Fish Machboos (Machboos Samak) takes about 55 minutes from a cold stove to the table, and the cooking itself is a fair bit of work. It is eaten at lunch and dinner. Nothing in the calendar rules it out, so it is a year round dish.

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