Lebanese chicken and rice

Lebanese chicken and rice is a delicious combination of luscious rice cooked with ground meat and spices, shredded chicken and toasted nuts. All come together to make a dish packed with great flavors and textures. Best of all, while it might seem fancy, it's a lot easier than you might think.

This post may contain affiliate links, where we earn from qualifying purchases. See more details in the policy page.

I've long been drawn to foods from the Levant region, and was most definitely in food heaven when we visited friends living in Jordan a few years ago. The fresh salads like tabbouleh and fattoush, tender grilled meats and creamy labneh and hummus were all so delicious. 

I've had similar feelings from visits to Israel, where we enjoyed some of the same dishes and discovered new ones like roasted eggplant with tahini and shakshuka hummus. 

While Lebanon is sadly still on my to-visit list, I do hunt down or make Lebanese food fairly often. We were so glad to find a great Lebanese restaurant near where we lived in Melbourne. The person who always served us was such a vibrant character and had such passion for the dishes from his country. And for good reason.

In general, I was familiar with all that we had there, but this dish  - riz a jej - was a new one to me. This fragrant rice dish, topped with chicken and toasted nuts is sometimes described as Lebanese dirty rice. But really, it's very much it's own dish. The person in the restaurant said it was one of his favorites, and it soon became one of ours. So much so, I had to make it at home. 

I've drawn on this Simply Leb recipe and Food 52 recipe in making this and we all found this so delicious. While it may seem like this dish is a little complex, you can do a lot ahead. So the hands-on work before eating is really not bad. 

Make ahead options

This dish has three components - the seasoned, meaty rice, the chicken on top and the nut garnish. You don't want to skip any of them, trust me. But the good news is you can make two out of the three ahead.

The topping for this dish is toasted nuts. You can, if you like, make them slightly healthier by dry frying or toasting under the broiler/grill. But the more traditional way is to cook them in oil. And, I have to say, they taste so incredibly good it's worth that little extra oil. 

You can make the nuts a day or two ahead and store them in an airtight container at room temperature.

The other part you can make ahead is the chicken. In fact, it's a great way to use leftover roast chicken or bought rotisserie chicken. However, if you don't use leftovers, the traditional way to cook it is poaching. And this is really easy to do while you cook the rice since you can leave it to itself.

The one part that is a little more hands on is cooking the rice, but it, too is easy. 

Cooking tips

As I say, while there are a few components, this is generally a pretty easy dish. A couple tips, though:

• Pay close attention when you cook the nuts. It doesn't take long for them to go from just brown to burnt, both cooked under broiler/grill or in a skillet/frying pan. So, give them your full attention. If you cook them in oil, drain them on kitchen paper to save them being too oily. 
• Give yourself time to shred the chicken. It doesn't take all that long, but you don't want the rice to become cold while you do it. So, I recommend you cook the chicken slightly before then shred while the rice cooks. Then cover to keep it warm or, if needed, warm it in a skillet with a little warm stock to keep it moist. 
• Find Lebanese spice mix (or make your own!) You don't need a lot of spice in the rice and meat mixture, but you don't want to skip it. Lebanese seven spice (baharat) gives a lovely balance of aromatic spices and a little pepper. It really adds to the end flavor of the dish. And it's easy to mix up yourself, too.
• Don't skip the butter in the rice. It might seem strange to add extra fat in after softening the onion and browning the meat, but this extra butter adds a little extra richness to the rice. It's worth it.

Serving suggestion

You can layer up the different parts of the dish either on a large platter to serve from, or you can make individual plates with each component. Serving on a platter is more typical.

This is the kind of dish that would generally be a main after a range of mezze dishes to start (such as hummus, baba ghanoush and others). Or, you can go straight to main and enjoy more, of course. Either way, this is really good with some salad on the side, particularly fattoush. 

Lebanese chicken and rice is a celebratory dish, and it's easy to understand why. But it's also not as difficult as it might appear and makes a wonderful meal any time you choose. Fantastic flavors and textures - be sure to try it soon. 

Try these other tasty chicken dishes:

• Chicken saltimbocca (with prosciutto and sage)
• Musakhan (Palestinian sumac chicken)
• Peruvian roast chicken (pollo a la brasa)
• Plus get more main dishes and Middle Eastern recipes in the archives.

Remember to pin for later!