Machboos calories: chicken machboos, per 100 g

Machboos, also written majboos or machbous, is a spiced rice dish cooked with chicken or meat and eaten across the Gulf. The Food Composition Tables for the Kingdom of Bahrain include one version, Machbous Dajaj, or chicken machboos, among their composite dishes: dishes prepared at home in Bahrain and analysed chemically in the laboratory. The row is a measurement of a cooked dish, not a total worked out from its ingredients.

The tables do not print the recipe: not the rice, the oil or ghee, the spice mix, or how chicken and rice were proportioned in the sample. These change most between kitchens, so the figure describes one Bahraini home recipe, not every machboos cooked in the UAE.

The basis is 100 g of edible portion, the part that is eaten, so bones are not counted. The tables were published in 2011 without the year each dish was analysed, and the printed energy agrees with the row's own protein, carbohydrate and fat.

After water, carbohydrate is by far the largest part of the row: 25.2 g per 100 g, against 6 g of fat and 5 g of protein, or about five times as much carbohydrate as protein. By weight, chicken machboos is a rice dish first and a chicken dish second.

Fat is a little higher than protein. Cooking oil or ghee and chicken skin are possible sources, but the tables record neither, so read it as a feature of this sample, not of every pot.

Protein is the smallest of the three, and it cannot tell you how much chicken is on your plate, because the sample's share of chicken is not printed. A plate piled with chicken, or one that is mostly rice, is a different mix from the one analysed. Fibre is the smallest figure of all, 0.3 g per 100 g.

• Machboos rice on its own. The rice was not analysed separately, and adding up plain rice and chicken rows would be a recipe estimate, not a measurement of machboos.
• Lamb, meat or beef machboos, including machboos laham. Only chicken was analysed, and its figure is not a stand-in for other meats.
• Fish or prawn machboos. The tables analyse fish and shrimp cooked in rice, but as the fish or shrimp alone, without the rice, so neither is a figure for the dish. Hamour cooked in rice is in the fish and meat list.
• Kabsa and mandi. They are different dishes, each with its own method and spices, and neither has been analysed in the tables used here. The machboos figure is not used for them.
• Today's machboos from your kitchen or a restaurant, whose rice, oil and chicken may differ from the Bahraini home recipe analysed for tables published in 2011.

Lamb machboos, kabsa and mandi are on the food calories page, each with the reason it has no figure. Other home-cooked dishes from the Bahrain tables are in its cooked dishes list, among them harees, which has its own page.

No source used here publishes a standard serving of machboos, and a plate from a shared pot can be any size, so weigh it.

1. Weigh rice and chicken together with the bones out, since the figures are for the edible part, or weigh the plate before eating and the bones after, and use the difference.
2. Open the food calorie calculator, search for machboos and choose the chicken machboos row.
3. Enter the grams. The calculator reads the same record as this page, so the two answers agree.
4. Count toppings and sides separately: daqqus tomato sauce, yoghurt, salad, fried onions or nuts. Anything the calculator does not list is left out, not guessed.

For the whole day, the calorie calculator sets a daily energy target and the macro calculator splits it into protein, carbohydrate and fat.

With carbohydrate the largest part of the row after water, machboos counts mainly as a carbohydrate meal in a macro plan. If you are eating more to gain muscle, a rice dish is an easy source of extra energy: the bulking calorie calculator sets a surplus target and the muscle gain and bulking guide covers the rest.

Protein is the part to watch, as the smallest of the row's three macronutrients; the protein calculator gives a daily range to check it against. If machboos is part of your iftar, the Ramadan meal plan spreads a day's calories and protein across iftar, an evening meal and suhoor.

This page is general information about one food, not individual nutrition advice. If you manage a health condition or follow a diet set by a clinician, plan around machboos with a doctor or registered dietitian.