Cabidela or arroz de cabidela (Cabidela rice) is a Portuguese dish

Portuguese cuisine

Portuguese cuisine is characterised by rich, filling and full-flavored dishes and is closely related to Mediterranean cuisine. The influence of Portugal's former colonial possessions is also notable, especially in the wide variety of spices used. These spices include piri piri and black pepper, as...

 made with chicken

Chicken

The chicken is a domesticated fowl, a subspecies of the Red Junglefowl. As one of the most common and widespread domestic animals, and with a population of more than 24 billion in 2003, there are more chickens in the world than any other species of bird...

 or rabbit

Rabbit

Rabbits are small mammals in the family Leporidae of the order Lagomorpha, found in several parts of the world...

. After the chicken or rabbit is killed, they are hung up upside-down, so the blood may be captured as it drains out. The rice is then cooked together with the meat and the blood of the animal, which imparts a greyish-brown color to the dish.

Variants

In the former Portuguese colony of Macao

Mação

Mação is a municipality in Portugal with a total area of 400.0 km² and a total population of 7,763 inhabitants.The municipality is composed of eight parishes, and is located in the Santarém District....

, a similar dish made with duck (pato de cabidela) is one of the more famous dishes in Macanese cuisine

Macanese cuisine

Macanese cuisine is unique to Macau, China and which consists of a blend of southern Chinese and Portuguese cuisines, with significant influences from Southeast Asia and the Lusophone world. Many unique dishes resulted from the spice blends that the wives of Portuguese sailors used in an attempt to...

.

In Brazil, this dish is made exclusively with chicken (thus being called galinha de cabidela), and is considered a typical dish of the city of Recife

Recife

Recife is the fifth-largest metropolitan area in Brazil with 4,136,506 inhabitants, the largest metropolitan area of the North/Northeast Regions, the 5th-largest metropolitan influence area in Brazil, and the capital and largest city of the state of Pernambuco. The population of the city proper...

.

In India

India

India , officially the Republic of India , is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by geographical area, the second-most populous country with over 1.2 billion people, and the most populous democracy in the world...

, Pork

Pork

Pork is the culinary name for meat from the domestic pig , which is eaten in many countries. It is one of the most commonly consumed meats worldwide, with evidence of pig husbandry dating back to 5000 BC....

 Cabidela is popular among the Goan Catholic community of Goa

Goa

Goa , a former Portuguese colony, is India's smallest state by area and the fourth smallest by population. Located in South West India in the region known as the Konkan, it is bounded by the state of Maharashtra to the north, and by Karnataka to the east and south, while the Arabian Sea forms its...

, and the Mangalorean Catholic community from the Mangalore

Mangalore

Mangalore is the chief port city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It is located about west of the state capital, Bangalore. Mangalore lies between the Arabian Sea and the Western Ghat mountain ranges, and is the administrative headquarters of the Dakshina Kannada district in south western...

 and the former South Canara

South Canara

South Canara was a district under the British empire, located at . It was bifurcated in 1859 from Canara district. It was the undivided Dakshina Kannada district...

district.