Intermédiaire

Kabab-e Koobideh

Name: Kabab-e Koobideh
Total time: 1 h 30 min
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Persian
Ingredients: 600 g Ground lamb or beef, about 20% fat; 1 large Onion; 1.5 tsp Salt; 1 tsp Black pepper; 0.5 tsp Ground turmeric; 0.25 tsp Baking soda; 400 g uncooked Basmati rice, to serve as chelow; 4 Ripe tomatoes; Sumac; Butter for the rice (optional)

The kabab at the centre of chelow kabab: seasoned ground lamb or beef pounded with grated onion until it turns sticky, pressed onto wide flat skewers and seared over charcoal, then eaten with saffron rice, grilled tomato and a shower of sumac.

Source

Recette de Persian home kitchens · 🏺 Traditionnel · Everyday and festive cooking of Iranian households — the shared repertoire behind sofreh (the spread) that no single person owns

Persian · traditional dish — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article describes kabab koobideh as an Iranian variant of shish kofta made from ground lamb mixed with salt, black pepper and grated onions, which fixes the defining ingredients used here. It is the kabab served over saffron rice as chelow kabab. Quantities, the kneading times and the whole method are this book's own, written for a beginner.

Background on Wikipedia ↗

Watch it being made

Quang Tran

⏱ 90 min🍽 4 portions🔥 520 kcal🇮🇷 Iran

HalalSans produits laitiersSans glutenSans fruits à coque

Étapes

Put the mince, dry grated onion, salt, pepper, turmeric and baking soda in a bowl. Now knead — really knead — for a full 8 to 10 minutes, lifting and slapping the mass back into the bowl, until it turns smooth, pale and tacky like a paste.
💡 This kneading is the whole dish. Underworked meat will not grip the skewer and falls into the coals — the paste-like stickiness is what holds it on.
Cover the bowl and chill it for at least 1 hour, or up to overnight. Cold, rested meat is far easier to skewer.
Wet your hands. Take a fistful of meat, wrap it around a wide flat skewer, and squeeze along the length so it grips — then press ridges into it every couple of centimetres with your fingers. Aim for a strip about 20 cm long and no thicker than a thumb.
💡 The finger ridges are not decoration — they grip the skewer and let the heat reach the middle fast, so the outside does not burn before the centre cooks. Flat, wide skewers matter; round ones let the meat spin and drop.
Get the charcoal to a strong, even glow with no flames. Lay the skewers across the grill so the meat hangs over the coals without touching the bars. Do not touch them for the first 60 seconds — let a crust set.
💡 If the meat sags or drips the moment it hits the fire, the crust has not set — leave it longer before the first turn. Turn only once the underside releases cleanly.
Turn the skewers every 30 to 40 seconds, grilling the tomatoes alongside, until the meat is deep brown with charred edges and just cooked through — about 6 to 8 minutes total. It cooks fast.
Slide the meat off the skewers directly onto the hot saffron rice — press the back of a piece of flatbread against the meat and pull the skewer out. Serve at once with the grilled tomatoes, raw onion, fresh basil and a bowl of sumac to scatter over everything.

💡 Astuces

Two enemies of koobideh: too little fat and too little kneading. Both end the same way, with the meat in the fire. If you are unsure, add a spoon of fat and knead an extra two minutes.
No charcoal grill? Press the meat into thick fingers by hand, chill them hard, and sear in a smoking-hot cast-iron pan or under a very hot oven grill. It will not have the smoke, but the texture is right.
Chelow kabab is often crowned with a raw egg yolk and a knob of butter stirred through the hot rice before the meat goes on. Skip both to keep it dairy-free; the sumac and grilled tomato do the heavy lifting either way.