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Recipe Blog - thebroadroom.net: May 2005
Kabob Koobideh
posted by Colleen Shirazi,
Friday, May 27, 2005
at 3:50 PM (Pacific)
This is basically a kabob made of ground beef or lamb. You can make it either in the oven or on the grill. The grilled version tastes better; the oven version is easier and more convenient.
If you want to grill the kabob, you will need special flat, sword-shaped skewers, rather than the usual stick-style skewers. The special skewers can be found at
Middle Eastern stores.
Likewise, if you grill, you can also make the traditional grilled onions and tomatoes.
Peel some onions--shallots or boiler onions are best but you can also use regular yellow onions. If the onion is big, cut it into halves or quarters. Thread the onion on a stick-style skewer and baste with vegetable oil before cooking (you can baste it while it's cooking if it looks dry).
Get plum-style tomatoes or else small tomatoes. Thread the whole tomatoes on your stick-style skewers (making separate skewers for onions, don't mix the two on the same skewer, since the cooking time varies) and baste with vegetable oil before cooking.
Note: onions take a long time to cook so start them early.
Kabob can be served with flat bread for lunch, but for dinner you'll want to make steamed basmati rice (which I will post a recipe for as well).
To serve in the usual way, pile some hot steamed rice on a plate. Top with a piece of butter, and sprinkle the rice with somagh. Somagh is a sourish dark red powder you may find at Middle Eastern markets. Optional: add a raw egg yolk (only the yolk; transfer the yolk between the two halves of the eggshell until the white is filtered out). Mix everything--butter, somagh, optional egg yolk--into the hot rice with your fork.
Get a piece of kabob--a skewer if grilled, a slice if baked--and lay that beside the rice. If you've made grilled vegetables, put a grilled onion and tomato on the other side of the rice.
After all this preamble, you'll be shocked at how easy it is to make the actual kabob. :D
1-1/2 pounds ground beef
1 large onion
baking soda
salt and pepper
This amount easily serves four people. You can scale it up or down as needed.
Grate the onion in a food processor until it looks as if it was grated on a grater. Put the grated onion inside a double layer of cheesecloth. Squeeze out as much onion juice as you can. Discard the juice, unless you want to use it for something else.
Get a pot or large bowl and dump the meat in it. The meat should not be extra lean; it needs some fat to cook properly.
Add the squeezed-out onion, about half a teaspoon of baking soda, and a generous amount of salt and pepper. Mix thoroughly with your clean hand (there is no other way to mix it).
Baking method: pat the meat mixture out inside a large baking pan, until it covers the entire bottom of the pan. It's okay if it's a thin layer; in fact it should not be too thick.
Start on high heat--425 degrees Fahrenheit or so. Bake it until the top is browned nicely and the meat is cooked through.
You may need to reduce the heat if it's browning too quickly, or broil it at the end if it's cooked through but not browned enough. If you're doing a thick layer, you can also cut it into several large slices and flip the slices over and brown the other side. Basically you are replicating the grilling process so don't be afraid to play around with the meat.
Once it's done--lift the meat out of the fat. That is very important. If it sits in the fat, it will absorb it.
Cut the meat into strips about an inch and a half wide. That's it!
Grilling method: Everything is the same except you pat the meat mixture around your flat skewers. It takes some time and patience to do this. You want to cover the grilling part of the skewer with a thin but solid layer of meat.
Brush vegetable oil on your grill and make sure it's hot before you start grilling.
Grill your kabob until the meat is cooked through.
 
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