KIBBEH - beautiful Lebanese meatballs
A popular national dish of Lebanon consisting of minced meat and bulgur-crushed wheat. At first glance, another typical dish of the poor people - generous, cheap, simple ingredients. Therein, however, lies the surprise…
Preparation steps
- crushed wheat - bulgur, cook in a ratio of 1 bulgur: 2, 5 water, about ten minutes until it absorbs all the water. Allow to cool
- lamb (veal) grind only once. Finely chop the red onion and mix into the meat. Add spices: salt, freshly ground pepper, nuts and a little cinnamon. Stir in the well-drained bulgur and season with a little olive oil.
- gild finely chopped red onion in olive oil, add the meat and simmer gently until it runs out of water. Add salt, pepper, quince, finely chopped parsley and mint
- take a lump of minced meat the size of an egg, make a flat surface on the palm of your left hand, put a teaspoon of stuffing on it and then squeeze in the shape of a lemon
- kibbeh can be baked in the oven for 200 for about 30 minutes or fried rolled in flour in deep oil. Remove to paper to remove excess grease
- eat these warm meatballs alone or (as shown in the picture) covered with tomato sauce
Serving
Instead of tomato sauce, kibbeh is also served in the famous yogurt sauce (or laban, an extraordinary sour milk). The meatballs are then placed in salted boiling water for about ten minutes and then transferred to heated sour milk with a strainer for another ten minutes. Sprinkle richly with parsley and mint. I was tempted to change or add something to the filling of these meatballs - cheese, ham, mortadella. It’s probably an equally good option, but then it wouldn’t be kibbeh meatballs. And they are unusually tasty like this, with slightly different tastes than the ones we are used to.
