Jujeh Kabab

The marinade is onion, lemon and saffron and its own article names nothing else in it.

Chicken. Not vegetarian — contains chicken.

Ingredients

• 1.2 kg chicken, jointed into 5 cm pieces, on the bone, or 900 g boned thigh
• 2 onions, finely grated
• juice of 2 lemons
• 1 teaspoon saffron threads, ground and steeped in 4 tablespoons hot water
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 40 g butter, melted, for basting
• 4 tomatoes and 2 green peppers, to grill alongside

Method

1. THE MARINADE IS ONION, LEMON AND SAFFRON AND ITS OWN ARTICLE NAMES NOTHING ELSE IN IT. Minced onion, lemon juice, saffron. That is the list, and the restraint is the dish: saffron is the flavour you are meant to taste, lemon is there to carry it into the meat, and onion is there for sweetness and to hold moisture. Garlic, yogurt, turmeric, paprika and olive oil all turn up in versions of this and all of them bury the saffron, which is both the most expensive thing in the bowl and the whole reason the kebab is yellow.
2. THE SAFFRON IS GROUND AND STEEPED, NEVER DROPPED IN WHOLE. A teaspoon of threads ground to powder with a pinch of sugar, then four tablespoons of hot water for twenty minutes until the liquid is deep orange. Whole threads in a marinade give you yellow streaks where they touched and nothing anywhere else.
3. IT IS MARINATED FOR FOUR TO TWELVE HOURS, NOT LONGER. The lemon juice is working on the surface the whole time and past about twelve hours it has turned the outside of the chicken opaque and slightly chalky before it ever sees heat.
4. BONE-IN IS BETTER AND ITS ARTICLE ALLOWS BOTH. Pieces cut through the bone stay juicy over the fire because the bone slows the heat reaching the centre; boneless thigh is easier to eat and a little drier. Breast is the hardest to get right and is not what this is usually made from.
5. IT IS BASTED WITH SAFFRON BUTTER, AND ONLY AFTER THE FIRST TURN. Melted butter with a spoonful of the saffron water, brushed on after the chicken has taken colour on both sides. Brushed on at the start the butter burns and the saffron in it blackens.
6. MODERATE HEAT AND TWELVE TO FIFTEEN MINUTES. Hotter than that and the sugars in the onion marinade scorch before the chicken is done. Turn every three or four minutes.
7. IT IS SERVED TWO WAYS AND THEY ARE DIFFERENT OCCASIONS. Its article is good on this: on steamed rice in restaurants and at weddings, or wrapped in flatbread at home, at kebab shops, on picnics and packed for the road. The wrap is the everyday form.
8. THE PEPPERS AND TOMATOES GO ON THEIR OWN SKEWERS. Its article lists grilled tomatoes, peppers grilled or raw, and fresh lemon as the usual accompaniments. They cook at different rates from the chicken and want their own skewer.

Our own recipe. This one was written for this site rather than taken from anywhere, so there is no source to point you at. The quantities and the order of the steps are choices, not the only way to do it.

Filed under Iran · All recipes