Kabab Barg

The meat is cut into thin strips, which is what barg means, and marinated in olive oil rather than yogurt.

Beef, Lamb. Not vegetarian — contains beef, lamb.

Ingredients

• 800 g beef tenderloin, or lamb sirloin
• 2 onions, grated
• 4 cloves garlic, crushed
• 100 ml olive oil
• 1/2 teaspoon saffron threads, ground and steeped in 3 tablespoons hot water
• 1 1/2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper
• 4 tomatoes, to grill alongside
• sumac, to serve

Method

1. THE MEAT IS CUT INTO THIN STRIPS, WHICH IS WHAT BARG MEANS, AND MARINATED IN OLIVE OIL RATHER THAN YOGURT. Barg is leaf, and the cut is the name: tenderloin sliced across into pieces about a centimetre thick and the length of your palm, then flattened a little under the heel of your hand. Its article gives the marinade exactly -- olive oil, onion, garlic, saffron, salt and black pepper -- and there is no dairy in it at all. Oil carries the saffron into the surface of the meat and lets it take a hard sear; yogurt, which another Iranian kebab on this site uses, sets into a pale skin and steams instead.
2. IT IS A PRIME CUT AND IT IS NOT MEANT TO BE TENDERISED. Beef tenderloin or lamb sirloin, which its article names, and chicken breast less often. These cuts are tender already, so the marinade is there for flavour and the time is short -- two to four hours, not overnight. Left a day in onion and oil the strips go soft and mealy.
3. THE ONION IS GRATED AND ITS JUICE IS USED. Unlike the minced kebabs, where onion water has to be squeezed out, here the whole grated onion goes into the marinade liquid. It is a wet marinade for solid pieces of meat, so there is nothing to destabilise.
4. THE STRIPS ARE THREADED FLAT ALONG THE SKEWER, NOT BUNCHED. Pierce each strip two or three times so it lies flat against a flat skewer with no folds. Bunched meat steams in its own creases and comes out grey in the middle.
5. IT IS SEARED FAST OVER FIERCE HEAT AND COMES OFF PINK. Two to three minutes a side on a hot charcoal bed, and that is all. It is a lean prime cut; cooked through it is dry and there is no fat in it to forgive you.
6. THE TOMATOES ARE GRILLED SEPARATELY AND THAT IS DELIBERATE. Its article says so. Whole tomatoes on their own skewers take longer than the meat and collapse if they share a skewer with it, and their juice running over the meat prevents the sear.
7. SUMAC AT THE TABLE, NOT IN THE MARINADE. Its article notes the tomatoes are sometimes seasoned with sumac. It is sour and dusty and it works as a dressing on cooked meat; in a marinade it just tints everything pink.
8. ONE SKEWER OF THIS AND ONE OF MINCED KEBAB IS A NAMED ORDER. Its article records the combination as soltani, a meal in the style of a sultan, and with a chicken skewer added as well it becomes shah abbasi. Both are plates assembled from other pages here rather than dishes in their own right.

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