Kabab Torsh

The marinade is a thick paste of crushed walnuts and pomegranate juice rather than a liquid.

Chicken, Beef. Not vegetarian — contains beef, chicken.

Ingredients

• 800 g beef sirloin or tenderloin, in 4 cm cubes, or chicken thigh
• 200 g walnuts, very finely crushed
• 200 ml pomegranate juice, unsweetened
• 60 g parsley, finely chopped
• 6 cloves garlic, crushed
• 4 tablespoons olive oil
• 2 teaspoons salt
• 1 teaspoon ground black pepper

Method

1. THE MARINADE IS A THICK PASTE OF CRUSHED WALNUTS AND POMEGRANATE JUICE RATHER THAN A LIQUID. Its article gives it exactly: crushed walnuts, pomegranate juice, chopped parsley, olive oil and crushed garlic. Two hundred grams of walnuts crushed almost to a butter, let down with the juice to something like double cream, and the meat turned through it until every face is coated in a layer you could scrape off with a finger. This behaves differently from a wet marinade: the paste clings, the walnut oil carries the flavour in, and on the fire the coating itself toasts and becomes part of what you eat.
2. THE WALNUTS MUST BE CRUSHED FINE, NOT CHOPPED. Pounded in a mortar or run in a processor until they are oily and beginning to clump. Chopped walnuts sit on the outside in pieces, fall off on the grill and burn in the coals.
3. THE POMEGRANATE JUICE IS UNSWEETENED AND THAT IS WHAT TORSH MEANS. Torsh is sour. Juice with sugar in it, or pomegranate molasses used neat, makes a sticky sweet glaze and the name stops being true of the dish.
4. IT IS MARINATED OVERNIGHT, LONGER THAN THE OIL-BASED KEBABS. Twelve to twenty-four hours in the fridge. The paste is thick and works slowly, and the walnut needs time to give up its oil into the meat.
5. THE LOCAL HERB THAT DEFINES IT IS NOT AVAILABLE HERE AND IS NOT GUESSED AT. Its article is blunt about this: the most important point in preparing this kebab is a local plant called chochagh, similar to Eryngium planum, which it says gives the dish its particular taste and is grown only locally. There is no stated substitute, so this page does not offer one -- made without it you have the walnut and pomegranate kebab without the one herb its article says matters most, and that is worth knowing rather than papering over.
6. CUBES, NOT STRIPS, AND THEY GO ON ROUND SKEWERS. Four centimetres, which is big enough to stay rare in the middle while the paste colours outside.
7. MODERATE CHARCOAL, AND IT IS WATCHED. Its article says charcoal, and the coating makes the heat matter: walnut oil and fruit sugar both catch quickly. A grey-ash bed, ten to twelve minutes, turned every couple of minutes.
8. IT IS EATEN WITH STICKY RICE, NOT STEAMED RICE. Its article places it in Gilan and Mazandaran and pairs it with kateh, the undrained rice, as on its own page, and a spread of Gilani side dishes -- not with the long-grain steamed rice the Tehran kebabs come with.

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