Loobia Polo

The meat and beans are cooked to a finished stew before any rice touches them.

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

Ingredients

• 500 g long-grain white rice
• 3 tablespoons salt, for the soaking and parboiling water
• 500 g braising beef or lamb shoulder, in 2 cm dice
• 400 g green beans, topped and cut into 3 cm lengths
• 2 onions, finely sliced
• 1 teaspoon turmeric
• 2 tablespoons tomato purée
• 1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon saffron threads, ground and steeped in 3 tablespoons hot water
• 100 ml sunflower oil

Method

1. THE MEAT AND BEANS ARE COOKED TO A FINISHED STEW BEFORE ANY RICE TOUCHES THEM. The order in its own article is exact and it is the dish: onion softened with a little turmeric, then the diced beef or lamb mixed in, then the green beans sautéed separately and added with salt and pepper, then the tomato, saffron and cinnamon. That mixture is complete -- tasted, seasoned, nothing raw in it -- before it is layered with half-cooked rice and steamed. Put raw meat in with parboiled rice and the fifty minutes of steam will neither brown it nor tenderise it, and the pot ends up grey and watery.
2. THE BEANS ARE FRIED SEPARATELY AND THEN ADDED. In a dry wide pan with a little oil until they blister and take some colour, six or seven minutes. Added raw to the stewing meat they go khaki and squeak; fried first they keep a bite through the long steam that follows.
3. THE ONION IS COOKED SLOWLY AND THE TURMERIC IS A TOUCH. Two sliced onions in oil over a medium-low heat for fifteen minutes until gold and collapsed, then one teaspoon of turmeric for thirty seconds. Its article says a touch of turmeric, and that is right: more makes the whole dish bitter and sets it a flat mustard colour.
4. THE STEW IS SIMMERED UNTIL THE MEAT GIVES, THEN REDUCED DRY. Add the tomato purée and cook it out for two minutes, then water barely to cover, and an hour and a quarter at a bare simmer. Add the beans, the cinnamon and half the saffron water, and cook uncovered until almost no liquid is left. A wet mixture will turn the rice to porridge from the inside.
5. THE RICE IS PARBOILED ONLY HALF-WAY. Rinsed, soaked two hours in cold salted water, drained, then six minutes in hard-boiling salted water -- its article says half-cooked rice and it means it. This pot steams for longer than a plain polo because the stew layers hold heat badly, and rice parboiled to the usual eight minutes finishes soft.
6. IT IS LAYERED, AND THE TOP AND BOTTOM ARE BOTH RICE. Oil in the pot, a layer of rice, then stew, then rice, then stew, finishing with rice heaped into a cone. Stew against the base will catch and burn before the steam has done anything.
7. FIFTY-FIVE MINUTES UNDER A CLOTH-WRAPPED LID ON THE LOWEST HEAT. Five minutes on medium first to raise the steam. Remaining saffron water over the top before the lid goes on.
8. IT CAN BE MADE AS AN ABSORPTION RICE INSTEAD, AND THEN IT IS A DIFFERENT DISH. Its article notes it is also made with rice cooked in the kateh style -- undrained and sticky. That version is a one-pot weekday thing where the grains cling together; this page is the layered one.

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