Show the Working

Soğan Kebabı

The onions outnumber the meat and are the point, cooked until they are sweet rather than soft.

Lamb. Not vegetarian — contains lamb.

Ingredients

Method

  1. THE ONIONS OUTNUMBER THE MEAT AND ARE THE POINT. One point two kilos of onion to four hundred grams of lamb, which is three to one by weight and looks like an error on the list. It is the dish: this is an onion dish with lamb in it, not a kebab with onions threaded between. Every other kebab here uses onion as a marinade or a garnish. Here the skewers are mostly onion halves with small patties of meat between them, and what people remember is the onion -- charred at the cut faces and collapsing sweet inside.
  2. THEY ARE COOKED UNTIL SWEET, WHICH IS LONGER THAN UNTIL SOFT. Twenty to twenty-five minutes over moderate embers, turned often, which is twice as long as a meat skewer needs. An onion is soft at ten minutes and still tastes raw and sulphurous; by twenty its sugars have caramelised and it tastes of almost nothing else. The meat therefore has to survive that long, which is why there is tail fat in it.
  3. THE FIRE IS MODERATE, NOT FIERCE, FOR THE SAME REASON. Over hot embers the cut faces are black at six minutes and the centres are still raw. A hand should be bearable above the coals for four or five seconds -- cooler than a lamb şiş wants.
  4. THE ONIONS GO ON CUT FACE DOWN FIRST AND ARE NOT MOVED. Four or five minutes on that face without touching them, so the sugars catch and a dark crust forms. Turned early or often at the start, they steam and go translucent without ever browning.
  5. THE POMEGRANATE MOLASSES GOES ON AT THE END AND NOT INTO THE MARINADE. Brushed over in the last two minutes and again off the heat. It is largely sugar and will burn black over twenty minutes; added late it glazes and its sourness cuts all that onion sweetness, which otherwise becomes cloying by the third skewer.
  6. The onions peeled and HALVED through the root, so each half holds together.
  7. The lamb and tail fat chopped BY HAND and mixed with the cumin, salt and pepper. Formed into small flat patties about 3 cm across.
  8. The onion halves tossed with the olive oil.
  9. Threaded onto FLAT skewers, alternating: two onion halves, a patty, two onion halves, and so on. Mostly onion.
  10. The charcoal burned down to MODERATE embers -- a hand bearable above them for 4 or 5 seconds.
  11. The skewers laid on with the onion CUT FACES DOWN and LEFT 4 to 5 MINUTES without moving.
  12. Turned, and then turned every 3 or 4 minutes.
  13. Cooked 20 to 25 MINUTES in all -- far longer than a meat skewer.
  14. TESTED: an onion half should be collapsing and taste SWEET, with dark charred faces. Soft but sharp means longer.
  15. The pomegranate molasses brushed over in the LAST 2 MINUTES.
  16. Brushed again off the heat, and served on flatbread with the pan juices.

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 Turkey · All recipes