Armenian · Main
Khorovats
- Intermediate
- 30 min
- roughly 1 of 4 for cost
Leads with acid holding everything up to the light, char used as punctuation, lifted green at the very end.
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg pork neck, in 5 cm cubes with the fat left on
- 3 onions, about 450 g
- 20 g salt
- 2 tsp coarse black pepper
- 2 tbsp sumac
- 1 bunch flat parsley
- lavash, to serve
Equipment
Grill
The skills inside
Allergen screen
None found among the 14 screened.
Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.
Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.
Method
- Grate one onion and squeeze its juice over the pork, add the salt and pepper, turn it by hand and leave it somewhere cool for 2 hours. 120 min
- Burn hardwood or vine cuttings down until no flame is left and the coals are grey over an orange core: a hand held a palm above the grill should be uncomfortable within 3 seconds.
- Wipe every trace of onion off the cubes so it cannot burn, then thread them onto flat skewers with a rim of fat facing outward, a finger of space between pieces.
- Grill over the embers, turning a quarter turn each time the fat begins to drip and hiss, until the crust is mahogany and the centre reads 70C (158F), about 20 minutes. 20 min
- Slice the remaining onions thin, toss them with the sumac and torn parsley, and slide the meat straight off the skewers onto them.
- Cover the bowl for 5 minutes, then serve from it, wrapped in lavash that has caught the juices. 5 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the technique it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Grilling over live coals 77 recipes
- The fire was ready before the food was: coals evenly covered in grey ash with no flames licking through and no raw smoke coming off, and a hot zone and a cooler one both available.
- The grate was hot and clean when the food landed, and the food released cleanly from it when the time came to turn rather than tearing away.
- Marks are browned, not burnt: deep colour where the metal touched, with no carbon flaking off and no soot transferred onto the food.
- The interior reaches its target with a thin gradient, not charred outside and cold within, and not driven through by a flare-up.
- What comes off the fire smells of fire and food only: no raw wood smoke, no fuel, nothing acrid at the back of the nose.
Where it goes wrong It went on over live flames instead of settled coals, so the outside charred bitter in the flare-ups while the middle stayed cold, and everything on the plate tastes of soot.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Riesling or Grenache
- Also Right
- Cru Beaujolais
- From the Taps
- Farmhouse saison
- Zero-Proof
- Cloudy apple juice, chilled
Pork loves fruit and gentle sweetness: orchard-note whites and low-tannin reds flatter it where heavy oak flattens.
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