Punjabi & North Indian · Starter
Mutton Seekh Kebab
- Advanced
- 45 min
- roughly 3 of 4 for cost
Leads with aromatics blooming from the first bite, richness that coats and comforts, on a slow, honest burn.
Ingredients
- 700 g mutton shoulder, trimmed and passed twice through the coarse plate
- 150 g mutton or lamb fat, minced with the second pass
- 100 g onion, chopped very fine and squeezed dry in muslin
- 25 g ginger and garlic, pounded to a paste and squeezed of excess water
- 3 green chillies, minced
- 20 g roasted chana dal, ground to a flour
- 3 g garam masala
- 3 g cumin seeds, dry roasted and ground
- 3 g deghi mirch
- 2 g black pepper, coarsely ground
- 2 g kasoori methi, crushed
- 15 g coriander leaves, chopped fine
- 10 g salt
- 30 g ghee, melted, for basting
Equipment
Grill · Mortar & pestle
The skills inside
Pounding a curry pasteGrilling over live coalsDry-pan toasting: spices, seeds and nutsSalting to draw the water outResting dough: the pause that does the work
The words inside
Allergen screen
Found: gluten · dairy
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
- Chill the meat and fat to just above freezing, then pass both through the coarse plate a second time so the fat runs evenly through the mince instead of sitting in lumps.
- Set the bowl over ice and knead the mince with the salt, onion, ginger garlic, chillies, chana dal flour and spices for 8 minutes, until the mass turns pale and tacky and lifts out in one piece that clings to an upturned palm. 8 min
- Rest it covered in the fridge 1 hour, then take a handful, press it onto a flat skewer from the middle outward with a wet hand and run a thumb down its length to leave ridges. 60 min
- Hang the skewers over hot coals without letting the meat touch them and leave them still for 4 minutes, until the surface sets matt and the kebab releases when you turn it. 4 min
- Rotate and baste with ghee for 6 minutes more, until the fat drips and hisses in the coals and juices run clear from a ridge. 6 min
How to tell it is going right
This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.
Pounding a curry paste 23 recipes
- Smeared thin across a pale surface it reads as one substance, edge to edge: no pale gritty specks standing proud of the smear, no shard that drags a line through it as the smear is pulled. Flecks mean something hard went in after something wet and skated instead of shattering.
- Rubbed between finger and thumb it feels like wet clay, dense and smooth, and takes the print of the thumb. Anything that rolls into a hard grain or grits like sand has not been broken down, and the order of work was wrong.
- The fibrous aromatics have surrendered: pinch a little and pull, and nothing draws out as a thread or a hair. Listen to the last minutes of work as well, which should be a dull wet slap in the mortar; a dry knock or rattle still present means hard pieces are being chased around rather than crushed.
- One even colour throughout when it is turned under the light, deep and saturated, with no marbling and no streak in which a single component can still be read. A dull grey cast over the surface says it was worked long past its point.
- Heaped up and left alone it stands in a soft peak and holds the mark of the pestle for a full minute: no clear or coloured liquid creeps out at the base, no oily film separates on top. It should also come to the pass cool, no warmer than about 25 C (77 F); a mortar warm to the back of the hand means friction has driven off the top aroma and the paste will smell flat.
Where it goes wrong Everything went into the mortar together, or the wet ingredients arrived before the hard, dry ones had been reduced to dust, so the moisture cushioned every blow and the hard pieces slid rather than broke. What comes to the pass is a wet mince rather than a paste: hard flecks and fibrous threads through a loose slurry, liquid weeping out of the heap within a minute, colour marbled instead of single, and on the plate it reads as separate raw items sitting next to each other rather than one flavour.
Salting to draw the water out 41 recipes
- Salted evenly over every surface rather than tipped on in one place and tossed once.
- Laid out so the water has somewhere to go: a colander, a rack, or a sieve over a bowl, never a flat dish where it sits back in what it gave up.
- Given real time, and there is visible liquid to show for it: a pool underneath, a drip, or a wrung handful.
- That liquid is removed. It is squeezed, blotted or poured away, and the food is dry to the touch before it goes anywhere near heat.
- The dish is seasoned knowing salt has already gone on, tasted before any more is added.
Where it goes wrong It went into the dish still wet, and was salted again out of habit. The water it was carrying dilutes and steams whatever it meets, so the result is watery and over-seasoned at once, and those are two faults that cannot be corrected in the same direction.
At the Table
- The Pour
- Off-dry Riesling (Mosel Kabinett)
- Also Right
- Gewürztraminer or off-dry Chenin
- From the Taps
- Crisp lager or pilsner
- Zero-Proof
- Agua fresca or iced jasmine tea
Sugar, cold, and low alcohol are the fire code: sweetness tames capsaicin while acid resets the palate; tannin would fan the flames.
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