Ramadan is on and there’s no better time to enjoy a dish to satisfy the whole family, and nothing hits the spot quite like a big dish of Baked Kibbeh and some homemade hummus to go with it!
But What Is Kibbeh?
If you’re already a fan, then we hope you enjoy it as much as we did, but if you aren’t familiar and are looking to expand your palette with new recipes, kibbeh is wide variety of Middle Eastern meat dishes. Depending on where you are in The Levant, they may make it different ways but for simplicity’s sake it’s kind of like a Mediterranean meatloaf, made with a choice of ground meats mixed with bulgur wheat and onions and stuffed with a mixture of pine nuts.
This is the perfect way to enjoy a big baking dish of amazing flavor and is perfect for serving hungry friends and family.
Gimme The Kibbeh
Jumping into a great place to start is by pureeing the onion in a food processor. You want this chopped incredibly fine, so if you have a small processor, use it. This helps the blades really chop it up nice and fine; we started ours in a large processor and needed to switch to a smaller one, so save yourself the headache and start small.
Once the onion is thoroughly chopped, toss it in a bowl with a mix of Midamars 80% lean and 93% lean ground beef. If you’re a fan of lamb, ground lamb works great for kibbeh as well, but we just stuck with the classic beef for this one.
The mixing of the kibbeh is where you can really make the recipe your own. The way we made ours may not be to your taste, and this is where you can adjust seasoning to your preference as you add hydrated bulgur wheat, salt, pepper, and orange zest to the beef and onion and get mixin’.
If you want to test your kibbeh before you commit to baking the whole thing, break off a small piece of the meaty mixture and pan-fry it. That will give you an idea of what your final dish will taste like, so don’t be afraid to adjust your seasoning. Our recipe provided is a pretty tasty jumping off point though!
The Kibbeh Filling
The kibbeh mixture might be tasty on its own, but it needs an equally tasty filling to go with it. Pan fry some pine nuts in some butter until they’re nice and golden. These will burn quickly so make sure to keep mixing. Then cook up some ground beef and some onion until thoroughly browned, mix in the nuts, and season with some salt and pepper and you’re all set.
Time To Build
Lay out half of the kibbeh in a sprayed baking dish and spread it over the bottom, then spread the filling over that, and top with the remaining kibbe. It’s that simple, the hardest part of this dish is getting the mixture right on the kibbeh, and you’re already done with that, you’re practically done already!
We scored the top of ours with a nice diamond pattern but that’s optional, just run a skewer or handle of a piece of silverware diagonally over top. The recipe is delicious, and now you can make it look just as nice when it comes out of the oven. And speaking of, toss this in the oven for an hour and you’re all done, but that’s the perfect chance to make the hummus.
How-To-Homemade-Hummus
In a large food processor (for real this time) blend some garbanzo beans with tahini, lemon juice, and a few cloves of crushed garlic. Blend it in batches, making sure you wipe down the edges of the processor each time so you don’t miss any chunks. We wanted a smoother consistency hummus, so we added olive oil to ours, which means we also needed to adjust the ingredients so it’s not overpowering.
