Persian Recipes that You Can Make at Home
Let’s imagine a picture. You’re in your home, there’s a scent of saffron, butter, and perfectly cooked white rice in the air. Sounds too good.
Most Persian dishes are traditionally served with rice. Afterward, move on to the iconic chicken kebab, Joojeh, and we’ll finish it off with Tahchin, a crispy saffron rice cake that is delicious. All of these dishes are relatively simple in their technique and ingredients but still hold their own against the more complicated dishes like Ghormeh Sabzi and Fesenjan, two legendary Persian stews. Hopefully, after trying the food in this article, you’d want to explore all the wonders of Persian Cuisine.
Persian Rice
Everyone loves rice, and everyone has their way to make it. Local people usually make it the old-fashioned way in Iran, but a good quality rice cooker will get the job done with no issues.
Generally, there are three main ways to cook rice in Iran: Chelow, Polow, and Kateh.
Chelow is the classic white rice, that is usually served with saffron, and is a staple of every Persian restaurant in the world. It goes great with all kinds of kebabs and stews. It takes a bit more work than Kateh, and cooking a perfect Chelow will earn you the respect of any Iranian cook. In Chelow, the rice cooks in two steps, first by boiling in water and then draining and steaming. The first phase is reminiscent of cooking pasta, and you do not want the rice to cook further than al dente during this step. In the second phase, fat (usually in the form of oil and butter) and saffron are added to the rice. A clean kitchen towel wrapped around the lid helps with the steaming.
Persian Rice
Kateh is plain white rice cooked in boiling water until all the water is gone. This is the way it’s usually done in the north of Iran, and it’s a great substitute for Chelow. You won’t get Tahdig this way (other than plain crispy rice), but the result is softer and way quicker than Chelow.
Polow is white rice cooked, drained, and then mixed with other, generally pre-cooked ingredients. Polow is a general term for any meal that is rice mixed with other ingredients then cooked, i.e., rice cooked with lentils (or “Adas” as we call them in Farsi) is Adas Polow. If you’ve heard of Pilaf, this is the Iranian way of doing it.
Tahdig means the bottom of the pot. Most of the time when we cook rice in Iran, and sometimes when we cook other stuff like pasta, we put a layer of ingredients at the bottom of the pot. The result is a crispy, almost deep-fried layer of goodness. You can make Tahdig out of anything if you’re creative enough, but the most popular choices are lavash (which is an Iranian flat bread), slices of potatoes, and a mixture of rice, eggs, saffron, and yogurt.
Chicken Kebab
Joojeh Kabab (Chicken Kebab)
There are many different variants of chicken kebab all over the Middle East, Joojeh is the Persian way to do it, which directly translates to chick or chicken in Farsi. This is the basic way to do Joojeh, but you can add other spices and ingredients to your taste
Ingredients:
- 500 g Chicken (thigh or breast), cut into the desired size for your grill/oven
- 2 Medium Onions, sliced
- 1 Lime
- 2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil
- 2 Tbsp Yoghurt (Use the yogurt that tastes the best to you, but preferably a tangy one)
- 1/4 Tsp Turmeric
- Pinch of Saffron
- Salt
- Black Pepper
Directions:
- Grind your saffron with a bit of coarse salt until it turns into a fine powder.
- Add a couple of tablespoons of boiling water to the powder, mix to dissolve the saffron, and give a couple of minutes to bloom.
- Add the Yoghurt and turmeric to a bowl, then zest and juice the lime, and add both to the bowl.
- Add the saffron water and the oil, then mix till smooth.
- Season the chicken with a fair amount of salt and some black pepper, it is easier to control the amount of seasoning when I season the chicken and not the marinade, but feel free to add the salt and pepper to the marinade if you feel like you know how much you need.
- Add the onion and the chicken to the marinade. Mix thoroughly until each chicken piece is well coated.
- Marinade for a minimum of 1h and up to 24h in the fridge.
- Grill the chicken. This step is traditionally done on a charcoal grill with metal skewers, but you can use the oven or any other kind of grill that you have available.
- This step is optional and not necessarily traditional, but you can fry the remainder of the marinade and turn the waste into delicious and tangy caramelized onions.
Tahchin
Tahchin (Saffron Rice Cake)
Do you like Tahdig that’s made out of rice, saffron, eggs, and yogurt? Add chicken (or any other ingredients that you like, like ground beef and eggplants, or even nothing at all) and it’s a whole meal now! Add barberries sautéed in butter and you got yourself a dish that you won’t forget. As with our Joojeh, this is an awesome, but pretty basic Tahchin. You can add ingredients that you like, a personal favorite of mine is shallot powder in the eggs and yogurt mix, and a lot of people like to add a bit of rose water.
Ingredients:
- 1 skinless bone-in chicken breast or thigh
- 1 Medium Onion, sliced in half and peeled
- 1 Clove of garlic, smashed and peeled
- 3 Cups Rice
- 1 Cup Yoghurt (Choose a relatively thick yogurt, but not drained or Greek, although any kind would do in a pinch.)
- 2 Eggs
- 50 g Butter
- ½ Cup Dry Barberries [Optional, but highly recommended]
- 2 Tbsp Vegetable Oil
- 1 Tsp Turmeric
- ½ Tsp Cinnamon
- 1 Tbsp Sugar
- A pinch of Saffron
- A pinch of Cayenne Pepper
- Black Pepper, to taste
- Salt, to taste
Directions:
- Add the chicken, onion, garlic, turmeric, cinnamon, cayenne pepper, black pepper, salt, and water to a pot and bring to a boil. Bring it down to a simmer when it boils and cook until it’s done, but try not to overcook the chicken because it will cook further in the next steps. It’s best to choose thigh for this very reason, because thighs get tender when they cook, while breasts get firm. Take the chicken out and put it aside so it cools down. You can cut it in half so it cools down faster. Take the remaining solids out of the liquids in the pot and throw it away, you can use the remaining liquid as stock for soups or any other recipe that would appreciate these flavors.
- Wash and rinse your rice thoroughly, until the water you’re pouring out is almost clear. Add water and salt and cook until al-dente. Drain and put aside to cool down a bit.
- Grind your saffron with a bit of coarse salt until it turns into a fine powder.
- Add a couple of tablespoons of boiling water to the powder, mix to dissolve the saffron, and give a couple of minutes to bloom.
- saute the dry barberries in the butter until they are puffed up and shiny, about 2-3 minutes, then take off the heat to cool down. Add the remaining butter to the rice
- Shred the cooled-down chicken, or dice it into 1 ½ inch pieces.
- Whisk the eggs until they are mixed. Add yogurt, saffron water, salt, pepper, and sugar, then whisk. Add the slightly cooled-down rice (so that you wouldn’t cook the eggs accidentally) and mix with a wooden spoon.
- Add the vegetable oil to a nonstick pot, and grease the wall thoroughly, just like a cake pan. Add a layer of the rice mixture, around a third of it, to the bottom of the pot and press it with a wooden spoon, build a firm ground floor.
- Add the barberries and the chicken to the rice and mix them. Add the result to the pan in heaps and press in between each addition. We want the result to hold its structure.
- Wrap a clean kitchen towel around the lid of the pot, put the lid on, and put the pot on low heat for 50-60 minutes, depending on the pot and the heat. You will know when it’s done when the edges turn golden brown and the distance from the walls.
- When it’s done, run a spatula through the wall of the pot just like a cake, and reverse it into a plate.