Hello friends!

Today I have a somewhat complicated but utterly delicious recipe for you and I promise it’s worth the effort. We will be making kabuli pulao! Yum! Kabuli pulao is a lamb and rice dish that is made in the Northwest of Pakistan and in Afghanistan. It is cooked by using traditional techniques and flavorful spices. Unlike it’s cousin, biryani, Kabuli pulao is not spicy and has a less competing flavors going on while being equally yummy. Growing up, we had Kabuli pulao on the regular. It is the perfect mellow food for kids to eat. This and some cold yogurt takes me back to my childhood.

Kabuli Pulao is not a one-step one and done dish, but requires a few steps – which is why I called it a dance! So clever. I am going to separate the dish into four areas: topping, meat, rice, and broth. When all four of those elements are made correctly and flavorful your end result can’t be anything but delicious.

The beauty of Kabuli Pulao comes with perfectly cooked rice grains that shine like little pearls and with meat so succulent that it melts in your mouth. With the steps that I am going to show you, this can be achieved.

Let’s get started.

Toppings

The toppings are my favorite part of Kabuli pulao which is why I am going to show you how to make them first. It’s great writing the recipes for this stuff!

First, we’ll need 1/3 of a cup of slivered almonds. You’ll want to put these into a dry pan and over medium heat, slowly toast them till they get a slight nutty brown color.

You’ll want to do the same with some pistachios as well. Reserve both of these in a bowl on the side.

Next, you’ll want to make the carrot and raisin topping.

Heat up a small frying pan with 2 teaspoons of vegetable oil.

Add in 1 cup of shredded carrots and cook on medium heat for 3-4 minutes. I would look for shredded carrots that are slightly thick – don’t get the grated carrots. I was intending to buy whole carrots and cut them into matchstick size shapes myself but I thankfully found them in the grocery store.

Add two teaspoons of sugar to the carrots so they slightly caramelize as they cook.

Add 1/3 cup of raisins, I’m using a great jumbo raisin variety from Trader Joe’s. They are awesome. Buy them if you can! Cook the raisins with the carrots.

As the raisins slightly plump up, crush 10 cardamom pods. You’ll use the cardamom throughout the dish.

As you crush the cardamom, take out the green husks so you’re only left with the cardamom caviar. I don’t know if its called cardamom caviar but thats what it looks like. Also you don’t have to be so accurate with the husks, if you leave a few bits its ok.

After the 3-4 minutes are up, reserve the carrot and raisin mixture to the side and sprinkle 1/4 teaspoon bruised cardamom to it.

And that’s it for the toppings!

Meat

For the meat, I chose to use a 3 lb. boneless leg of lamb. It is very readily available and has a good amount of fat distributed throughout the meat so I knew that it would be tender if I cooked it well. The only problem was that I had to cut the lamb myself. Buh.

So since my hands were dirty as I was working, I couldn’t take pictures. But you’ll want to take the netting off the lamb. If you are making a whole roasted leg of lamb you can keep the netting on btw. You’ll want to trim away as much of the fat as possible from the meat. I use a long sharp, serrated, bendable knife for this. I know those are a lot of characteristics for a knife, but its the best way I’ve found to slice away the fat quickly. You’ll want to portion the lamb into very large chunks. The lamb pieces will shrink as you cook them a little bit too so when you start off with 3 inch chunks, you’ll be left with good size pieces in the resulting pulao.

We will be pressure cooking the lamb – I am using my trusty Cuisinart Electric Pressure Cooker – and to start that process we will want to put in as much flavor as we can into the lamb and the resulting broth that will be used for the pulao.

Oh, did I mention that you will need a lot of pots for this dish? Sigh. Well, mostly because my pressure cooker is small and dark and I can’t see what’s going on in there.

In a sepearate pan, heat up 1/3 cup of vegetable oil and sautee about 3 cups of sliced onions over medium high heat, I used one and a half large white onions.

We are caramelizing the onions by doing this. This will help build the best flavor and color that we can for our broth! It takes about 15 minutes but it is worth it in the end.

I put my pressure cooker on the browning setting and when my onions were at the stage they are above I put the onions and the oil with it in the pressure cooker and allowed them to continue to caramelize as I got along with the meat.

For the meat, I added 1 teaspoon of salt directly to the meat on the cutting board. I’m using a plastic cutting board. Did you notice? I want to be able to bleach and clean the heck out of this.

I added 1/4 cup of vegetable oil to the same pan that I was frying the onions in and in batches I browned the meat. If you notice, I did not crowd the pan. I added the meat in a single layer with none of the meat overlapping each other. This is verryyyy important. You don’t want steamed grey meat for your pulao. Well I don’t, and this is how you can ensure that that doesn’t happen.

After four minutes or so of browning – don’t move the meat once it’s in the pot! – take some tongs and flip it over and let it brown on the other side. That beautiful crust is flavor.

After the other side has finished browning, move this batch of meat into the pressure cooker to continue to brown with the onions and work on the rest of the lamb, batch by batch, until all the meat is perfectly crusty and brown.

To the pressure cooker, add in some whole spices. I added in seven cloves, two large black cardamom pods, seven green cardamom pods, a two-inch piece of cinnamon, and one and a half teaspoons of toasted cumin seeds. I toast the seeds by putting some in a dry pan and roasting them over medium heat until they become fragrant, about 3 minutes.

I put all the spices in a mortar and pestle – did you notice I have one that I use only for green cardamom and one I use for other spices, garlic, and ginger? – and slightly bruise and grind them and then add this to the pressure cooker with the meat.

Also add in 3 smashed garlic cloves.

Add in 1/2 teaspoon of salt and five to six cups of water. You’ll want to just cover the meat in your pressure cooker. Put the pressure cooker on high and cook for 30 minutes.

After 30 minutes, you’ll want to turn the pressure cooker off and either let it naturally release the steam or do what I did and release it manually. Don’t get in front of that steam though!

Check your meat so that it is perfectly cooked, tender and flavorful. This is where you can correct the meat for the final dish if you need to.

With some tongs, remove the meat and set it aside on a plate.

Reserve the broth for later.

Rice

So far we have carrots and meat. That’s not Kabuli pulao. Let’s add rice to the mix. For Kabuli pulao, you want a grain of rice that has the least amount of starch in it as you can, and for that we use a basmati rice – as opposed to a sushi rice that’s super sticky. We are not only using basmati rice, we are going to use sela rice.

Sela rice is a parboiled rice that results in an extra long grain. It is sometimes difficult to find, but you can call your local Indian or Pakistani grocer and see if they sell it. I prefer using this for pulaos because the rice stays perfectly separated and long. Sela rice needs to be soaked for quite a while before cooking. I cleaned and soaked four cups of rice in 6 cups of water (or enough to cover the rice in the bowl by one inch) for four hours.

After four hours.

Crazy different, huh? This is why it’s necessary to soak rice.

In a large pot, bring water to a boil. We will be cooking the rice like you cook pasta. Boiling and straining.

Add in 3 tablespoons of kosher salt to the water. Just like with pasta, you want to flavor the rice as your cooking it.

Add in the drained rice and cook until the rice is 75% done. I don’t know how long this is exactly, but you will honestly have to keep taking out rice kernels and bite down on it to see how hard it is. That’s what I have to do too since it varies on so many things. It roughly takes 7-10 minutes though.

After the rice is 75% cooked, strain the rice.

Broth

The broth is what will bring the Kabuli pulao together. We’re almost at the finish line guys, can you feel it??

Take two cups of the broth made from the lamb and keep it aside.

In a dry saucepan set over medium heat, slowly caramelize 3 teaspoons of sugar. You don’t want to use a spoon or anything to stir, just swirl the pan as it heats up.

After it reaches a slightly caramelized color, add in the stock and cook this adding in 1 teaspoon of the ground cardamom – remember those beauties? – and two teaspoons of garam masala powder.

Stir this, check for salt and now we’re ready to assemble!

Assembly

Place the 75% cooked rice in large pot that has a tight fitting lid.

Strain the broth over the rice.

Add another sprinkle (1/4 teaspoon) of garam masala and cardamom on top of the rice.

Mix the broth with the rice so that each grain is covered.

In a single layer, place the reserved meat over the rice.

Then add on the reserved carrots and raisins.

Heat up one teaspoon of vegetable oil in a pan until it is smoking hot.

Sprinkle the oil over the rice and use the back of a wooden spoon and create holes to allow the rice to steam.

Cover your pot with a clean kitchen towel.

Cook this on medium high for 5 minutes, medium for 5 minutes, low for 5 minutes, then turn it off and let it sit for 5 minutes. You just want to gradually build up steam then allow it to permeate into all the layers of the pulao.

Your patience will be rewarded with this.

Told you it was worth it.

Take the carrot and raisin mixture out and set it on a plate.

Do the same with the meat.

On a large platter, sprinkle 75% of the rice, then place the meat on, then cover with the remaining 25% of the rice and top with the carrots, raisins, and the reserved almonds and pistachios.

It was so good!

I hope you guys try this out! It takes some time but its definitely an impressive dish!

Xo,

Rehana

