160. Lyulya-kebab with pickled onion (Azerbaijani recipe)

After several recipes with pork, let's move on to more traditional dishes. Under the cut today is a dish traditional for the people of the Caucasus that resembles both cutlets and shashlik at once — lyulya-kebab. These days lyulya-kebab is made not only from lamb but from other kinds of meat, from poultry and even from walnuts, but we'll stick to the authentic recipe. The recipe also comes with a step-by-step method for making pickled onion

Cooking time ≈ 45 minutes.

Ingredients:

• 600 g minced meat
• 2 large onions
• Vinegar
• Ground cumin, khmeli-suneli, ground black pepper, parsley, ginger, nutmeg, salt, paprika and dill to taste

The mince needs to be salted, kneaded and mixed with the spices (but don't overdo it — people usually manage with a minimum of spices and add more salt and pepper). The mince has to be kneaded very thoroughly, so that the protein comes out of the pieces of meat and the mince becomes sticky and dense.

Shape the mince into sausages 10–20 cm long.

If you're going to cook the lyulya-kebab over coals, you need to thread the meat onto skewers; if in a frying pan, roll it lightly in flour.

Fry in vegetable oil until done (about 7 minutes).

While the lyulya-kebab itself is cooking, let's pickle the onion. Cut it into thin rings and scald it with boiling water (to take the bitterness away). Cover it with vinegar, add pepper and leave it in a covered dish for half an hour.

Lyulya-kebab is traditionally served with herbs, pickled onion and lavash (which is why adding herbs to the mince itself makes little sense). You can also serve narsharab as a sauce — pomegranate juice boiled down to 1/3 of its original volume.

Bon appétit!