Chapli Kebab

Most of this post was written in July 2020. I've chosen to leave most of the text the same and just add some updates.

Reading through my new favorite Afghan food blog, Afghan Culture Unveiled, I found a recipe that really intrigued me: chapli kebab. I had only eaten chapli kebab once before, back in 2009 at the Vendy Awards from the Biryani Cart. It was one of my favorite things from that awards day, but I was never able to get it again because they never had any when I went to the cart for lunches at work. I hadn't realized that they made chapli kebab in Afghanistan as well, but figured it might not be exactly the same as what I had since the folks behind the Biryani Cart weren't Afghan. (I think the main chef was a native of Bangladesh.) Some additional reading online informed me that chapli kebab originated from Peshawar, today northwest Pakistan, located right on the border of Afghanistan, so that makes a lot of sense.

The first chapli kebabs we ever had - a bit more orange/red than any recipes I've found online and have no idea how to make these!

Once I had my heart set on making chapli kebab, there were two hurdles. One, a lot of recipes use ground beef, which I don't really cook with. When I was planning this one out, we made a visit to one of the few stores in the area that sold Impossible Burger (2023 note: what a difference 2-3 years makes. Now in 2023, Impossible is everywhere and we buy it all the time), and I picked up a few packs. We'd tried Impossible Burger at a restaurant before, and it did taste remarkably like beef, so I thought maybe we could give it a try here and see how close it came to the real thing. The second hurdle was the egg being used as a binder. We had heard a lot about flax eggs but never tried them, so this seemed as good a time as any. (We might be on our third bag of ground flaxseed at this point in 2023 - lots of flax eggs have been made since then.) With those changes, the very meaty, burger-like chapli kebab turned into a vegan version in our kitchen.

The ingredients for our version of the chapli kebab were:

- 1 package of Impossible Burger ($8.99)
- 1/2 of a large bunch of scallions ($0.65)
- 1/2 of a small bunch of cilantro ($0.99)
- 1 flax egg ($0.08)
- salt and freshly ground black pepper ($0.03)
- garlic powder ($0.05)
- 3 cloves of garlic, finely chopped ($0.20)
- about 1 tsp dried ginger ($0.05)
- about 1 tbsp ground coriander ($0.40)
- a couple dashes of ground cinnamon ($0.08)
- about 1 tbsp of olive oil ($0.20)

The cost of the chapli kebab was about $11.72. It would have been a little over $7 if we had chosen to use ground turkey instead of Impossible Burger, but we really wanted to see how close it would come to tasting like beef. We, of course, finished it all, and it was just one component of a dinner that ended up costing approximately $20 (the final post on this dinner about spinach will have the breakdown).

The steps for making our chapli kebab were:

1. Prep - chop scallions, chop cilantro, chop garlic.

2. Mix together all ingredients in a large bowl. [Apparently, flax eggs take 5 minutes to make, which I didn't know in advance, so I mixed that in last.]

3. Knead the meat for 5 minutes.

4. Heat olive oil in large skillet. Roll the meat mixture into about 8 balls, and cook for a few minutes on each side until browned and cooked through.

I love ground meat dishes, and being able to use Impossible Burger, to not have to worry about various bacteria that hitch a ride on raw meat, to not have to worry about undercooking the meat, and to also know that it's better for the environment, has been great. I had made meatballs with it a couple of weeks earlier as a test run, and the things we liked and were amazed by then were still true here. How do they make soy taste like actual red meat? How do they make the product so that it gets that browning and charring just like actual meat does? Science is pretty incredible stuff.

Anyway, back to the chapli kebabs. They came out so well. The flavorings were excellent. They didn't stay together quite as well as they probably would have with an egg, but they were still really good. We ate them with some sliced up raw tomatoes and the naan (previously written about for the 52 week cooking challenge), just like in the recipe photo, and that was such a great combination. Such flavorful "meat" with refreshing tomatoes wrapped up in pillowy naan, what's not to love about that?

I guess I should ask B, because he ate maybe a third to a half of one kebab and didn't seem to like it very much. I don't know if it's because it did taste like meat (since he hadn't loved eating red meat in the past all the time), if it was because he found it too crumbly, if he wasn't in the mood for the spices today (even though he's had them before), if he was just too distracted by the more appealing (to him) bread and tomatoes, or if he was just being a toddler, but he wasn't a huge fan of it. (2023 note: I've tried it several times since then, and it seems very hit or miss for him still.) A and I really liked it though, constantly marveling at how it could possibly taste just like meat. I would make this again, maybe with Impossible Burger, maybe with ground chicken. (2023 note: It's been Impossible every time.) Happy to have found a good recipe for chapli kebab!