Photo: Kdryldz14 · CC BY-SA 4.0
İskilip Dolması (Rice Steamed in a Cloth Bag over Lamb Broth)
Rice from İskilip in Çorum, Turkey: fried in animal fat with onion, tied into a cloth bag and set on a trivet inside a pot of simmering lamb broth, where it cooks overnight in the steam alone. The rice never touches the liquid. To serve, the meat goes on top and the broth is poured over. A registered geographical indication and a wedding dish.
Ingredients
- Meat
- bone-in lamb shoulder · in large pieces1.2 kg
- water2 l
- salt1 tsp
- Rice
- rice · medium or short grain400 g
- butter · or half lamb tail fat60 g
- onion · finely chopped1
- salt1 tsp
- black pepper0.5 tsp
- Equipment
- cotton cloth or muslin · boiled first, big enough for the rice to triple1
- steamer rack or trivet · tall enough to stand above the broth1
- flour-and-water dough · enough to seal the lid1 handful
Steps
- ⏲ 15 min
Bring the lamb, water and salt to the boil in a large pot, skim off the scum as it rises and turn the heat down low.
- ⏲ 30 min
Wash the rice until the water runs clear, soak it 30 minutes and drain.
- ⏲ 5 min
Melt the butter in a pan, fry the onion golden, add the rice and fry 5 minutes until the edges of the grains turn translucent. Season with salt and pepper (cooking rice).
Tip the fried rice into the middle of the cloth, gather the corners and tie them loosely, leaving room for the rice to triple.
Stand the rack in the pot and set the bag on it. The bag must not touch the broth; if it does, ladle some off (steaming).
- ⏲ 180 min
Put the lid on and seal the rim with the dough, leaving one gap a finger wide. Leave it over the lowest heat for 3 hours.
Break off the dough, lift out the bag and turn the rice out onto a large platter. Take the lamb off the bone, pull it into large pieces and lay it over the rice.
Ladle a little broth over the rice and serve the rest on the side.
Variations
- Three courses. The leftover meat broth becomes a noodle soup served first, and a flour halva made with milk follows as dessert.
- In the oven. The sealed pot can go into a 150°C oven instead.
More detail and the reasons why (1)
- At feast scale. Made in a cauldron about a metre high and across, with 20kg of meat, 5kg each of butter and olive oil and 25kg of rice, it feeds around 150 people. At weddings and circumcision feasts cooks called dolmacı tend it through the night.
Tips
- Keep the bag out of the broth. The rice cooks in steam alone.
- Tie the bag loosely. The rice needs room to swell.
- Seal the lid but leave one gap. That is where the steam gets out.
- Fry the rice in fat first.
More detail and the reasons why (1)
- Rice with no water to measure. The water that cooks it is the steam rising from the broth below, and all that touches the grain is that steam and the fat it was fried in. As cooking rice puts it, fat on the grain slows the water getting in. The pot used for couscous also sets the grain over a stew to take up its aroma, and biryani also seals its pot with dough. İskilip dolması keeps the rice and the meat apart until they meet on the platter.
The basics behind this dish
- Browning and the Maillard ReactionMeat fails to brown for one of three reasons: it is wet, the pan is cool, or you put too much in at once. Plus how the brown film stuck to the pan becomes your sauce.
- Cooking Meat: Temperature, Resting, and Cutting Against the GrainDoneness is a core temperature, not a number of minutes. What resting actually does, how to handle a thick cut, and why the direction you slice changes the texture.
- Knife Skills: Grip, Cuts, and Why Size MattersHow you hold the knife matters more than how fast you cut. The pinch grip, the claw hand, and why uniform size is a cooking decision rather than a cosmetic one.
More of the same kind
More from this country
Sign in to edit.
Written with AI · how we check it · Edit history
https://cookiki.com/en/r/iskilip-dolmasi · cookiki · User contributions are licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0.