Today we’re going to talk a bit about herbs. Cooking herbs! While the photo attached to this post certainly looks like something that’d get you detained in airport security, in reality, it’s a mixture of dried herbs, including parsley, leeks, chives, and fenugreek.
I love these particular sabzi herbs, which is what they’re collectively known as around my place. It’s also a tiny bit cool outside, perhaps one of our last cool days for a while. So I decided to see if I could whip up a treasured Persian stew, ghormeh sabzi, using my slow cooker. Cooking this particular stew on the stovetop can take two or more hours, so finding a shortcut is definitely in order. Some nights you need home-cooked food, not takeout Chinese.
For the record, the dish is also known as khormeh sabzi and Qormeh sabzi. (The transliteration into English from Farsi is what accounts for these variations). There are probably other spellings, too but these are the more commons ones.
Ghormeh sabzi is often called the national dish of Iran. Besides herbs, it’s typically made with chunks of lamb and/or veal. Wikipedia describes it thusly:
The main ingredients are a mixture of sauteed herbs, consisting mainly of parsley, leek, and a smaller amount of fenugreek leaves. The herb mixture has many variations; spinach and coriander may be added. This mixture is cooked with kidney beans, green onions, chives, dried limes, and lamb or veal meat. Traditional Tabrizi Qormeh sabzi is almost always cooked with lamb and uses black-eye beans (Lubia-e-Cheshm-bolboli Persian: لوبیای چشم بلبلی) in place of kidney beans. It is then served with polo (Persian rice).
Some prefer to leave out the fenugreek, while most people consider it to be an essential ingredient. The Shirazi version substitutes potatoes for the beans.
Ghormeh (and gheimeh) may refer to diced meat. Sabzi means green and also describes various green herbs.
Good ghormeh sabzi has layers of flavor. It is not bitter at all. Since this is all an experiment and the final product is many hours away, I’ll report back later. So far I know this much: The hands-on cooking and prep time for the slow cooker version of ghormeh sabzi was about 20 minutes.
Why not post the recipe straight away, you ask? First off, we have to make sure the slow cooker version is worth posting in the first place. I wouldn’t want to steer anyone wrong. So stay tuned.
Turkish coffee pudding looks scrumptious and the Muhamarra Dip is healthy and simply delicious. Take it from me! Very easy to follow recipes with great results! Wonderful take on the East meets West culture with the best of what Persia has to offer. Always a delightful, most insightful read and a blog I truly look forward to follow for every next treat that comes…
Thank you so much, Nicky. Your comments mean the world to me, especially considering what a talented cook and overall foodie you are 🙂
So was it worth cook it in crockpot?
Funny you should ask-I’m working on this recipe again today. It’s in the slow cooker as I type this. The first time around, I wasn’t happy with the slow cooker results. I’ll know later today if I am closer to a recipe that’s worth sharing. Thanks for stopping by. 🙂
Still haven’t gotten this recipe right, guys. But it will be cold for a few more months, so if I try to work on it at least once every couple of weeks, eventually I should have something good and workable figured out.
I just started to kick up my crockpot game, and was thinking about how Ghormeh Sabzi might turn out in it. Looks like it will work.
It might just work. Unfortunately, I haven’t hit on the right combination just yet. If you come up with something, please let me know.
Will do I will probably give it a test run and see how it works out. If it’s a success I will let you know.
Yes, do let me know!
I keep thinking ghorme sabzi SHOULD work in a crock pot .. did you figure out how?? And where can I get the spices, prepackaged, even better, that I can order online? I live in an area with no Persian grocery stores!
I’m still working on the crockpot sabzi recipe. Think I might be a step closer now, so stay tuned. As for shopping for Persian goodies online, Amazon has some things. A couple of other options, which I honestly haven’t used and thus can’t vouch for, are:
http://www.kalamala.com/
http://www.persiangrocery.com/
Kalustyan’s also has a site: http://www.kalustyans.com/
Make sure to compare prices, and feel free to drop a line to let me know your thoughts on these, or any other, online outlets.