Exit cook Mansaf: National Dish of Jordan / Festive Palestinian Lamb
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Mansaf: National Dish of Jordan / Festive Palestinian Lamb

Step 1 of 4 ·
Serves 4

Ingredients

· · ·

Method

  1. 1
    Soak the jameed balls in warm water, breaking and stirring them repeatedly so the dense, dried curd gradually surrenders its salt and flavour into the water rather than staying locked in hard pockets. Keep working the liquid until it is smooth and pourable, a uniform pale amber with no lumps remaining — this is the foundation of the sauce, and grit or undissolved curd here will carry through to the finished dish.
  2. 2
    Place the bone-in lamb pieces in a pot, pour over the reconstituted jameed sauce, and bring it to the gentlest possible simmer, keeping the heat low throughout so the sauce tightens slowly into a glossy, cohesive body without separating. This is where the dish lives or dies: a rolling boil will break the emulsion of fat and fermented whey, leaving you with a grainy, split liquid that cannot be recovered. Braise until the lamb yields at the bone and the sauce coats the back of a spoon with a deep, glistening sheen.
  3. 3
    Cook the rice separately in well-salted water so it absorbs seasoning evenly as it swells, rather than tasting flat against the sharp, savoury jameed. Drain it as soon as each grain is tender and distinct, before the starches soften further and the grains clump.
  4. 4
    Line a large communal platter with the flatbread, then pile the rice over it and arrange the braised lamb on top, so each layer is ready to receive the sauce. Ladle the jameed sauce generously over everything so it soaks down through the rice and into the bread, which acts as a sponge and becomes as important to eat as the lamb itself — the platter is right when the bread is saturated, the rice glistens, and the surface of the lamb shines.
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HACCP Brief — Codex Alimentarius CXC 1-1969 Mansaf: National Dish of Jordan / Festive Palestinian Lamb
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