London Kabuli Pilau with Smoked Beef Short-Rib by Mursal Saiq

This is my British barbecue take on Afghanistan’s national dish. Merging British flavour profiles and ingredients with traditional Afghan recipes which are replete with complementary aromatics. My take replaces the steamed meat with low and slow Texan barbecue methods, twisting the culinary arts on their head and bashing them together to pay homage to the global melting pot that London truly is.  

Serves 6 – 8

Ingredients:

1kg South / central Asian extra long grain rice (wash / rinse, repeat and then soak in water over night.)
3 carrots
200g large black raisins (not sultanas)
Gravy browning 
1ltr canola/ vegetable oil
100g whole cumin seeds
50g black cardamom
50g whole cloves

2 full racks (8 bones) beef short rib
250g black pepper
Herb salt: 50g rosemary, 50g thyme, 450g
100g Demerara sugar

Equipment: Smoker, (or oven), hob, temperature probe, blender or pestle and mortar, parchment paper, tin foil, large pot, 1 pan, 1 medium sized pot, sieve.

Method

Slice carrots into thin strips – do not grate them they’ll be too thin. Heat oil in a pan. Then fry your carrots in all of vegetable or canola oil. When slightly softened (3 – 5 mins), remove with a slotted spoon and lay them on grates and sprinkle salt and sugar. 

Then in the sam oil, fry your raisins – as soon as they come to the surface of the oil take them out, as they burn quickly. Lay them on grates. 

Keep the oil – it is important.

In another pan – toast whole cumin seeds. Allow to cool then grind to powder-like consistently. 

Grind black cardamon (use extra if cooking the short-rib in an oven and add to the salt mixture to increase the level of smokey profile.) Then grind the clove, before mixing all the ground spices together. 

Pick rosemary and thyme and mix together with ground rock salt till you have desired salt texture – you want it to be evenly fine. (Use this as the salt across the cooking process.) 

In another pan, add some gravy browning (liquid form). Add 200ml of water. Add half of your spice mixture into this liquid.

Then, for the rice. First, boil a large pot of water – 1kg rice to 2/3 litres of water add 1/1.5tbs of herb salt.  

Add your soaked rice once water is boiled (par-cook) about 10-15 minutes. Then drain.

Place rice back in the pot and add 150ml of your browning / spice mixture. Then add 300ml of your oil. 

Mix the oil and water into the rice – add the rest of the spice mixture – add more oil if all rice is not covered and glossy when you mix it. 

Cover the rice with lid tightly – you want to try and gently steam to finish cooking the rice, so you can place a weight to help the mild steaming process. 

Let it steam for another 10 minutes on low / medium heat, do not burn the bottom – you might have to keep slightly adjusting the heat. Use your nose and, without disturbing the rice too much, check the bottom of the pan with a wooden spoon.

Check your rice – taste it and be careful of the steam from the pot! If it’s not ready, continue to steam – and add a little more oil mixture if needed. 

When it’s cooked, serve with a layer the carrots and raisins at the top, turning it into jewelled rice.

Smoked beef rib: 8-10hr cook in a smoker. Make sure you leave enough time this is a low and slow process using a smoker. You can do this for 6-8hrs in an oven with the same temperature guides below, just make sure to to check the internal temperature of the meat regularly.

First – remove any hard fat on your meat before brining, but leave as much soft fat on as possible to help the slow fat rendering process. 

Rub all sides of the beef rib with salt, black pepper and Demerara sugar – get a decent bark on the meat.

Set the smoker to 200 – 250 F – with lots of wood and little charcoal, which you need to ember / smoke a

During the start of the cook try and stick to as much as wood compared to charcoal ratio as the nitrates of the wood will impact the haemoglobin of the meat and that is where the pink ring and smokey flavour profiles really take. After the initial stages of the cook, it’s much harder to achieve this process and result.

Place meat after brining into the smoker or the oven.

Check the temperature of the smoker or oven to ensure it remains at the desired heat level. When your meat reaches 70°C – use your probe – its’ time to wrap. Encase the meat with parchment and tin foil place back in the smoker or oven and keep cooking until you reach 87-90°C.

Once your beef is cooked, level on the bone and place on top of the rice. It is best served with sumac yoghurt and Afghan salata, with charred lemon and black pepper dressing.

Mursal Saiq is the co-founder and head chef at Cue Point in London. Photographs by Mursal Saiq.