Today's show is my love letter to Lebanon.

"Julie Taboulie's Lebanese Kitchen" is made possible by... Man: ♪ Do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ [Lebanese music playing] As a first-generation and full-blooded Lebanese-American born to an immigrant, Catholic, Lebanese family, I was immersed in learning, making, and sharing Lebanese cuisine and culture my whole life.

My Lebanon is a beautiful and breathtaking country, filled with warm and welcoming arms and open hearts, generous and gracious people that are as proud and resilient as the inspiring land itself, and many, many, many smiles meeting and greeting me wherever I should go.

So what better way to celebrate the glorious land of Lebanon than with cooking the national dish itself, called kibbeh.

Kibbeh is an authentic and absolutely delicious Lebanese dish that combines meat or vegetables with fine bulgur wheat, kneaded together to create countless combinations.

I may not live in Lebanon, but Lebanon lives in me.

Ana Uhibbuka Lubnan.

I love you, Lebanon.

Today is all about my love of Lebanon.

So, Lebanon, this is for you and for all of you here in the States, as well, that are Lebanese-American or Middle Eastern or Arabic, and for all of my American audiences as well.

And what better way to showcase my love of Lebanon than by sharing the national dish Lebanon, called kibbeh.

I just love it.

It's an amazing, amazing, amazing food.

And today I'm showcasing and sharing 3 different types of kibbeh with you.

The first one we're gonna do is our kibbeh nayeh, which is a delicacy and it's served tartare style.

The second one up is our kibbeh kbekib.

They're these little sort of small spheres of kibbeh meats, and they're stuffed with meat and pine nuts and mint, and it's absolutely addictive.

You're just gonna love these.

Once you eat one, you're not gonna be able to stop.

And then the third one is for all my vegetarians out there, and it's a potato style vegetarian kibbeh, and, uh, kibbeh batata.

So the first thing that we're gonna get started on making today is our kibbeh nayeh, because I have our fresh, finely, finely, finely ground and finely, finely lean sirloin meat.

And I just took it out of the refrigerator.

You can use lamb also, but I like to use the sirloin.

OK, so now I'm just gonna place our kibbeh nayeh meat in our food processor.

I'm also going to add a little bit of sea salt right on top, just to give it some seasoning.

I'm using 4 pounds of our meat today, because we're going to be using half of it for our kibbeh nayeh, and we're gonna be using the other half to make our kibbeh sort of meatball spheres, if you will.

OK, so now we're gonna add-- I have some ice cubes.

We're gonna add just a couple ice cubes as well, because this is gonna help to keep the meat nice and ice cold, and also to keep the blades cold, because we're gonna be sort of whipping it and blending it even more.

So I just added about 3, so we'll see how that looks.

OK. That looks perfect.

You can see how smooth it is.

Look at that beautiful red color.

It's gorgeous for our kibbeh nayeh and for our kibbeh base for our little meatball spheres.

[Laughs] If you will.

So we're gonna take two plastic freezer bags.

I'm gonna use one for our kibbeh nayeh, and I'm gonna use the other one for our kibbeh base for our kibbeh kbekib, our little meatball spheres.

So now I'm just gonna sort of open one up at a time.

OK, so now we're gonna take half of the meat, place it in the bag.

So centuries ago in Lebanon, and throughout the Middle east, they would actually make the kibbeh, that resembles this, in a oversized granite or marble jurn, a mortar and pestle.

And they still do that today, and you can certainly try that at home of you like, but our friendly food processor does all the work for us in today's times.

OK, so now we're just gonna sort of press the bag just to get any air out from it first before we lock it.

And then we're gonna smooth out the kibbeh meat.

I'm just looking for sort of one thin layer.

OK.

So that looks great.

Just gonna zip this up.

And we're gonna do our next bag.

This one's gonna go in the freezer.

Look how beautiful our red-as-can-be, ultra lean and triple-ground meat is.

I'm gonna place this one in the freezer for about 15 minutes for our kibbeh nayeh, our tatare style served kibbeh.

And then the other one is going in the refrigerator to stay nice and cold while we make our hushwee, our mouth-watering meat and pine nut mixture.

Kibbeh is one of my favorite dishes of all time.

There's just something that's so alluring and addictively appetizing about kibbeh.

I am just finishing up finely dicing our yellow onion, also Spanish onion, for our mouth-watering meat and pine nut mixture that we call hashwee, that's gonna go into our little kibbeh kbekibs, our little sort of spheres, kind of meatballs, if you will, but kind of to the umpth degree.

[Laughs] Now we're gonna get our onions...

In our pan.

[sizzling] Whoo!

Love that sizzle.

[Laughs] It's a good sound to hear in the kitchen.

Now we're just gonna give them a little toss-around here.

We're basically just getting our onions sort of cooked down a little bit, till they're nice and translucent in color.

We're not caramelizing them at all, and we don't want them to turn brown.

And I'm using 80-20 of sirloin meat.

You could also use lamb meat if you like, or you could blend the two meats together.

And the reason why I'm using 80-20 is because I want a little bit of fat and flavor in our filling, since our base of our kibbeh is extremely lean.

OK, so now we're gonna season it with some sea salt first and our freshly-ground pepper.

You can do about a half a tablespoon of this.

And then also I love to add some allspice and some 7 Arabic spice.

All right, so now that our meat is completely browned and seasoned really well, we're just gonna turn off our heat just like that, and we are gonna start on our pine nuts and our nana.

It's always a good idea to have nice buttery toasted pine nuts to go in hashwee fillings, your meat fillings.

All right, so now we have our fresh mint that we call nana.

It's spearmint and not peppermint.

And traditionally with the kibbeh, you always will find the mint.

You see, it just sort of brightens the meat mixture up already.

And we're going to mix the mint in with our meat.

Meat and mint day today.

[Laughs] And national dish of Lebanon day with kibbeh.

All right, so our pine nuts have browned up beautifully.

They're nice and buttery.

We're just gonna add all of those to our meat mixture, just like that.

I love the taste and the texture and the appearance of the pine nuts with meat.

OK, so that's it for our filling.

I just want to give it a little taste to make sure that we're on point, because it's gonna be stuffed into our little Lebanese meatballs, or kbekibs.

Mmm.

That is so delicious.

The seasoning is so, so savory with the allspice and the 7 Arabic spice.

And I love the crunch of the pine nuts.

It's gonna be so good stuffed into our little kibbeh kbekibs, our Lebanese style savory little meatballs.

Kibbeh is the national dish of Lebanon, and it sort of leads the land of Lebanon and throughout the Middle East.

It's this famous and fascinating food, and it comes in so many different types of varieties and versions, tastes and textures, and shapes and sizes.

And traditionally it is made with a meat base, although there are vegetarian versions, too.

So I just pulled our beautiful red, lean, and triple-ground sirloin meat that I'm using today-- but you can also use lamb if you like-- for our base of our kibbeh kbekib, our little Lebanese style savory sort of stuffed meatballs, if you will.

I have about two pounds of meat, so I'm going to use two cups of our fine bulgur wheat.

And I'm just gonna rinse it a little bit.

We're not gonna soak it.

We just want to get it a little bit wet.

So I'm just sort of running my fingers through the bulgur wheat so that it's nice and wet with the water.

OK, so now I'm just gonna wring any excess water from the bulgur wheat, and we're gonna place it right into our large mixing bowl.

And we're not soaking it because we don't want the bulgur wheat to expand on us.

We want it to be fine as possible so it can sort of seamlessly blend in with our triple-ground lean meat that we have.

All right.

And now we are going to grate a small onion into our bulgur wheat.

It's gonna give some nice flavor.

OK, that should do it.

We don't want to get our fingers, now, do we?

So I'm just gonna set this aside.

And we're gonna season our bulgur wheat with about half a teaspoon of sea salt and half a teaspoon of freshly-ground pepper.

I have a little bowl of ice-cold water, which is always a really good idea whenever you're making kibbeh.

Just have it on standby to sort of dip your fingers in to keep them nice and cold as you're working with the mixture.

So I'm just gonna sort of mix it together first.

Just like that.

And then, using my fist, we're just gonna sort of kind of knead the bulgur wheat first.

I want to break it down a little bit before we add the meat, and then we're gonna knead that, too.

But it's always a good idea to do this first.

Wonderful.

So now we are going to add our meat.

Can't wait for this.

[Laughs] It's nice and cold.

I'm gonna dip my hands into some nice ice-cold water.

OK, so now the first step that we're gonna do, we're gonna start to fold the bulgur wheat into the meat, and then we are going to, uh, knead it.

My kibbeh base looks beautiful to me.

You can see, actually hardly see, the bulgur wheat, 'cause we used number one, it sort of blended in so seamlessly with the meat.

So now I'm just gonna sort of clean everything up, I'm gonna get some fresh, new cold water with ice cubes, I'm gonna give my hands a wash, and then we're gonna start to make our little kbekib, our kibbeh kbekib, our Lebanese style stuffed meatballs.

Kibbeh nayeh is a delicacy that is prepared, served, and eaten tartare style in Lebanon and throughout the Middle East.

And actually, some restaurants here in the States serve it as well.

And Americans eat similar dishes, like beef carpaccio or steak tartare, but there's really no comparison, because the kibbeh nayeh is this incredible sort of iconic edible experience that you're just gonna have to taste for yourself.

I have our fresh cold water that I have some ice cubes in it, so we can finally start making our kibbeh kbekib, our Lebanese style stuffed meatballs.

OK, so I'm gonna dip my hands into the cold water, and I'm gonna take about a tablespoon to 1 1/2 tablespoons.

And you can make them small or you can make them large.

These are sort of medium, I would say.

So, I think I have about a tablespoon and a half of our meat and bulgur wheat mixture.

I'm just sort of tossing it between my two hands right now.

I'm gonna be constantly dipping my hands in that ice-cold water to keep my hands nice and cool and the meat nice and cold.

OK, so now we have a ball.

I'm just gonna sort of roll it between the palm of my hands.

Beautiful.

Now I'm gonna take my index finger and just insert it right into the center.

And I'm gonna start to rotate it around.

So we're basically creating an opening, a large opening so we can fill it with our hashwee, our meat mixture.

OK.

So that's beautiful.

You have a nice sort of wide opening there, and I feel that it's thin enough, and I'm gonna take about a teaspoon to start with of our filling.

That looks good.

I'm gonna just press it down using the back of my spoon, so it's just like this.

You don't want to overfill the kibbeh.

And then I'm gonna sort of just squeeze it between both of my fingers there, my thumb and my index finger and rotate it from the bottom now, just like that.

Press in the meat filling that's sort of peeping out... to enclose it, and then you're making this sort of point at the top, too.

Just like that.

Now I'm gonna take some of my water again, with my hands, and just sort of smooth it out, just like that.

And also getting our point at the top, too.

OK. Beautiful.

You have your kibbeh kbekib.

It's this nice stuffed Lebanese style sort of meatball, or sphere or football.

[Laughs] Just like so.

All right.

And I'm just going to place it on our sheet pan.

And then I'm gonna take a little bit of unsalted butter.

We're gonna butter each one as we go.

We're just gonna place that right on top so we can get this nice sort of golden-brown color and have this nice crispy, crunchy outer texture, too, and then it's gonna be nice and sort of moist on the inside.

So I just placed our kibbeh kbekib, our Lebanese style stuffed meatballs, if you will, in my oven.

I have it preheated at 375 degrees.

They're gonna bake for about 30 minutes, and then halfway through I'm going to turn them over so that they can cook evenly on all sides until they're nice and brown and beautiful.

And next stop is my potato kibbeh for all of you vegetarians out there.

Although traditionally kibbeh is prepared using meat, whether it be lamb meat or sirloin, there's so many different types of vegetarian versions as well.

There's our potato kibbeh, we have pumpkin kibbeh, and I recently created a zucchini squash kibbeh, too.

So we have some things for the vegetarians and vegans out there as well.

I am peeling our Yukon gold potatoes for our potato kibbeh.

It's kibbeh batata.

And it's a vibrant vegetarian style kibbeh that my situ would make often in Lebanon, especially in the springtime and during Lent as well.

And basically I started with 3 Yukon gold potatoes.

You can use any potato that you like.

And I boiled them with their skins on until they were fork tender.

And then I placed them in ice-cold water just so it could stop the cooking process.

And then after that I drained and strained them, And then I placed them in the refrigerator so that they could get nice and cold.

OK, so now that we have our potatoes skinned, we're going to do our next step, And I have about a half a cup of fine bulgur wheat.

We're using number one again.

I'm just going to simply place it into our bowl, just like that, and we're gonna cover it with some cold water so it can soak and soften for us.

OK. That is perfect.

We're just gonna let our bulgur wheat soak for us in the water until it's nice and softened.

In the meantime, we're gonna mash up our potatoes, and remember, they're cold, so we want them to sort of have this nice, kind of substantial consistency to them.

Just like that.

Now we're gonna add some olive oil and some fresh lemon juice, too.

I'm gonna blend in the oil and lemon juice with our potatoes.

So now we're gonna check our bulgur wheat.

It should be softened for us.

And we're just gonna wring it from the water, and we're gonna sprinkle the grains right into the potato.

Now we are going to sort of blend the bulgur wheat into the potatoes and get them incorporated evenly.

And then we're gonna knead it as well.

OK, that is beautiful.

It's really nice and moist, it's nice and soft, it's blended really well.

You can see that it's really pliable, which is what we want.

And now we're gonna chop up all of our fresh herbs.

And I love that I'm sharing it with you all at home, because this is really a super simple kibbeh dish to make.

OK, so now we're gonna plate this up.

I'm gonna show you how I like to serve it.

There you have it.

There is your kibbeh batata.

It's our vegetarian potato kibbeh.

And last, but certainly not least, is our star dish of the day for our kibbeh, our national dish of Lebanon, which is our kibbeh nayeh.

So I'm just rinsing our cup of fine bulgur wheat for the finale dish of my love to Lebanon, which is our kibbeh nayeh.

It's the national dish of Lebanon, and it's our delicacy, and it's served tartare style.

So I basically grated a small onion in our big bowl right here.

And I took out our beautiful red, lean, extremely lean, triple-ground, uh, sirloin meat.

I had it in the freezer to get nice and ice cold.

So now what we're gonna do, we're just simply going to wring the fine bulgur wheat from the water and toss it into the grated onions.

And now to season our bulgur wheat and our grated onion with a little bit of sea salt, about a half a teaspoon, and half a teaspoon of freshly-ground pepper as well.

Just like this.

And now I'm just sort of going to work the bulgur wheat in with the grated onion.

And the fact that all of our dishes are done already and we're doing the kibbeh nayeh last is exactly what you want to do.

You want to basically prepare it and serve it right at once.

Just gonna sort of take it out of our bag, just like that.

You can see the beautiful red color.

And now we are simply going to start to knead it together with our bulgur wheat.

I have another bowl of some fresh water with ice in it, so it's nice and ice cold.

I'm gonna dip my hands into it.

And now we're just sort of going to blend the bulgur wheat in with our kibbeh nayeh meat.

So I'm just gonna dip my fingers in the ice-cold water one last time and just sort of smooth it out, While also making a nice round ball to make it easier for us to plate it and serve it.

Just like that.

Beautiful.

And now using the palms of my hands, I'm just simply going to press it down and get a nice even layer.

I'm going to give my hands a wash.

I like to take the back of a fork and just sort of make a design, just sort of pierce through the meat.

And now we're gonna take some good-quality extra-virgin olive oil, and we're gonna drizzle this right on top.

And now I'm just gonna take some of the fresh nana and place this all over.

That is really what makes kibbeh kibbeh, I feel, is the fresh mint, the spearmint that we have.

What I like to do is I like to serve just, you know, sort of a bowl or platter of the fresh nana, the fresh mint, with it.

And then also, I have right over here, uh, some onions and some little different types of hot peppers that you can serve with it, too.

And without further ado, we're gonna try our kibbeh nayeh that we made today.

So I'm just gonna scoop up my khebz, my pita bread, take some of our kibbeh nayeh, just like that.

And I like to put a nice piece of our fresh mint, or nana, right on top.

And just enjoy it just like that.

Mmm.

It is incredible.

Indescribable.

You're gonna have to taste this for yourself, along with all of my other kibbeh dishes that we made today, our kbekib, right in front of me, our little Lebanese style stuffed spheres.

And also our potato kibbeh for all of my vegetarians out there.

This one is for you.

And I'm so happy that I could share and show my love of Lebanon with all of you.

And as always, I wish you and yours to... takloull bil' hanna-- eat in happiness, and sending smiles.

[Kiss] Ana uhibbuka Lubnan.

I love you, Lebanon.

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Julie: "Julie Taboulie's Lebanese Kitchen" is made possible by... Man: ♪ Do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ ♪ Do your thing, do your thing ♪ ♪ Syracuse, do your thing ♪ [Lebanese music playing]