Kufta (meat patties)

Everyone has a breakfast routine. Maybe you wake up early every day to make yourself a feast. Maybe you just eat cereal. Maybe yogurt is your morning staple. Or smoothies. Or fruits. Or oatmeal. Or breakfast sandwiches. Or anything really. It could be that your breakfast routine is nonexistent. Maybe you are just not a breakfast person. Personally, I love breakfast. You can eat almost anything you want. Waffles. Pancakes. Chocolate. Meat. Sausage. Eggs. Veggies. Bread. Cheese.

Whether you like breakfast or not, everyone has one or two special breakfast staples. Something that you make when you’ve got more time, when you can savor a meal, rather than quickly gulp it down. One of my favorite breakfasts, which I eat too infrequently in my opinion, is kufta with tamata kleetha and bee’ih. Meat patties, fried tomato, and eggs, with a bundle of fresh parsley and fresh bread on the side. This breakfast is great. Veggies. Protein. Fried tomatoes. Just a wonderful combination of flavors.

A few weeks ago, I decided to spend an evening cooking a few different items, rather than working on homework. Not the best choice at the time, but now I have kufta in the freezer, which makes me happy, plain and simple. Kufta is fairly easy to make, and once you’ve made a batch, you can easily store it in the freezer.

Thoughts: My kufta came out a big fat. There’s nothing wrong with that, except that they require a bit more cooking. In the pictures below, the kufta were cooked and eaten on a different day than they were made.

Ingredients

2.5 pounds ground beef

1/2 bundle of parsley, washed and finely chopped

1 tablespoon baharat

1 teaspoon salt

Optional Accompaniments 

1 large tomato, sliced

1 or 2 eggs

Directions

1) Place the ground beef, parsley, baharat, and salt in a bowl. Mix all the ingredients together thoroughly.

2) Take a small amount of meat, roughly the size of a ping pong ball, into the palm of your hand. Flatten the meat into a patty, roughly a few centimeters thick. The amount of kufta you make will depend on how large and fat you make each individual patty.

3) To cook the kufta, place the patties on a heated frying pan and cook until browned. If the kufta need additional cooking time, add some water and cover the pan with a lid.

4) If you plan to store the kufta, and not eat them right away, lay each patty flat on tray as you may them. When the tray is full, place it in the freezer long enough for the kufta to freeze. Once they patties are frozen, peel them off the tray and put them into a freezer bag for storage. Freeze the bag, and voila! kufta are available whenever you want them.

5) If you’d like to fry a tomato or two, first slice the tomatoes, heat a bit of oil in a pan, add the tomatoes and cook until well seared. Sprinkle with salt, pepper, and lemon to taste. A more detailed post on fried tomatoes and eggs can be found here.