🍖 Mansaf
Mansaf is Jordan's national dish: lamb simmered in a tangy sauce made from jameed, dried fermented yogurt, served over a mound of rice and scattered with toasted almonds, pine nuts and parsley. The meat is tender, the sauce sour and savoury, and more of it is ladled over the rice at the table. It is eaten from one large shared platter at weddings and gatherings.
Diets
Allergens
Contains (in a typical recipe):
What it is made of
Recipe
Ingredients
- 1.5 kg lamb on the bone, in large pieces
- 500 g jameed, soaked and blended (or 1 l liquid jameed)
- 600 g medium-grain rice
- 1.5 l water
- 2 tbsp ghee
- 40 g almonds
- 30 g pine nuts
- Chopped parsley
- Salt
Method
- Cover the lamb with water, bring to the boil, skim, and simmer for 1 hour.
- Blend the jameed with some of the broth until smooth, then add it to the pot and simmer the lamb in it for 30–40 minutes, stirring often.
- Cook the rice in salted water with 1 tbsp ghee until tender.
- Toast the almonds and pine nuts in the remaining ghee.
- Spread the rice on a platter, top with the lamb and some sauce, then sprinkle with nuts and parsley; serve the rest of the sauce on the side.
How to make it lighter
- Use lean lamb and skim the fat from the broth before adding the jameed.
- Toast the nuts in a dry pan instead of ghee.
- Take less rice and more of the tangy sauce, which carries most of the flavour.
History
Mansaf grew out of the Bedouin cooking of the region that is now Jordan, where jameed was a way to preserve milk in the desert. Rice is often said to have replaced bulgur as the base in the 20th century, and mansaf is today the centrepiece of Jordanian hospitality and celebrations.
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Values are estimates per 100 g for a typical recipe; home and restaurant versions vary. Diets and allergens are worked out from the ingredients of a typical recipe — always check with whoever cooked the dish. Not medical advice. Nutrition data: Me Nutrition dish database v13. How we count →