Nihari

Ingredients

• Beef shin1.2 kg
• Marrow bones500 g
• Onions — in thin rings3
• Ginger40 g
• Garlic8 clove
• Fennel seeds1 tbsp
• Kashmiri chilli powder2 tsp
• Cinnamon, cardamom, cloves, star anise1 tbsp
• Wheat flour4 tbsp
• Ghee120 g
• Lemon, ginger, coriander, chillito taste
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Fry the onions in ghee to a deep gold, about twenty minutes. Set half aside for serving.

   20 min

2. 2

   Add the ginger and garlic, the spices and the chilli, warm them a minute, then the meat and bones, and sear until the raw colour goes.

   12 min

3. 3

   Cover with water three fingers above, bring to the boil, skim and cook on the lowest heat for four or five hours. The meat should fall apart at a touch.

   280 min

4. 4

   Whisk the flour into a cup of cold water until smooth and pour it in as a thin stream, stirring constantly. Cook ten minutes: the gravy thickens and turns glossy.

   12 min

5. 5

   Lift out the bones and set the marrow aside separately. Serve with the fried onion, matchsticks of ginger, coriander, green chilli and lemon — everyone adds their own.

   8 min

About the dish

Nihari was cooked overnight and eaten at dawn — from the Arabic nahar, morning. The point is the very long braise: the collagen in shin turns to gelatine and the gravy thickens on its own, without flour.

Flour is still wanted, but only a little and at the very end: the slurry goes in as a thin stream and must be cooked out, or a raw taste remains.

The marrow is part of the dish rather than an addition. The bones go into the pot whole, and the marrow is lifted out separately and spread onto the bread.

Worth knowing

• — Shin is essential: a prime cut has no collagen and the gravy stays watery however long it cooks.
• — The slurry goes only into boiling gravy and only with stirring. Otherwise the flour seizes into lumps that never break up.
• — Nihari is better on the second day, and that is not a figure of speech: overnight the gelatine sets and the gravy grows denser.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

720 kcal

Protein

52 g

Fat

46 g

Carbs

20 g

More from Pakistan

• Chapli kebab — Flat beef patties with cornmeal, tomato and whole coriander seeds.