Baked Kibbeh Muffins- Lebanon

Served with the remainder of the taboule wheat salad and fresh veggies

This week I attempted to make a traditional Lebanese dish! The best known variety of kibbeh is fried, but I attempted a baked version (see my previous post for my reasoning). I used this recipe with heavy alterations. I also chose to make this dish into single serving "muffins", single portions are always fun!

In this dish there are two parts, a browned, pre-cooked meat stuffing and the portion which is raw until baked.





Prep time: 20 minutes active, 1 hour 20 minutes total
Cook time: 45 minutes

Ingredients

Kibbeh Nayyeh (raw)
1 c bulgar wheat ***
1/2 lb- 1 lb ground beef
1/4 onion, minced finely
1 t black pepper
1/2 t allspice
1/2 t cinnamon
1/4 t salt

***This sounds like an exotic ingredient but it is actually found perfectly portioned at the grocery store. Look for this ingredient near the spanish rice

Stuffing (pre-cooked)
handful of pine nuts
1/2 lb- 1 lb ground beef
1/4 onion, minced finely
1 t allspice
1/2 t nutmeg
1/2 t black pepper
1/2 t salt

1) Pour 1 cup boiling water over the entire package of bulgar wheat. Cover to soak for 60 minutes
2) Begin making the stuffing. Heat up olive oil in a medium pan. Start cooking the beef on one half of the pan, toast the pine nuts on the other half.
3) When beef is no longer mostly pink, add remaining stuffing ingredients.
4) To form raw mixture, drain any excess water from bulgar wheat. Combine this with remining raw meat ingredients.

5) Spray a muffin tin. Spread half of the raw mixture in the muffin tins (aroiund 1/4 inch thick)
6) Add cooked stuffing mixture. Make little patties out of the remaining raw meat mixture, place on top of each "muffin". Drizzle each muffin with olive oil.
7) Bake at 350F for 30-40 minutes

Notes
Ultimately I had a few thoughts when I finished this dish. The first was that I have no idea what the difference was between the "stuffing" and the outer, raw portion. If I were to make this again I would basically just double the stuffing mixture and cook it in the muffin tins like meatloaf. My other thought was that the meat was dry and would go really well with a yogurt sauce like in this recipe!