‘Shami Kebab’ is a small patty composed of minced or ground meat mixed with Bengal gram lentils and spices. It is a very popular snack in India and features regularly in Pakistani and Afghan cuisine. In India it is generally prepared with mutton. However one can use any kind of meat like beef, chicken or lamb. Since mutton is unavailable at my current place, I used lamb mince to prepare these kebabs. They act as delicious starters to impress guests. 🙂

Ingredients for 12 pieces :

1. Meat mince – 250 gm.
2. Bengal gram or chana dal (soaked for 1 hr.) – 50 gm.
3. Potato (medium size, cut into halves) – ½
4. Onion (small, cut into large cubes) – ½
5. Ginger-garlic paste – ½ tbspoon
6. Cumin seed – ¼ tbspoon
7. Dry red chilli – 3 to 4
8. Whole gamar masala (Cinnamon stick – 1″, Clove – 3, Black cardamom – 1/green cardamom – 3 pods)
9. Black pepper corn – 6-8
10. Salt – ¼ tbspoon
11. Chopped onion (medium size) – ½
12. Chopped fresh coriander leaves – 2-3 tbspoon
13. Chopped green chilli – 1
14. Egg – 1
15. Water – 1¼ cup
16. Cooking oil to fry the kebabs

Procedure :

Take the ingredients from 1 – 10 & 15 in a large pot, mix well and put over gas on medium flame. As water starts boiling, cover the pan with a lid and put the gas on low-medium. Let it cook for 30-35 minutes, stir occasionally so that it doesn’t get brunt from the bottom . When the lentils get cooked and all of water evaporated, put the gas off. Let the mixture come to room temperature.

Now discard whole spices and dry red chillies from the mixture and grind it to a coarse paste.

Add ingredients 11, 12 & 13 to this meat paste and mix well. At this point the mixture remains little soft. Leave the mixture for 30 minutes and you will get the binding consistency.

Then wet your hand with little water and start making ‘Kebabs’ i.e. flat round shaped balls out of the paste. The size of them will depend completely up to you. I made 12 medium size kebabs, you can make larger or even smaller than that.

Beat egg in a bowl and dip the kebabs into it.

Heat oil in a frying pan over medium flame and shallow fry the kebabs from both sides evenly until brown.

Serve hot with salad and tomato sauce.

Note :

1. Make sure all of water evaporates from the meat mixture, otherwise your paste will be too soft and you won’t be able to make kebabs out of that mixture.
2. I throw out the whole spices from the mixture before making the paste. However it is not mandatory and you can keep them with the mixture, if you like.
3. You can store the kebabs into the refrigerator for one or two days and then fry while needed after defrosting. Keep the kebabs in layers separated by a plastic sheet in an air tight container.