How to Make Bezelyeli Pilav
Now let’s check on our lamb, I hear it boiling from the pot and it’s boiling up nicely. We just got to skim off that scum that I was talking about before, so you just want to get a bowl and a spoon and just kind of skim it off as much as you can. Now, we’ve been cooking it for about 20 minutes, there’s still a lot to go, so be patient, you just to keep skimming it off as you see it. So keep checking it, keep eyeballing it; as it’s boiling, it’s going to keep soaking up the water so as you open the pot, and when you see less and less water, that’s okay; that’s suppose to happen.
You want it to get really nice and juicy and tender. So it smells really good, I’m just going to cover it, keep on letting it boil and now I’m going to start up getting my pan ready for the rice which I have right here. Now for our rice, you will need about ¾ of a stick of butter, 1 cup of the frozen peas, 2 cups of washed and drained rice, some salt, and some olive oil.
So now, we’re going to make our rice. I’m just going to get our skillet really nice and hot over here. I’m going to put in our butter and a little bit of olive oil. I’m going to start to brown our rice. For now, let me just check on our lamb. See how our lamb is doing, is coming to a nice rolling boil. This is the time where you want to bring it down to medium and let it simmer because slow cooked meal is always the best. And now is the good time to also add in about a teaspoon of salt. We just want to throw it in there. Just around like that and let it simmer with the salt. So we need to let that cook.
Now that this is nice and hot, I’ll put in my ¾ of a stick of butter now you can use less butter in this, I just think with the peas and the washed rice, it gives it a really great, fluffy flavor and I like to add a little bit of extra virgin olive oil because it makes the rice shinny; and that always looks great specially when you’re having a big meal, our traditional holiday meal or celebration. It’s really nice to have fluffy, white rice and our leg of lamb. So let me take us a wooden spoon let’s melt our butter in there like that; and this is washed rice and then we’re just going to brown it a little bit. It doesn’t have to actually turn brown; it’s just what I call it.
You just want to kind of give it a little slow cook. Now some people don’t always cook it first. Some people just pour the boiling water; but I feel that it makes this a little more tender and much softer rice. You kind of want that to get hot; not the peas, you could put in the very end because they’re frozen and they cook up really fast, and you don’t want them to cook too much because then, they’ll mush and you don’t want that.
So this is browning up really nice. You don’t want to cook it too much; you just want a little, little, little cook in there. We’ll pour in our boiled water and with rice, it’s always essential to have boiled water. It just soaks up much faster, and we’re using 3 cups here because you already have the water of the washed rice. Remember how we said, you have to wash it before, and plus the frozen peas, it’s going to give it a little bit of water as well. So, we don’t need 4 cups, 3 cups is fine. Now we add a little salt, just around give it a mix and this is going to boil up really fast because we put boiling water.
Once that’s boiled up, we’re going to cover and let it simmer. So see, it’s already boiling; see how fast, that’s why you need to use boiled water. So right now, we’ll just cover because you always need to cover rice when you’re making it because it allows it to soak up the water and we’ll just lower to medium and let that simmer for about 20 minutes or until the water’s soaked up; so keep checking it.
I’m going to check on our lamb, no more scum see; but you always checking it, make sure there’s no scum and it’s boiling up slowly now, we want to slow cook. We like all the meat to cook nice, tender, juicy leg of lamb. So it’s soaking up that water nicely and the aromas are coming, I can smell the all spice and the cinnamon; it’s really great, you’re going to love it.
So first, we’re going to add our tomato paste. If you forgotten before, it’s 1 tablespoon of tomato paste; now you don’t want too much, this just gives it a great color. It’s going to be like a light color and it’s going to melt them there by itself. So you just want to drop it in there, we’ll cover it again so keeps cooking, and now we’re going to put in our carrots. Now, I peeled and washed our carrots; so I’m just going to throw these in there and you know, this keeps cooking, this has been cooking for about 2 hours now. We’re eyeballing it, we’re watching it, and we’re making sure that it soaks up a lot of the water.
Now as you can see, I cooked up my potatoes in water and this keeps them from turning brown. So there’s no real science to it. I just like to do it because I like it, the white color, it’s much more presentable and here, I just like to cube them and I like to use a small knife so that I can cut with my hands and that also which is going to put in like that and this is going to soak cook for another at least half an hour or 40 minutes. The reason we don’t put the vegetables in the beginning is because they’ll turn to mush, I mean, if you’re cooking something for 3 or 4 hours and by the time you take this potato out, it’s not going to be a potato, it’s going to be like mashed potato.