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The Levant and Anatolia · Volume 04, The Jameed, the Taboon and the Zarb Pit

Zarb

Bedouin Jordan, the desert pit oven

Zarb, Bedouin lamb and vegetables roasted in a sealed sand pit: a metal rack lifted from an earth pit, dark roasted lamb pieces and large charred vegetables still smoking faintly, resting on a dark board with sand still clinging to the rack's edges.

Illustration

Time
2 hours 30

An underground, sand-sealed pit fire, Jordan's own version of the earth oven, now most visibly cooked for visitors in the Wadi Rum desert.

As tradition built it

A shared table; about 2 to 2.5 hours in the pit for lamb, poultry faster.

Ingredients

The tradition's method, with the ingredients named. Quantities follow as we verify them.

Method

  1. Dig a pit roughly a metre deep and burn a fire of ghada wood, a desert shrub, down to embers at its base.
  2. Season the lamb with black pepper, cumin, coriander, turmeric and garlic, and load it with large-cut vegetables onto a metal rack suspended above the embers, with a pot of pre-soaked, seasoned rice set beneath.
  3. Lower the whole rig into the pit, seal it, and cover it with sand to trap the heat completely.
  4. Cook young lamb for roughly two to two and a half hours; poultry, where used instead, cooks faster.

Notes

No Jordanian or academic source could be found discussing zarb's technique in real depth, only tourism-operator material from the Wadi Rum region where it is now served commercially.

What a modern chef changes

The Big Green Egg run as a sealed, sand-buried pit, and each element cooked to its own temperature

Rung 2

Method

  1. Set the Big Green Egg up for fully indirect cooking, heat deflector plate in, meat on a raised rack well above it, dome shut, and run it low, 120 to 140°C, for the same several hours zarb itself takes, the closest a British kitchen gets to a sealed, sand-buried pit's own steady, radiant heat. Rung 2.
  2. Cook the vegetables sous vide first at a temperature matched to their own ideal doneness, then finish them briefly over the Egg's own direct heat once the meat is resting, so each element reaches exactly its own correct texture rather than being at the mercy of a single shared pit temperature.
  3. Dehydrate a portion of the spice rub's aromatics, particularly the coriander and cumin, before grinding them fresh in the spice grinder immediately before the meat goes on, for a sharper top note than a shop-ground spice mix carries into several hours of slow cooking.
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