Not Just Stew · The atlas · A working atlas of the world's cooking

The Indian subcontinent · Volume 14, The Langar, the Spit and a Coast Without a Restaurant

Sajji

Balochistan

Sajji, whole spit-roasted lamb seasoned only with salt: large charred golden-brown chunks of spit-roasted lamb stacked on a metal skewer, the meat pulled slightly apart showing pale pink flesh beneath a deeply bronzed crust.

Illustration

Time
4 hours

A whole young lamb or goat (chicken in the urban, city version), skewered lengthwise through the leg, shoulder and loin, seasoned with nothing but salt rubbed in with a little oil to help it adhere. The skewer is planted upright so the meat stands around the perimeter of a ring of embers, cooking from the side rather than over direct flame, for three to four hours (roughly 1.5 hours for chicken, 2 to 2.5 hours for lamb or goat, by a separate Urdu-language account), the fire actively tended throughout. In Balochistan itself it is taken off at the rare stage and served with kaak, hard stone-baked bread, rather than rice; urban Pakistan roasts it further and serves it with rice instead, sometimes cooked separately inside the animal's own cavity. No source gives an exact distance from the embers beyond "roughly two metres."

As tradition built it

Serves 8 to 10. About 4 hours, mostly unattended.

Ingredients

  • 1 whole leg and shoulder of lamb or goat, on the bone, roughly 4 to 5kg
  • 80 to 100g fine sea salt, roughly 2 percent of the meat's weight
  • 2 to 3 tbsp neutral oil, just enough to help the salt adhere
  • to serve kaak or another hard flatbread
  • as available a wood or charcoal fire, built into a ring and left to burn down to embers before cooking begins

Method

  1. Rub the meat all over with the oil, then the salt, working it into every surface and any deep cuts.
  2. Thread a long steel spit through the leg and shoulder lengthwise.
  3. Once the fire has burned down to a bed of embers rather than open flame, plant the spit upright at the fire's edge, roughly two metres out, so the meat receives radiant heat from the side rather than direct heat from below.
  4. Turn periodically and tend the embers to keep them glowing rather than flaming.
  5. Cook 3 to 4 hours, until the exterior is deeply bronzed and the meat pulls easily from the bone, or to rare if serving the traditional way.
  6. Rest 15 minutes before carving.
  7. Serve with kaak.

What a modern chef changes

A weighed dry-brine, a sous vide and rotisserie split, and a smoked-fat baste

Rungs 1 and 2

Method

  1. First, a controlled dry-brine by weight (rung 1) rather than a rubbed-to-taste salting: 2 percent of the meat's weight in fine salt, applied 12 hours ahead and left uncovered in the fridge, draws moisture to the surface and reabsorbs it evenly, seasoning the meat all the way through rather than only its crust.
  2. Second, a reverse-sear split (rung 2): the leg is cooked sous vide at 56°C for 6 hours to render internal fat and bring the whole cut to a uniform medium-rare before it ever meets fire, then finished on a Big Green Egg fitted with a rotisserie attachment, planted at the same two-metre radiant distance the tradition specifies, purely for smoke, bark and colour rather than to carry the cook.
  3. Third, the trim and bones are rendered separately into a smoked fat, brushed over the meat during its final rotisserie turns, so the basting itself carries embered wood smoke rather than relying on ambient smoke alone.
  4. A dehydrated kaak crumb, made by blitzing stale kaak in a high-power blender and drying it to a fine, crisp dust, is scattered at the table as the only garnish, a direct textural echo of the bread it would traditionally be torn and eaten with.
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