The Slavic east and the Balkans · Volume 28, Grill, Pepper and the Ottoman-Habsburg Line
Bosanski Lonac
Bosnia
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 4 hours
- Researched
- 10 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
The keys named by Bosnian sources are a proper ceramic pot or kazan, a generous quantity of ingredients, real patience, and enough fatty meat to carry the long cook.
As tradition built it
Serves 6. About 4 hours.
Ingredients
- 800 g beef, cubed
- 400 g lamb, cubed
- 1 kg potato, peeled and cut into chunks
- 2 onions, sliced
- 1 aubergine, cubed
- 2 tomatoes, chopped
- to taste garlic, black pepper, salt
- a wedge or two a wedge or two of cabbage, cut into chunks
Method
- Lightly fry the beef and lamb with the sliced onion until coloured.
- In a deep ceramic pot or heavy casserole, layer the potato at the base, then the browned meat and onion, then the aubergine, tomato and cabbage, seasoning each layer with garlic, black pepper and salt.
- Add water to just cover.
- Cover tightly and simmer on very low heat, or in a low oven, for 3 to 5 hours, without lifting the lid, until everything has collapsed into a rich, unified stew.
What a modern chef changes
The seal respected as the whole mechanism, not an inconvenience
Rung 5, applied to a pot rather than a sač dome
Method
- Do not open the pot to check on it. The whole technique depends on trapped steam and unbroken heat; every lift of the lid resets the clock on the very slow braise this dish is built around.
- Choose genuinely fatty cuts and do not trim them. A lean cut will simply dry out over this length of time; the fat is carrying the dish through hours the meat itself could not survive alone.
- Run it low and long in a Big Green Egg with the vents nearly closed, rather than a domestic oven, if you have one. The sealed, ember-fed heat is a closer analogue to the original kazan method than a conventional oven's dry, even air.