Kafta Kabobs with Tahini Sauce

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I’ve had a lifelong love for Middle Eastern cuisine. Being raised on Greek food, it stands to reason that I would love other cuisines that use warm spices, pitas, and yogurt. And growing up in a place with tons of authentic Lebanese restaurants sure didn’t hurt, either.

I’ve  been getting a lot of ground beef from our farmer, mostly because it’s fairly inexpensive and generally makes meals with good leftovers. But, a lot of times I just run out of ideas when I’ve already made burgers or pasta. Enter kafta, one of my favorite Middle Eastern dishes – it’s basically ground meat (lamb or beef may be used) mixed with some allspice and a few basic meatball ingredients.  I love how easy and delicious these are, and they’re just a little different than our standard Greek keftedes. We have these with fattoush (and I often end up shoving some of the fattoush in the pocket with the kafta), and the meal elicits remarks from Zachary like, “This was a good dinner. I really love all the things in this dinner!” Gotta love it.

Some people use additional spices in these, like cinnamon, cardamom, etc. I find that allspice is really all they need, though certainly those ingredients wouldn’t hurt. Thankfully, when I made these recently, I forgot to write down my recipe as I was going, so I had to make it again, to make sure I was able to give you an accurate recipe. 🙂 I’ve used a basic tahini sauce here, but tzatziki would be equally good, or even just adding a couple spoonfuls of yogurt to the tahini below would also work.

 

Kafta Kabobs with Tahini Sauce

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16 thoughts on “Kafta Kabobs with Tahini Sauce

  1. Oh Elly.
    I love you.
    Please come and live at my house and cook my meals for me. This looks like exactly what I want to eat.
    right now.
    For breakfast.

  2. I love the idea of more sweet spices in savory meals, so when I ate meat kafta (and keftedes) were always a favorite! Glad to hear Zack is a fan as well!

    1. haha, well sort of. I wish he was ours personally, but he’s a local farmer who we order meat from on a monthly basis. 🙂

  3. I love your blog! So many great dinner ideas. I had to try this one right away, seeing how we no longer live near our fav Middle Eastern restaurant and I miss it. The kabobs were fantastic! Perfect seasoning! The leftover kabobs I crumbled up and put inside a quesadilla with jack cheese, green onions, and thinly sliced grape tomatoes. An excellent dinner and an excellent lunch the next day. Thank you!

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