Persian Celery Stew Perfect Khoresh Karafs Every Time

Hello everybody this is Yousef and welcome to my kitchen. Today we are going to make a one of the most famous Persian or Iranian stew Khoresh Karafs or celery stew. This is really is very underrated and unappreciated stew. The reason is because there are some people they love this stew, some people they don't. Those that they don't I believe they never had experience with a good celery stew. Now today I'm going to give you some of the secret that it makes it completely different and makes it even better than khoreb sabzi. That is everybody's favorite. Now the secret to that is the ratio between the ingredients and another thing that I'm going to talk about it later on. Let's go over the ingredients and start making it. Okay what I have here as the main ingredients is the karafs which is one big bunch here with the leaves that is very important. We're going to use those and this is celery by the way and I have about two and a half pounds of the meat including about one and a half of that the beef which is a chopped roast. It's very nice for a stew and also I have one a lamb shank which is in New Zealand and the reason is because it's a very small and a very young lamb with no aftertaste. That's the best that you can have for the reason that I've combined this because this one has a bone in it and it makes a much much better taste in the final result and also we need one onion the big one or two small one. I have a dry parsley it's about one cup and half a cup this is the ratio and a half a cup of dry mint. If you want to use the fresh one so also you have to make sure that you have a two to one ratio. The reason that I use the dry because the dry it has the more intense color and also taste so that's why I use always dry one and we need also about one teaspoon black pepper one and a half teaspoon salt another one table turmeric and this is a secret that is that I use it it makes a huge difference for the stew to become more intense and more heavier than just the watery stew and that's it onion powder need about one lime or lemon juice some cooking oil all right now let's start from the chopping our onion chopping our celery then I cut the meat we go from there let's cut our onion mix it a small dice always you know keep the bottom of it so it's not gonna even just get the loose apart so you have a control on that the whole time then you're cutting it I'm doing it a little bit slow you just follow the end part you just make it a little bit cut and use all take this aside throw it away try to make it the same size as small so they can cook together at the end of the part you do cutting again like this and do the rest all right you put our onion aside we clean up our board now it's a time to cut our meat here's our meat as I said it's very nice for stew so the size it should be you know consider something that you always do but mine is just like a I try to make it as equal as I can it's about an inch and a half this is the size I like to do by the way this could be about for about six to eight people you can make this for so if you are less people that you want to make so just adjust the portion and weight so it's up to you how many people you want to make food I'm not going to do anything if this it goes all together let me wash my hand and clean up my table and go start stew saute our onion this is the pot that we are going to make our stew so we saute our onion here about two to three tablespoon of oil cooking oil I use a grape seed oil so you use whatever you like you can add the butter if you want or olive oil whatever you like so just start sauteing our onion okay we're not going to you know just caramelize or just overdo on a saute just a little bit about you know maybe four minutes or so as soon as you know it's translucent and that's the time to add your half of your turmeric right now give a nice color and aroma and now you're just going to add our meat to it just let it sit for a few second or one minute and then start turn around just make sure it seals itself so the juice stay inside the meat it's not going to you know just get the juice out and therefore your stew meat is going to be very soft and delicious at the end let's make a little bit room for our shank also now it's a time to add our black pepper this is your taste you know if you want to put more or less or a red pepper it totally is up to you and also the rest of the turmeric goes here too one more time to make sure all over the meats are being changed the color by the heat now this is my secret ingredient is the onion powder savory stew doesn't have that much of you know vegetable or just like a gourmet sabzi doesn't have a bean so the juice or water inside is going to be watery this makes it it became a little bit heavier and that's caused thickening so that's the thing that I add and makes a huge difference you try that too otherwise it's going to be just like a watery soup with this cause it became thicker and more acceptable and more delicious all right this is good enough now is the time to add the water I have boiling water here going to add enough to cover the meat because you're not going to make it very watery stew that's enough for now if we need it we can add later on so we are going to leave this alone put the lid on and let it boil and a little bit lower heat okay now we are going to make our celery and cut that let's do it okay as you see I have a big celery bunch we have to cut on a bottom of it first then I'm going to separate it the reason is because we have to wash this if you look at it there is dirt from the ground you have to wash them carefully we separate the stem and we are going to wash them first and then we cut them and we are taking these leaves make it separate because we need those and we wash them together but you know I need those separate to just sauté at the end with the the other parts of the celery this is my pot and we're taking these leaves I love these times of the year it's a wonderful time for me because you know I love the sunshine and just a very nice weather and also we have a hummingbird back there very little bird made a nest we watch him actually I didn't let our gardener come in last two weeks because they make a noise he did once he just made a nest and that causes he ran away and had to go somewhere else but it still is in my backyard to make another nest so I don't let the gardener come here and make a noise it's two weeks no one's came to my yard this beautiful bird and I love enjoy looking at him her when you know just laying on eggs if I had a chance I might show it to you and also wash the leaves and because I'm going to use that just like a dry mint and parsley we're going to cut them and sauté that too okay you see some of them are too big so we cut from the middle and just trying to just cut them the same size one inch that's a good size some people make it smaller some people longer but to me this is a good size to cut because they're going to cook at the same time this way you cut the leaves very fine because this is also one of the things that gives a thickness to your stew go over again make sure to just cut it and chop it as small pieces as you can because that's that's one of the secrets that it gives you a much better tasty celery stew all right this is the perfect size cutting and put it aside and continue our cooking by starting sautéing our celery this is our pan that is gonna you know just to sauté our celery this is since it's wet I just put it without the oil first for a few minutes then we're going to add some cooking oil so that causes the evaporate the water makes it dry so you use less oil for sautéing it okay as you see pretty much the evaporate all the wetness and water so it's a time to as you see it's very dry add the oil and make sure you just don't overdo on it oil and also at the same time it has to be enough to just make sure that they sauté these properly it might take about eight to nine or ten minutes to be done so be patient with it and stay on the top you don't want to burn it and just a little bit of the coloration of that shows it's been sauté would be enough I show when is the time to turn off the heat all right you can sauté more than these but to me this is you see it's been changing the color on the edges that would be enough for it and now is the time just turn off the heat or take this out or put it aside so since I'm going to use the pot for just sautéing the leaves and the parsley and mint so I'm going to take this out of here and use the same pot let me do that actually same pan adding a little bit more oil again okay and let me just drop these leaves top one it's a little bit big pan but I don't want to you know change it for a little bit of the leaves it's okay it's gonna be done anyway and also after you change the color to become a darker then it's a time to add the dried parsley and our dry mint all right this is this is enough it's been sauté you remember how small and how big it was and how small became but the color is changed to the dark and it's a time to sauté our parsley and dry mint now also I'd rather to add a little bit the oil see if I can get it from here not to it actually doesn't have any oil so just add a little bit you can sauté those okay parsley and the mint as soon as you smell the mint you just turn off the heat and this is it you are done and take it out of the heat because you don't want to burn it and make it bitter our meat is cooking away and let me just to see how tender it is now because it's been over almost one hour it's cooking pretty good and celery also is a is a little bit hard veggie so it needs to cook a little bit more so it's a time you can add your celery to it let me switch this to this side okay I need the towel all right because this is I there is no Persian Iranian stew that doesn't accompany with the rice so for that reason we are going to make our rice also here's already been washed soak in the salt salt and water and so we're going to make the nice rice with our stew this one also goes in all right now we adjust the water it seems that we need to add a little bit of water I have some boiling water I'm going to add right now with the salt it's a time for it okay a little bit water and the salt goes at the same time so we leave it alone for another hour and a half then our stew is going to be ready by that time make sure after start boiling again to reduce the heat down to just the simmer is good enough and about 15 minutes or 20 minutes before you serving we add lime or lemon juice that we had and meanwhile at that time you just test the stew to see if we have to adjust the salt or a pepper for yourself see you all right our rice is done is ready and also our stew is ready you just needed the time to add the one fresh squeezed lemon lime you're going to add that and in 10 more minutes we serve the food see you all right that's what I'm talking about our celery stew and you saw how easy it was and it turned beautiful and it tastes amazing you're gonna love it just do the same way and I guarantee you you're gonna love it okay let's go for a taste and see what we make okay beautiful tadik oh kiddo a little bit of saffron I'm gonna be honest about it you should John let me finish it then I talk to you it's so good I can't stop okay I really thank you and I appreciate watching my video and also your comment please let me know if there is any specific food that you like I make it I really appreciate and I try to make that for you and like always I love all you if this is for your 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