Mansaf Jordanian

Hard·45 min active + 1 hour 15 min resting

Jordan's national dish — lamb slow-cooked in jameed (a tangy dried fermented yogurt), poured over a bed of flatbread and rice and showered with toasted almonds and pine nuts. Eaten communally from one great platter; the centrepiece of every Jordanian celebration.

Mansaf is the national dish of Jordan and the great Bedouin feast — lamb cooked in a sauce of jameed, the hard dried fermented yogurt, ladled over rice and shrak bread. Eaten communally by hand from a shared platter, it is hospitality made edible.

Tear a piece of jameed-soaked bread with rice and lamb and the sauce is sharply tangy, savory, and creamy all at once, the lamb meltingly tender, the nuts toasty. Bite: the fermented yogurt's bracing sourness is unlike anything else, rich and almost cheesy, cutting the fatty lamb; eaten by hand from the shared platter. The proud, ceremonial heart of Jordanian hospitality.

Jameed — yogurt fermented, salted, and sun-dried into hard balls — rehydrates into an intensely tangy, savory sauce that must be heated gently and stirred to stop the high-protein yogurt curdling. Its acidity cuts the rich lamb; the bread soaks the sauce and the rice carries it.

Variations

With chicken. With more nuts. With a saffron rice. Soupier. With yogurt instead of jameed (milder). For Eid.

On the Palate

Where Mansaf Jordanian sits in the Jordanian flavor cloud

Ingredients

Serves 8

How it's made

8 steps · 45 min active + 1 hour 15 min waiting

1
10 min
Soak the dried jameed in water overnight, then blend smooth.
2
76 min
Simmer lamb pieces with onion and spices until tender, about 75 min.
3
8 min
Warm the jameed gently, whisking constantly so it doesn't curdle.
Watch out
Warm the jameed low and whisk without stopping — let it near a boil and the high-protein yogurt breaks into grainy curds.
4
12 min
Add the cooked lamb to the jameed and simmer to meld, never boiling hard.
Watch out
Once the lamb's in, hold it at a bare simmer — a hard boil will still split the sauce even now.
5
5 min
Lay shrak flatbread on a large platter and moisten with jameed sauce.
Watch out
Moisten the shrak, don't drown it — enough sauce to soften the bread, so it soaks without turning to mush.
6
4 min
Spread spiced rice over the bread.
7
4 min
Arrange the lamb on top and ladle over more jameed sauce.
8
3 min
Shower with toasted almonds and pine nuts; serve communally.