Zarb

Hard·45 min active + 3 hours 15 min resting

The Bedouin underground barbecue of Wadi Rum — lamb, chicken, and vegetables stacked on a tiered rack, lowered into a sand pit over hot coals, sealed, and slow-roasted for hours until smoky and falling-apart tender. The desert feast of southern Jordan.

Zarb is the Bedouin sand-pit barbecue of Jordan's Wadi Rum — meat and vegetables sealed in an underground oven and cooked for hours in the desert's own heat. It is nomad cooking at its most elemental, the desert itself the stove.

Pull a piece of zarb lamb and it falls off the bone, deeply smoky and tender, the long sand-pit roast having rendered the fat and perfumed everything with woodsmoke. Bite: rich, savory, and primally smoky, the vegetables soaked in the meat juices below. A communal desert feast, unearthed steaming under the Wadi Rum stars.

The sealed sand pit becomes an underground oven — coals provide steady radiant heat while the sand and lid trap smoke and moisture, slow-roasting the meat to fall-apart tenderness over hours. Dripping juices flavor the vegetables stacked below; the woodsmoke is the signature.

Variations

With more chicken. In an oil-drum zarb (modern). With saffron rice. With extra vegetables. With a spice rub. For groups.

On the Palate

Where Zarb sits in the Jordanian flavor cloud

Ingredients

Serves 10

How it's made

8 steps · 45 min active + 3 hours 15 min waiting

1
40 min
Dig a pit and build a fire in it until you have deep, hot coals.
Watch out
Burn the fire down to deep, ash-grey glowing coals with no flames — you want steady radiant heat, not fire that'll char the meat.
2
8 min
Season lamb and chicken pieces generously with salt and baharat.
3
10 min
Stack the meat and vegetables (potato, onion, carrot) on a tiered metal rack.
4
3 min
Lower the rack into the pit over the coals.
5
6 min
Cover with a metal lid, then a blanket, then seal completely with sand.
Watch out
Seal the pit airtight with sand until no smoke escapes — any leak lets the heat and smoke bleed out and the meat won't turn fall-apart tender.
6
180 min
Let it roast undisturbed for about 3 hours.
7
5 min
Carefully unearth and lift out the rack.
Watch out
The meat's ready when it pulls from the bone at a touch and smells of woodsmoke — that smoke note is the whole point of the pit.
8
3 min
Serve the smoky meat and vegetables with rice and bread.