Kafta

Kafta (kufta, kefta) appears across Persian, Arab, Ottoman and South Asian cuisines, with spiced ground-meat dishes recorded in a 13th-century Arab cookbook from Baghdad, though that text does not yet use the name kufta; the word itself derives from the Persian for to pound, and the named dish first appears explicitly in later Ottoman Turkish manuscripts. The Lebanese version stabilized in the Mount Lebanon region in the late Ottoman period as a charcoal-grilled skewer form, distinct from the meatball or stew kufta of Iran and Turkey. Charcoal availability in Beirut's mangal culture set the technique.

Lebanese kafta is lamb-and-beef with parsley, onion, and seven-spice baharat. Mince must be hand-chopped twice or run through a fine plate; food-processor mince turns the skewer spongy on the grill.

Coarse-ground lamb (or lamb and beef) hand-mixed with finely chopped onion, parsley, and a Levantine seven-spice (allspice, black pepper, cinnamon, nutmeg, clove, cumin, coriander), pressed onto flat skewers and grilled over charcoal. The exterior chars; the interior stays pink and loose. The onion is the moisture engine — without enough, kafta dries out at the first turn of the skewer.

The hand-mix is non-negotiable: the meat must be worked just until tacky, never paste. Over-kneaded kafta turns into kibbeh-textured rubber. The salt is added late, after shaping, to prevent the proteins from binding too tightly before they hit the grill. Flat skewers (not round) keep the meat from spinning when turned — round skewers are why home kafta falls into the coals.