What is jigar, and is it the same dish as kalle pache?
Jigar is lamb liver, cut into cubes, threaded onto flat skewers with pieces of fat between them and grilled fast over live coals. It comes off the skewer into bread, with raw onion, coarse salt and a squeeze of lime. That is the whole dish.
It is not kalle pache, and it is not part of it. Liver and kidney are not in that pot at all. In Iranian cooking the two sit in different rooms: the head and trotters go into a slow overnight pot, and the liver goes onto a grill and comes off fast. The grills that specialise in it are known as jigaraki.
We do not cook jigar at Shaun the Sheep. This is a recipe for your own coals, written the way a griller judges it, by look, feel and smell.
How do you choose lamb liver, and what does fresh look and smell like?
Jigar is decided at the butcher's counter, not at the fire. There is no long simmer to hide a poor piece, so buy on your eyes and your nose.
- Colour: deep and even, a wet reddish-brown with a shine to it. Grey edges, dull patches or a blotchy surface mean it has been sitting.
- Feel: taut and smooth, springing back when pressed. Slack or slimy is a no.
- Smell: clean, faintly sweet and metallic. Anything sour or sharp in the nose, walk away.
- The tray: a little clear liquid is normal. A cloudy pink puddle is not.
- The cut: ask for a whole lobe, not slices. You want to do the trimming yourself.
Lamb liver is the one to use. It is finer and milder than beef liver, and it holds a cube shape that chicken liver cannot.
What do you need for jigar skewers?
- Lamb liver, one whole lobe, unsliced
- Dombeh, the fat from the tail of a fat-tailed sheep, in a block; or firm lamb fat trim
- Wide flat metal skewers, the kind used for kabab koobideh
- Coarse salt
- Onions, raw, cut into wedges for the table
- Fresh limes
- Sangak or lavash bread
- Sumac and black pepper, optional, at the table
That is the list. No marinade, no oil, no lemon before the fire.
Why does dombeh go on the skewer between the liver?
Because liver is very lean, and lean meat over a fierce fire dries out before the inside is done. Dombeh is the reserve of fat carried at the base of the tail on fat-tailed sheep, and it is much of the reason so much Persian food tastes of lamb without much lamb in it. On a skewer it does a job nothing else does: it renders, and what it renders runs down over the cubes below it and keeps basting them for as long as they are on the fire.
Cut the dombeh into cubes a little smaller than the liver, and alternate: two pieces of liver, one of fat, all the way along. If you cannot get dombeh, ask the butcher for firm lamb fat trim. It renders less sweetly but it does the same work. Brushed-on oil does not; it burns off at once and leaves the liver bare.
How do you trim and cube the liver?
A whole lobe arrives wrapped in a fine silvery membrane. Take it off. Slit one corner with the tip of a knife, get a thumbnail under the edge, and pull it back across the lobe; it lifts away in a sheet, like peeling a glove. Left on, it tightens over the fire, curls the cube into a ball and drags it off the skewer.
Then cut out the tubes. Where they run through the lobe the tissue is pale and rubbery, and it stays that way whatever you do.
Now the cubes, and this is the part people rush. Cut them all to the same size, about a large olive each, and keep them square rather than flat. Uneven cubes are the commonest reason a skewer comes off half raw and half dry: the small pieces finish long before the big ones have started, over the same coals.
Should you salt or marinate the liver first?
Salt at the end, never at the start. Salt on raw liver pulls water to the surface, and that wet surface steams over the coals instead of catching, so you lose the crust and the cube tightens.
The same goes for lime. Acid on raw liver greys and firms the outside before it ever meets heat. Squeeze it at the table, over the cooked cubes, where it belongs.
Some cooks soak the liver in milk to soften its edge. It works, but it also waterlogs the surface, so if you do it, dry every cube thoroughly before skewering. The jigaraki grills in Iran generally do not bother.
How do you cook jigar over the coals?
- Let the fire burn down until there are no flames left and the coals are covered in a grey ash. Flame blackens liver long before the middle is cooked.
- Thread the cubes, alternating liver and dombeh, piercing each one through its thickest part. Push them together so they touch but are not squashed flat; where cubes are crushed against each other they steam.
- Lay the skewers across the rails so the meat hangs clear of the bars.
- Leave them alone. When the wet shine has gone from the top surface and beads of moisture start to rise, the underside has taken its crust and will release on its own. The fat cubes will look glassy and be dripping by then.
- Turn once, not repeatedly, and give the second side less than the first.
- Take one off and cut it. It is done when the outside is caught and browned and the centre is just barely pink. That window closes fast.
Pull everything off the skewers onto a board, salt it there, and get it under a cloth with the bread while you cook the next round.
Where does home-grilled jigar go wrong?
Almost always in the same place: it is left on too long. Liver has no forgiving margin, no connective tissue turning slowly to gelatin, nothing to gain from being left longer. Past the barely-pink moment it goes grainy and chalky, and no amount of lime brings it back.
After that, in order: cooking over flames instead of coals, leaving the membrane on, cutting cubes of different sizes, salting early, and skewering liver with no fat between the pieces. Fix those five and the dish more or less makes itself. Without coals, a heavy pan works if it is properly hot and the cubes are given room, but the smoke is the part you lose.
What is jigar eaten with?
Bread, and not much else. Sangak or lavash goes underneath the board or over the top, and you use a folded piece of it to grip a cube and pull it off the skewer. Raw onion in wedges, coarse salt, a lime cut in half and squeezed at the last moment, sumac if you like it, fresh chili if you want heat. No rice, no sauce.
If it is the wider Persian habit of eating every part of the animal that interests you, our guide to brain, tongue and trotters covers the cuts we do cook, on Jumeira Street, around the clock, for dine-in, pickup and delivery across 141 Dubai areas. Anything you want to check before ordering, call 04 321 8882 and ask.
