Losh Kebab

Want something to jazz up your grilled dinner? Need something with more flavor and a change from regular hamburgers? Losh Kebab is it! And, you can impress your friends and family with your worldliness.

I knew I would be everyone’s favorite person if I put losh kebab on the menu.  Losh kebab is basically a spiced up Armenian hamburger. If you ever see luleh kebab on a menu it is really just the same meat as losh kebab but wrapped around a skewer. You make the losh in whatever shape will fit best the pita bread or bun you are using.

I decided to serve it with a chopped salad that can either go in with the losh kebab, or be eaten on the side depending on preference. I can remember big Armenian picnics from when I was very young in the late 60’s or early 70’s and there was a big bowl of something to put on the losh kebab. When I called my mother to ask what was in the bowl, she hazarded a guess, “Maybe chopped onion and parsley?” That sounds right., losh kebab is good with the chopped vegetables on it, tabouleh, or even lettuce and sliced tomatoes. I decided to make Armenian chopped salad instead.

So, let’s see, that’s number 1, an entree, and number 2, a salad. Is this when I would say to myself, hmmm, muscle fatigue sets in from MS at the end of the day and the heat makes you pretty weak so why not just cut up some watermelon and call it a day? Nope. I decided to make bulgur pilaf. Pilaf, both the rice and bulgur type are easy, but I can’t make this many things at once. Learn from me. Make good choices.

Losh kebab had been on my mind to make because I had a bunch of parsley about to go bad and I knew I had to get to it. We had ordered pita bread and everything was going to be just fine until I decided to make two other Armenian dishes with it. I’m not sure what I was thinking here. Making three things at the same time is more than I can handle. My husband and daughter went swimming, but I just had to start everything on my own. I forgot, as I do almost every other day, that I can’t do what once was simple.

I think this forgetting is probably a good thing or it would be hard to get on with my life. It’s a bright and shiny new world most days and surely I can make three easy things for dinner right? Wrong. Luckily, my husband and daughter came back right about the time I could barely move or talk. They picked up the things I had invariably dropped and shooed me out of the kitchen. They kicked it into the driveway by running things to the bedroom for me to see or cut.

I actually did take a few shortcuts on this meal. Next time I just won’t try to make as many things. Who believes me?

Print Recipe

Losh Kebab

A hamburger with Armenian spices.

Prep Time15 minutes mins

Cook Time8 minutes mins

Course: Main Course

Cuisine: Armenian

Keyword: Armenian, Burger, Hamburger

Servings: 5

Equipment

• knife or food processor
• grill or broiler

Ingredients

Losh (Burgers)

• 2 lbs. Ground Beef (or 50/50 mix of Ground Lamb and Ground Beef) 80-85% lean
• 4 Tablespoons Tomato Paste
• 3/4 cup Parsley chopped
• 3/4 cup Scallions, white and green chopped into 1/4 inch or smaller pieces
• 4 cloves Garlic minced
• 2 teaspoons Kosher Salt
• 1 teaspoon Allspice
• 1/2 teaspoon Cumin
• 1 teaspoon Aleppo or Marash Pepper

For Serving

• enough pita bread, hard rolls or hamburger buns for the amount of patties you are making
• About 2 cups of chopped parsley and onion for serving

Instructions

• Put the ground beef into a large bowl. on top of one side of the meat, put the tomato paste, parsley, scallions, garlic, kosher salt, allspice, cumin and Aleppo pepper. Fold over the ground meat from the opposite side and mix with hands until just incorporated (the purpose of all of this is so the tomato paste and spices don't end up all over your hands and instead get mixed in). Don't over mix.
  
• Form the meat mixture into round shaped patties for rolls or buns or ovals for pita bread halves.
  
• Grill patties until they are about medium or lightly pink on the inside.
• Serve losh kebab in pita bread or on rolls with chopped onion and parsley in it.
  

Modifications

I did start out the dinner in a smart way by rationing my energy and spreading the work out. Around lunch time I measured out all my spices and tomato paste into a Pyrex bowl, so I could do some of the prep work  earlier in the day when I have more energy and divide it up from the last minute dinner prep. This was really the end of my intelligence and forethought for the day.

About an hour or so before dinner I chopped the parsley in the food processor first. I put the parsley into a small bowl to divide some up for the chopped salad I was also making, and put the garlic in the food processor next because I knew it was unnecessary to wash the bowl in between since it was all going the same place. I used the kitchen shears to cut the scallions as it is steadier than a knife right now. Did you know that kitchen shears are also a good way to cut Pita bread for everybody?

I ended up having to cut the salad things, on the bed, on a towel, on a large tray because I could barely move anymore and decided that I needed to rest for 30 minutes (more like 3 hours but I wasn’t thinking clearly at this point) and then couldn’t get up and get back to the kitchen. I was done. The lesson that I take from this is to make a better plan first thing in the morning and to spread out more of the  labor to earlier in the day.

This was a night I could have my husband grill since I can’t really get up close to the grill in the wheelchair and it doesn’t seem particularly safe to do so anyway. I have also cooked these under the broiler, turning them halfway.