Zaynab Makes Slicked & Spicy Lamb Noodles | From The Test Kitchen | Bon Appétit

foreign T and spicy lamb noodles I only eat halal meat so I've never been able to have the John Famous Foods cumin lamb noodles so I wanted to sort of Riff on that idea this has to be probably one of my favorite recipes that I've ever.

Developed for the site just because I went through so many iterations of it so the final product is something that I'm super proud of that combination of lamb and cumin is so iconic and I wanted to translate it to a really quick easy weeknight noodle dish we need large salads this is what I mean.

By a large shallot I'm going for like a quarter inch thick slices somewhere between an eighth and a quarter they're going to get cooked down in a ton of olive oil so don't worry about them being like paper thin I love shallots because they have like a garlickiness to them so just saved me from calling for another ingredient but if you only had.

An onion on hand you could definitely do one large yellow onion and maybe like four or five garlic cloves okay shallots are done I'm just gonna put them off to the side in a bowl and then for the mint I'm gonna toss the like thicker stems of the mint and try and use just like mostly the leaves I don't mind the thinner.

Stems at the top I want like a half cup of mint and I'm going to roughly chop it bundling it up to make it easier for me to handle when I chop it up but just run your knife through it you almost want larger pieces so that you can see them and really taste them in the final dish and then I'm just going to crush two tablespoons of whole cumin seeds in a.

Mortar and pestle we want to really like taste the cumin in both flavor and texture so using whole cumin seeds is the way to go here you want to crush it until you see like most of the seeds have broken down it definitely doesn't need to be powdery but you don't want the whole cumin seeds so that's the texture that we're going for you can see.

Some of the pieces have completely broken down there are some like larger chunks to give us texture to the noodles that's it I'm just gonna transfer it to a small bowl and then we can move to the stove if you're scared of using stainless steel because you're worried that your food's gonna stick like totally fair.

That's usually because your pan isn't like correctly heated through so that will cause ticking if you want to check if your pan is nice and evenly heated through you can just splash some water on the skillet if it dances around like that and like evaporates within like five to ten seconds you're good I'm gonna go in with that oil this is also a.

Pretty significant amount of Shallot this amount of oil is going to help this cook down faster we want the shallots to soften and also get kind of golden brown around the edges I just seasoned that with a pinch of salt so just stir to break up any like tight rings of Shallot and then we're going to let this go for like six to nine minutes again we want.

To see that the shallots have broken down and softened and they're starting to get golden brown around the edges the volume of the shelves as the moisture draws out from cooking it is going to reduce and how long this takes is going to depend on how thinly you slice your shallots if you want the mandolin route and they're pretty thin this will happen.

Closer to five to six minutes if you kept them like larger this will take closer to ten this looks perfect I can see that the shallots have softened and broken down and they're turning golden brown around the edges so now this is the perfect time to go in with tomato paste the tomato paste is going to caramelize in this oil and get really.

Nice and add a ton of depth and sweetness tomato paste is one of my favorite ingredients of all time just because it adds so much so fast just like cooking it down a little bit you lose that acidity and that tinniness and you get something that's very deep and savory so you want to let this go until the tomato paste darkens in color.

That'll take anywhere from like two to three minutes the tomato paste has darkened in color it's pretty evenly dispersed and so I'm going to go in with the spices for the smoked paprika I'm using smoked because I like that extra like savory-ness that it gives and then the red chili flakes gives it like a pretty good spice level in my opinion.

Cumin seeds are going in too and then we just want to stir this so that the spices can bloom in the oil blooming the spices in the oil is going to bring out their flavor and make them stronger and more potent that looks perfect and then I'm going to go in with the ground lamb and season the lamb a little bit with some kosher salts lamb has a ton of.

Flavor so it's the ideal choice because it plays really well with the other strong flavors that we have going on but you could definitely use ground beef as well cooking the lamb in the spiced oil mixture that we made is gonna make sure that the lamb is seasoned throughout if we just cooked it in oil with salt and pepper took it out and reintroduced it.

It wouldn't have had the opportunity to mingle with these flavors I think that adds a ton of deep savoriness to the lamb at this point the lamb is on its way it needs a few more minutes I'm going to drop my pasta so I'm using pappardelle which is like a nice wide pasta but you could use any pasta that you have obviously this I just feel like.

It's optimal mouth feel and clings to the lamb mixture beautifully I'm gonna season the boiling water with a pretty generous amount of salt and then drop my pasta the lamb mixture is done this looks perfect I'm going to keep it on low heat while the pasta finishes cooking the pasta has been cooking it needs like another 30 seconds or so.

That's perfect noodles are drained off I'm gonna put the heat to medium on the lamb and add pasta water this is just going to help loosen up the mixture so that it can coat the noodles so just stir that together it'll emulsify in pretty quickly because of the tomato paste it's not Saucy but it's also not dry it's slicked okay perfect this looks.

Great I'm gonna add a little bit more because of that amount of oil even though we added water it still has that like greasy quality that we want I'm gonna taste it now for salt now that most of the pasta water is in perfect okay great I'm going to add half of the Lamb mixture to the noodles so we're adding half so that we can coat.

The noodles in the mixture and also have some reserves for the top and then we're going to go in with the mint so now I'm just going to toss the lamb mixture with the noodles so you can see there's no like real sauce but the noodles are being coated by the oil from the lamb mixture and they're stained from all of those spices for plating.

We're gonna add the noodles to a bowl and then top it with more of the Lamb mixture just so that you have like extra concentrated lamb on top then I'm going to top the top with a little bit of that reserved lamb mixture so pretty and then I'm going to add a little bit more mint too these are my slicked and spicy lamb.

Noodles it's time to taste I'm actually kind of glad no one's here because that means I get to eat the whole thing myself but I'm gonna grab a piece with like a pretty good amount of lamb I also want a little bit of mint makes me so happy it's not like overwhelmingly spicy there's a ton of flavor it's really deep.

There's like a nice sweetness there's this like uniquely moistened quality to the noodles where they don't feel like they're Saucy and wet but they're also not like dry at all if you're looking for a really like simple but flavorful noodle dish this is the one for you