Kebab Hindi: Syrian Meatballs in Tomato Sauce

The name means Indian kebab, and the dish has nothing to do with India. Small lamb meatballs cook in a tomato sauce; carrot and potato go in with them, and the whole thing is served over yellow rice. This is home cooking, not a restaurant line.

Why it is called Indian

Nobody knows, and the sources say so plainly. A Syrian food writer notes that whoever named the dish had never met Indian cooking. The Post and Courier, a daily in the United States, wrote up the same contradiction: the name is discussed more than the dish. Cinnamon and clove are the only clue for anyone trying to anchor that name somewhere, and those spices are already at home in Aleppo.

What is in the pot

The minced meat is worked into balls the size of a walnut, fried, then moved into the sauce. The sauce is tomato, with red pepper fried alongside the onion, and in the Aleppo version it is soured with pomegranate molasses. Clove and cinnamon go into the meat itself. Carrot and potato cook in the same pot, which makes them part of the dish rather than a side. Rice, turned yellow with saffron, goes underneath.

Not the Aleppo kebab

The two share a word and nothing else. Aleppo kebab is threaded onto skewers, cooked over charcoal and takes no sauce; kebab hindi is a pot or oven dish in which the sauce is the point. Ordering one and being brought the other is a common moment of confusion at an Aleppo table.

Because it is a home dish, the portion is a household one: a wide pot, a crowded table, rice under everything. If you want it in a restaurant, look for the places that cook in pots rather than over fire.