Andy Makes Herb Rice with Scallions and Saffron

[Camera Man] Let's get into it.

Let's get into it.

That's how I always--

[Camera Man] What are we getting into today?

[instrumental music].

Today I'm gonna be making a dish

that I grew up eating.

Some people do it with potatoes,

some people make it with bread.

It's a rice dish called Sabzi Polo.

Sabzi means herbs,

Polo means rice.

So we're gonna be making a rice dish

that has a lot of herbs

and a few different other things

that are a little less traditional.

I'm gonna take you through step by step

and how to kinda master making the rice

and getting that burnt crust,

that a lot of you might know about,

some of you might not know about

but you're gonna know by the end of this video,

called Tahdig.

Okay, first we're gonna start with three cups of rice.

This is Basmati rice,

which is a long grain variety.

When it's aged properly and you see this color,

that's kind of the indicator where you know

that it's gonna have that fragrant Basmati smell.

This is really good Basmati

and I say that just because,

a lot of the Basmati you'll see,

it's a lot more pale.

This has like a beige color to it.

Oh it's almost golden.

And it's a little bit ashy.

You want that,

that means that the rice has been aged properly.

The ones that are a little bit more pale

or almost look white,

that means they haven't been aged properly,

which means it's not gonna be as long,

it's not gonna be as fluffy,

it's not gonna be as fragrant.

We're gonna take the three cups of rice

and we're going to rinse it.

You can place this in a colander or a sieve.

I just do it in a large bowl

so I could really see the water

and see how cloudy it gets.

And you see the water's already really cloudy.

So I'm gonna rinse this a few times,

and I'm gonna just keep rinsing until the water is clear.

I'm gonna add let's say about three tablespoons,

almost as salty as the ocean.

What I'm gonna be doing here

is I'm just gonna be slicing them into thin rounds.

I'm gonna use a Mandoline,

you could use a knife,

a Mandoline is just a little bit more exact.

And I'm gonna be kind of crisping them,

frying them in oil.

This is not traditional,

my mom didn't do this

but I love crispy shallots.

They just give a wonderful onion-y flavor to the dish.

If you don't wanna use shallots,

or you don't even wanna fry shallots,

you could always just take some onions,

thinly slice them and then cook them down in oil

until they're kind of lacy and brown at the edges.

Okay, so I'm gonna take the shallots,

I peeled them,

and I'm just going to slice them

into rounds using a Mandoline.

Again, use a knife if you want.

But with the Mandoline,

if you're careful you can go really fast.

If you really wanna make this dish

but you wanna skip the shallot bit,

you could totally do that.

I'm not gonna be upset if you do that.

I think the big part of this dish,

is the rice and the herbs

and making the herby rice.

Okay, I'm gonna place the shallots in a small sauce pan.

And then I'm gonna pour some neutral oil,

vegeteable oil, sunflower oil, peanut oil,

whatever you wanna use,

just don't use olive oil.

And I'm gonna pour it covered by maybe half an inch.

And then I'm gonna place this over medium heat.

This is gonna take some time,

you do wanna start with cold oil.

By starting with cold oil,

the shallots are gonna fry evenly,

the texture's gonna be more even,

they're all gonna be kind of crispy.

So start from cold oil, medium heat,

let that go it's gonna start to bubble

and once it's bubbled,

you're gonna need to watch it

cause it could happen relatively fast.

So the herbs that we're gonna use for this dish,

the traditional ones, the ones that I grew up with,

and pretty much you see in a lot of the herb-filled dishes,

in Iran are cilantro, dil, parsley.

I threw in some tarragon just because I like it.

You don't have to do that

but you should definitely use a mix of herbs

so it's just not one note.

I'm kind of going over and over the parsley,

which is definitely bruising the herb.

But it's okay in this case

cause they're gonna be cooked to death.

I'll have you try this it's not there yet.

This is the direction I'm gonna rec the sandwich.

Okay I'm into it.

It's great.

The idea is like onion bacon.

Okay? Yeah.

The cheese isn't sharp enough.

I didn't put salt in the eggs

'cause I was like showing off

to myself just doing this new egg cooking technique.

Yeah yeah.

I'm sold.

It's a basic concept. Oh yeah.

Make your onion situation.

Where's that bread from?

It's like, [beep],

health food store English Muffin.

Is it a roll though?

Oh it's an English Muffin.

It's an English Muffin.

But it's so dense and square.

Yeah.

It's kinda wild.

But I think it's the best thing to do

'cause nobody's gonna find a whole wheat roll

or like a cool seeded something.

A speck of green anywhere?

No but there could be.

There could be.

If there was a thing to do that was a green,

it would be like a green hot sauce.

Yeah, green hot sauce.

Like green-herby hot sauce.

Like maybe you take a green hot sauce

and you herb it up.

Yeah.

That sounds great.

All right, we're gonna get some green hot sauce.

I'm sold.

What you're going for is about three cups

very finely chopped herbs.

You're not bringing back Herbslayer for this?

No I think I've retired that knife.

What!

I think I'm gonna give it away to someone.

We called Andy's knife, Herbslayer because--

It was a temp.

It was a phase. Yeah, yeah.

You rolled in here a few years ago

and it was just like mountains of herbs

and a lot of...

A lot of confusion.

A lot of doubt. Lot of doubt.

A lot of seasoned peaches.

[Andy] Yeah don't bring a big knife to the kitchen

to start with.

A lot of couscous.

A lot of couscous,

a lot of dark times.

The shallots are

at a good color,

I'm gonna turn this heat off

'cause they're gonna darken a little bit

as I scoop them out.

You see?

You wanna scatter them all over,

so they don't steam.

I'm gonna season them with salt

while they're still hot.

And give them a little bit of a toss.

I have four scallions right now.

I am using these as a substitute,

you'll see in the recipe that I call for green garlic,

it's still a little to early right now

and we haven't been able to find green garlic in New York.

I love green garlic so if you can find it,

please use it.

It has this kind of mild, fresh garlic flavor that I love.

I'm just gonna cut these.

I'm gonna keep the scallions separate.

I'm bringing my mortar and pestle out.

I'm sure you guys know by now I love it.

If you guys don't have a mortar and pestle,

you guys can use a spice mill,

just make sure it's clean.

So I have about a teaspoon of saffron threads.

I'm gonna add a pinch of kosher salt

and I am just gonna break that down.

[banging]

Okay so you have the saffron that's been pretty

finely ground.

I'm gonna add some hot water.

Okay so that was three tablespoons of hot water.

I'm going to pour the saffron water into a bowl.

Very nice.

And we get that really lovely color.

Right over there.

So we have our herbs,

our three cups of finely chopped herbs,

some scallions,

that's in case if you can't find green garlic

and we have our saffron water.

And we have our fried shallots.

Next we're gonna parboil our

[slowed down distorted voice]

and we're gonna parboil our rice.

So now first I would just want you guys to look at it,

this is our rice that has been soaking,

So this has been soaking for about two hours

but you can definitely after 40 minutes,

that's enough for the soak.

But it can soak for up to six hours.

I'm gonna drain this.

This doesn't need to be rinsed,

the soaked rice doesn't need to be rinsed.

Okay so we have a pot of boiling water,

I'm gonna add some more salt to this.

This is gonna be kind of the last bit

of seasoning of the rice.

We might taste and adjust in the very end.

So I'm gonna add

a good amount of salt.

Next we're gonna add the rice.

Make sure you get all the grains.

Right away what I do is I take a wooden spoon,

and I give it a few swirls.

You're gonna boil the rice

until the rice starts to rise to the top,

almost dance.

And you're gonna cook it till it's al dente.

That means you should see like almost a white dot

in the center.

It won't be fully cooked,

it won't be fully tender.

Now depending on your rice,

this part can take as little as six minutes,

depending on the quality,

how long your rice has been aging,

to up to maybe 12, 14 minutes.

It shouldn't really take that much longer

especially if you're soaking rice.

And also the longer you soak your rice,

the less time it's gonna take for it to be al dente.

As soon as I see a bit of the rice

over here rising to the top,

that's kinda my indicator.

And I already have seen some.

So I'm gonna taste just a bit of...

And there we have it.

It's been three, four minutes.

I'm gonna just turn that off.

I'm gonna drain this.

You don't wanna do hot water,

you wanna do cold water to get the remaining grains out

'cause you don't want the rice to keep cooking.

And I just pour that over.

And then I give this a bit of a shake

to get rid of any excess water.

If there's too much water your rice is gonna get mushy

but just from here,

you're in a really good place right now.

I'm pretty proud.

I'm pretty proud.

Look how long these grains are.

That's a really long grain of rice.

What you do here is like,

first you rinse the rice to get rid of the excess starch.

You soak the rice so that you can cut the cooking time

but it also further prevents the rice from sticking

and then you parboil it,

and that also gets rid of excess starch.

But then also allows you to do the final step,

which is steaming the rice.

And so right now,

the rice is almost cooked through.

You just wanna finish it by steaming it

with the other ingredients

so all the flavors can melt together.

Forgot to mention this to you guys,

save your shallot oil.

You don't need too much but save it for this part.

Also just like save the oil for sautéing

because you have that wonderful shallot-y infused oil.

I have three tablespoons here,

I'm just gonna throw that in the bottom of the pot.

And what we're doing here is

this is the process of making the Tahdig,

the burnt crust on the bottom.

I'm gonna add two teaspoons of that saffron water.

This is one way to make Tahdig, all right.

When I say that Tahdig can be made from rice,

bread, quints, tomatoes, eggplants, potatoes,

that's the crust that forms on the bottom.

Today we're doing it with lettuce.

Specifically, romaine lettuce

and we're using just the dark green parts.

So not this part,

just this part.

And so we have your shallot oil,

your saffron water,

and I'm gonna add a little bit of salt.

I'm adding a little bit of salt

because you have fat in the form of the shallot oil in here

so you want the salt in there

so everything's flavored.

And then next,

we're just gonna layer the lettuce.

I just place it straight down.

It's okay if it comes up a little bit on the sides.

And they can overlap.

Next we're gonna start layering.

So this is the whole thing about Polos,

which is rice that's mixed with other ingredients.

Chelo in Farsi means plain rice.

And that's kind of the plain rice you eat

with stews or with kebabs.

But in this case Polo is mixed rice.

So we're gonna take the rice

and we're gonna do a layer.

And just scatter it on the bottom like this.

Next we're gonna take the herbs.

Take some of the scallions.

More rice.

We're kind of building it high,

kind of want it to slope like a mountain.

I am going to take the back of the spoon,

I'm gonna poke a few holes,

you don't want it to hit the very bottom of the pot.

And I'm just poking a few holes here

and that's so the steam can escape.

And then from there,

this is very traditional.

Where you take a kitchen towel,

and you place it over.

And then, you place the lid on top.

Okay we're going to place this over medium heat.

This is just to kinda get everything going

to get some steam building.

For the Tahdig on the bottom to just start forming.

That's gonna go for about 12 to 15 minutes

and then we're gonna reduce it to medium low

and let that cook for another 20 to 25.

So it's been about 12 minutes of medium heat,

we're gonna turn it down to low.

I'm gonna place six tablespoons of butter

that've just been kind of cubed.

They'll met in the pot so no worries.

Place that back over.

And this is gonna go for about 20 to 25 minutes.

The herbs are gonna slightly darken,

the crust will be fully formed,

the butter will be melted

and then we'll plate after that.

Okay.

Nice.

Okay we have our rice here,

the herbs have cooked through.

Okay so we have our remaining saffron water,

I'm gonna just scoop about a third of it into the bowl.

And what I'm doing here is just making some saffron rice.

We're just gonna give this a toss

and color the rice.

Next we're just gonna plate this up.

You can see that the grains are still intact,

they're separated, they're not sticking together.

I'm gonna add a bit of the shallots that I have.

We're just getting all the rice to the platter

and then we'll kind of break the Tahdig apart.

I'm gonna scatter some of the saffron rice over.

Some more shallots,

this is gonna add a nice onion-y flavor

and crunch to the dish.

This is not traditional but I use a little bit

of dried rose petals to finish.

And then we'll go back to the pot.

So the lettuce has caramelized,

you can see the veins of the leaf

and the rice is underneath.

I'm gonna try not to eat this.

This is the finished product,

this is Sabzi Polo.

The herby rice with crispy shallots,

you have the lettuce crust around.

And it's typically served with fish as I mentioned earlier.

This I just want to showcase the rice on its own.

It's a great side dish

or a main dish.

And I have a little bit of yogurt sauce.

You will serve this with some yogurt sauce.

So I'm just gonna plate myself a little bowl.

Take myself a little bowl.

Okay.

Thank you guys for tuning in.

Please make this.

Let me know your thoughts,

it's one of my favorite dishes.

[women laugh]

I don't know why they're laughing.

When you're serious it's funny.

I'm a very serious person.

Bye guys!

Why so serious?

I feel like I've been so serious this whole video

but it's because I'm like trying to cover everything

and I can't joke.

So don't [beep] with me fellas.

You know who said that don't [beep] with me fellas?

[Camera Man] [mumbles]

No no.

Who said it?

It's in a movie.

Faye Dunaway. Faye Dunaway.

In Mommie Dearest when she was portraying Joan Crawford.

[laughing]

Wow. It's the same movie with,

No wire hangers!

Yeah, that's really gay.