Libyen Embaten

Hello, and welcome to my page on the instructables.com. I am here to help you foster a full understanding on how to cook this Libyan traditional dish that is very common in Libya. This meal is cooked mostly in our holy traditional event called Ramadan and there, we eat it with bread and salad, and sometimes we put couscous next to it. I hope you will enjoy learning about this recipe and will enjoy your meal.

Best Wishes,

Lamoosaisawesome :) !

1. To start cooking this Libyan, tradition dish called Embaten, you have to first start preparing the ingredients that are needed. To start off, you first need three fresh onions that need to be grated for it to be put into the mixture.

Grate three fresh onions using a grater as shown in the images, this is part of the mixture that is the main important ingredient that will be done when cooking the dish.

For the final mixture, we need in total 500 grams of beef/lamb minced meat, 250 grams of parsley and 250 grams of grated onions. When you have all of those requirements you can start mixing this mixture with the spices create the stuffing.

To create the stuffing you need half a kilo of minced meat, 250 grams fresh chopped parsley, 300 grams grated onions, and three tablespoons of semolina. Add 1 egg and one tablespoon of tomato puree. Finally, add the needed spices. For this, you need 1 teaspoon of:

- Cinamon

- Ghee and Vegetable Oil

- Black Pepper

- Ginger

- Red Pepper

- Curcumin

- Salt

This stage of cooking Embaten is very significant and you need to be careful while doing it. It involves preparing the potatoes, first slice the potato lengthwise as shown in one of the images above, cut each one slice three-quarters down and stopping just before reaching the base, then cut the second all the way down, and this then will be ending with two slices of potatoes joined at the base. Then start stuffing the mixture into the potatoes very carefully that your potatoes aren't going to get apart. After you have done all of the stuffed potatoes, start rolling each one in flour and then dip it into the mixed two eggs liquid.

After you have rolled the stuffed potatoes in flour, and then deep fry in a pan that contains a large amount of oil so that all of the pieces are going to be covered in oil. The Frying will take around 10 minutes on each side. After that, it reaches its golden brown color and that's when you know it is cooked completely. During this 20 minutes, it is important to keep on flipping the potatoes pieces carefully and for beginners, it is important to use two forks so that the oil wouldn't splash onto your face.

The famous Libyan dish is now ready to eat, but traditionally, this can be cooked for further few minutes in a saucepan with a bit of tomato sauce. In case there are any potato slices left or the stuffing, it can still be cooked and eaten and does not have to be thrown to waste. Place all of the remaining potato pieces that were left over from the slicing in the saucepan, pour in a bit of tomato sauce, cover the saucepan, and heat it for around 10 minutes maximum. Furthermore, this then will turn the fried potatoes which are very delicious and tasty. If there is a lot of mixtures left over, then roll into small balls, put on top of them white flour, and then fry them in oil and this can be eaten with bread like koftas. This Libyan dish isn't eaten by itself, but it is served as a warm dish with couscous and salad.

I hope you will enjoy your meal :)!