Kefta is a popular recipe for spiced ground meat used, with variation, from Morocco to the Middle East. Typically, kefta is made with lamb, although in Meknes, beef kefta is also quite popular. You can buy kefta already made at the butcher, or make your own (which is becoming more popular here after a scandal last summer in which a butcher ground up two people he’d murdered in his kefta grinder).

Anyhow, if you desire to make your own kefta, this recipe from Latifa Bennani-Smires will teach you how:

(makes approximately 15 brochettes)

1 lb of boned lamb or beef

100g (4oz) of beef or mutton fat

1 teaspoon of cumin

2 teaspoons of paprika

1 pinch of Sudan felfla (very hot ground pepper)

1 large bunch of parsley

1 large bunch of coriander

1 onion

salt

optional: teaspoon of cinnamon, 1 or 2 sprigs of fresh mint

Wash the parsley and the coriander, drain and stalk carefully. Cut the meat up into pieces and mince. Cut up the fat and mix with the meat. Add the salt, parsley, coriander, onion, cumin, paprika, and hot pepper. Mince all the ingredients together twice. Knead this mix hard and leave to stand for about an hour.

(From Moroccan Cooking, published by Al Madariss - Casablanca in French and English)

After you’ve made the actual kefta, you’ve got to cook it of course. Traditionally, the kefta would be wrapped around skewers and grilled over a charcoal fire - any kind of barbecue would suffice.

Another popular favorite, of course, is the kefta tajine, which I have mostly mastered:

Also easy, the main ingredients are chopped tomatoes, kefta, and if you like, eggs.

But lastly, and aye, here’s the rub - I have recently discovered, via Hamza’s mother, the most delicious way of cooking kefta. You see, meat in Morocco is butchered in the halal method (in which the animal is sliced at the throat, the slaughterer says bismillah, and the blood is drained, among other specific rules), and therefore isn’t so moist. My favorite method of cooking kefta makes it nice and juicy - cook it in butter!

Just melt a good sized chunk of butter in a pan and cook the kefta pieces - sausage-like pieces tend to cook juicier than meatballs. Bon appetit!