Nihari

the dawn stew of Old Delhi and Karachi: beef shank cooked overnight until the marrow gives way, thickened with its own liquor and cut with ginger, green chilli and lime

Origin: Old Delhi, Mughal India

From the journey of Cardamom.

Nihari is a breakfast, and the name says so. It comes from the Arabic nahār, meaning the day or the early morning, and the dish was built around the hour it was eaten: set on the fire overnight, taken off at dawn, and served after the Fajr prayer to men going out to work. The stew that resulted is unlike anything else in the North Indian repertoire. It is not a curry with meat in it but a single cut, the shank, cooked so long that the connective tissue dissolves into the liquid and the marrow can be knocked out of the bone with a spoon. The consensus places its origin in the late Mughal period, in the kitchens of Old Delhi in the eighteenth or early nineteenth century, though the record is thinner than the confidence with which the claim is usually made. What is documented is what happened next. After Partition in 1947, Delhi Muslim families migrated in large numbers to Karachi, and they took nihari with them. It is now, by any reasonable measure, the national breakfast of Pakistan: sold from dedicated shops that make nothing else, eaten on Sunday mornings, and treated as a civic institution in Karachi and Lahore in a way it never quite became in the city that invented it. The cardamom matters more than its quantity suggests. Both black and green go in, the black for smoke and depth in the long cook and the green in the finishing garam masala, and it is the cardamom that keeps a dish this rich from becoming heavy. Remove it and the stew reads as fat and chilli. Old nihari houses keep back a portion of each day's pot to start the next, a practice called the taar or the maya. The practice is real and openly described. The claims attached to it are another matter: several celebrated Karachi shops assert an unbroken line back to the 1950s or earlier, and there is no way to verify any of them. Treat the continuity as an advertisement and the technique as sound, because it genuinely is: each day's pot inherits gelatine and seasoning from the last. The dish belongs to both countries and is claimed warmly by each. India eats it in Old Delhi, Lucknow, Bhopal, and Hyderabad; Pakistan eats far more of it. Neither claim requires the other to be wrong.

Ingredients

The stew

  • 1.5 kg beef or veal shank, bone in, cut into thick rounds
  • 4 tbsp ghee
  • 2 large onions, finely sliced
  • 2 tbsp ginger and garlic paste
  • 2 tbsp Kashmiri red chilli powder
  • 1 tsp ground turmeric
  • 2 tsp salt, or to taste
  • 2.5 litres water

Nihari masala

  • 4 black cardamom pods, lightly cracked
  • 6 green cardamom pods
  • 2 tbsp fennel seeds
  • 1 tbsp coriander seeds
  • 1 tsp cumin seeds
  • 1 cinnamon stick, 5cm
  • 6 cloves
  • 1 tsp black peppercorns
  • 0.5 tsp grated nutmeg
  • 1 blade of mace
  • 2 bay leaves

To thicken

  • 6 tbsp wholemeal flour (atta)
  • 200 ml water, for the flour slurry

To finish

  • 1 thumb of ginger, cut into fine julienne
  • 4 green chillies, sliced
  • 1 small bunch coriander leaves, chopped
  • 2 limes, cut into wedges

Method

  1. Toast all the nihari masala spices in a dry pan over a moderate heat until they smell warm and nutty, about two minutes. Grind to a fine powder and set aside. This is the one step that cannot be replaced with a shop blend without losing the dish.
  2. Melt the ghee in a heavy casserole. Fry the onions over a medium heat until deep golden brown, twelve to fifteen minutes. Lift out half with a slotted spoon and reserve for the garnish.
  3. Add the ginger and garlic paste to the pan and fry for a minute. Add the chilli powder, turmeric, and two thirds of the ground nihari masala, and stir for thirty seconds only, until fragrant.
  4. Add the shank and turn it in the spices until every surface is coated. Season with the salt.
  5. Pour in the water, bring to a bare simmer, cover, and cook at the lowest heat the hob will hold for five to six hours. The meat should come away from the bone under no pressure and the marrow should slide out. Traditionally the pot is sealed and left overnight.
  6. Whisk the atta into the 200ml of water until completely smooth, with no lumps whatsoever. Pour it into the simmering stew in a thin stream, stirring continuously, and cook for a further twenty minutes. The liquid will thicken to a glossy, pourable gravy and the fat will rise and separate into a red layer on top. Do not skim it: that layer is the mark of a correct nihari.
  7. Stir in the remaining ground masala and taste for salt. The stew should be rich, gently hot, and clearly aromatic rather than merely fiery.
  8. Serve in bowls, each topped with the reserved fried onion, plenty of ginger julienne, green chilli, and coriander, with lime to squeeze over at the table. Naan or kulcha is the correct bread, and the marrow bones should be handed round.

Notes

Two things separate a good nihari from a flat one. The first is the atta slurry, which must be whisked absolutely smooth before it goes near the pot: lumps will not disperse and cannot be rescued. The second is the finishing masala, held back and added at the end, because the volatile aromatics in the cardamom and mace are destroyed by six hours of simmering. Beef shank is standard in Pakistan; lamb or mutton shank works and cooks rather faster. The garnishes are not optional decoration but the acid and freshness the dish is built to be eaten with.

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