Learn how to make authentic Lebanese stuffed zucchini kousa mahshi

This is a step by step guide to making this traditional northern Lebanese meal. It has mince meat and rice in a rich tomato soup sauce and it can also be made with a yogurt and garlic sauce. I prefer to make this dish with the light green zucchini known as the Lebanese zucchini, courgette or squash, you could also use capsicums (bell peppers) or eggplants (aubergines). This video is a step by step guide for you to follow in which I’ve shared my special tips and helpful advise. If you like this video, please comment and give it a thumbs up!

Ingredients
12 small-medium sized white zucchini (courgettes)
250g minced lean lamb or beef
1 cup basmati rice or long grain rice
2.5 L water
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cumin
1 1/4 teaspoons ground cinnamon
*1 teaspoon allspice (bah’rat) – optional
1 teaspoons black pepper
2 tablespoons butter
1/2 teaspoon white pepper (optional)
5 tablespoons tomato paste
800g canned diced tomatoes or ripe fresh tomatoes
2 tablespoons cooking salt or 3 tablespoons table salt

I didn’t have canned tomatoes so I added more tomato paste instead.
*bah’rat is an all spice mix that can be purchased from Middle Eastern/Lebanese food stores, you don’t need to add it if you don’t have it and depending on the mix it will greatly influence the taste of this dish. I regularly miss including it because I can produce consistent flavor without it.

I’d love to hear how you go using this recipe, comment below 🙂

Transcript
Today we are making Stuffed zucchini called kousa mahshi Lebanese style this is a recipe that my family has always made and let’s walk you through it.
I’ve already prepared so some rice and some mince. first of all u brown off the meat if it extremely fatty, sometimes you get some mince meat that’s extremely fatty. I would suggest just draining off some of the fat but leave a little bit so that it’s a bit tasty, the fat gives it taste.
Then we have the zucchini, so it’s always good to get zucchinis that are a bit fat. So what we are going to be doing it actually using. Actually I don’t know what the instrument is called but basically we’re going to pick out the insides. So it needs to be fat enough so that and big enough that so that when you are doing it you don’t pick too much of the insides and make a hole in it.
Some of the herb that we’re using, I’ll actually put a complete list, so black pepper, salt you don’t have to use the Himalayan salt, but we are using it today. Cooking salt is actually what I usually use but I’ve run out of it, so cumin ground cinnamon ground we’re going to use some tomato paste and usually I have canned tomatoes usually two cans of tomatoes that a diced you can get the whole tomatoes in the can as well or you can use also really ripe fresh tomatoes chopped up I usually get three medium sized tomatoes or the canned version. the first thing we’re going to do is wash these zucchinis and chop off the ends I’ve just got off the bottom, so sometimes you’ll find there is some bruising or like it doesn’t look to pretty, you want it to look good, so just lightly skim off those sections.
And that’s the top of the zucchini that’s attached to the plant so you cut that off, as you can see there is very little waste you kind of want to keep as much as possible of the zucchini and now we are going to going to use this tool so basically pock it in here, I usually go up to about I don’t know, 90% of the way through. You don’t want to pick too much out of this top are as you can see it’s very curved so you might accidentally pick through it. It take practice but it possible to not make a hole in the zucchini (courgette)
So we are just going to start taking out of the middle, I like to turn it slightly as I go and angle it a little bit at a time. You can kind of feel where you are going with it. Let me just change this plate with the large bowl. I would suggest going very slowly at first so that you learn how to do this. See here there is not much out of it. You have to kind of shake the zucchini to get it all out, but can you see that?

Alright , that’s one down, eleven to go.
I’ve just finished with the 12 zucchinis and here are the insides, we’re going to reserve that for later so that we can add it back in.
here is our stuffing that we’re going to put inside the courgette, this is basmati rice about 2 cups worth I’ll get the accurate details of the recipe I’ll put it down in the description and also 500g of mince meat you can either use lamb or beef traditionally it’s made with lamb but this is beef taste nice either way your choice

And here the herbs we are going to add this is ground black pepper this is table salt this is cracked pepper and I would suggest if you’re not very tolerant to pepper you might want to withhold that so this is cinnamon ground cinnamon and this is cumin.
so I have prepared this a bit earlier it’s always good to get it to cool down, just go watch some Netflix.
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