If I had to pick one recipe to make with my eyes closed, it would without a doubt, be the recipe for my beloved Pumpkin Kibbeh. Aside from the fact that it is one of my personal favourites, I genuinely couldn’t begin to tell you how many times I’ve made it if my life depended on it.
Allow me to explain. Although any mention of it is surprisingly absent from this blog, during the summer and Ramadan of 2013, I decided to bite the bullet and launch a humble home-based vegan catering business under the name of Arab Vegan Kitchen. It was extremely challenging (especially given that I was only in my second year of post-graduation full-time work at the time) but also incredibly rewarding. Having only ever cooked food for friends and family, I was unbelievably excited at the prospect of being to put my creations out there for others to savour. In all honesty, I didn’t expect to receive many orders. After all, I was still new and how many people in Bahrain would really want to have home-cooked, “healthified” vegan food for iftar?
Well, apparently – a lot. From day one I was getting anywhere from two to six orders a day. So daunting was the demand that I often had to relegate orders to the next day and enlist the help of my mother more than a handful of times.Needless to say, I had my work cut out for me. For 30-days I cooked my heart out, meticulously designed labels and packaging, and hand-delivered the majority of the orders that came in. Of all the dishes I had on offer – the pumpkin kibbeh was by far the most popular, with a few regular customers ordering it several times throughout the month.
Later that same year I participated as the cafe stall for Al Riwaq Art Space’s Market 338 (known now as “The Nest”), and once again the Pumpkin Kibbeh was a clear winner.
As with any recipe that has been tried and tested countless times, there have undoubtedly been modifications made along the way. So today, I give you the treasured recipe for the new and improved, but still outstanding, Pumpkin Kibbeh 2.0.
- 1.5 cup steamed and pureed pumpkin OR butternut squash
- 4.5 cups fine bulghur, cooked
- 1.5 tbsp paprika
- 2 tbsp cumin powder
- 2 tbsp ground coriander
- 1 tbsp cinnamon
- Sea salt and black pepper to taste
- 2 tbsp olive oil
- 1 tbsp ground flaxseed
- 1 400g bag of frozen spinach, defrosted
- 1 cup of cooked chickpeas
- ¼ cup toasted walnuts, roughly chopped
- 1 cup of diced tomato
- Juice of one large lemon
- 1 large red onion, finely chopped
- 3-4 cloves of garlic, minced
- 2 tbsp of sumac
- 1.5 tbsp olive oil (or cooking oil of choice
- Start by steaming the pumpkin and pureeing in a food processor.
- Cook the bulgur as directed on the package and season with salt– it shouldn’t take too long as bulgur is already parboiled so keep a steady eye on it and make sure it doesn’t go mushy.
- Combine the pumpkin, bulgur, spices, flax and olive oil in a large bowl and mix thoroughly. You should have a mixture that can be easily moulded and is not too crumbly. If it’s too “wet” add in a little more bulgur or even some breadcrumbs would do the trick. Place the mixture in the fridge to cool down and firm up for a couple of hours.
- Pre-heat your oven to 350 F/180 C.
- For the stuffing, sauté the onions and garlic on medium heat the olive oil for 5-8 minutes until softened. Add in the chopped tomato followed by the spinach and stir through along with the sumac, lemon juice and salt and pepper to taste. Add the chickpeas (along with a little water if you feel the mixture getting dry – although this shouldn’t be the case if you’re using frozen spinach as it will release its own water) and allow to simmer on low heat.
- In a separate pan, toast the walnuts for a few minutes, stirring frequently, then add to the rest of the spinach mixture. Simmer on a low heat for 8-10 minutes, stirring occasionally. Taste and adjust seasonings as needed before turning off the heat.
- Now it’s time to assemble. Take a heaping tablespoonful or so of the bulgur mixture and flatten in your palm. Place a heaped teaspoon of the spinach and chickpea mixture in the middle and squish it inward lightly (you don't want to break the outer layer). Using the rest of the bulgur "dough" form a closed oval-shaped ball around the kibbeh and gently pat to secure. Repeat until the bulgur mixture is used up.
- Place the kibbehs on a lined baking sheet and brush with some olive oil. Bake for 25-30 minutes or until golden brown, flipping once in between to ensure even baking. Alternatively, cook in the air-fryer for 15 minutes onn 200.
Fine bulgur is parboiled, so you can easily cook it by placing it in a bowl and adding boiling water, then covering with a tea towel for five minutes (similarly to how you would make couscous)
This recipe makes more stuffing than the actual kibbeh mixture, so I would recommend either halving the stuffing ingredients or doubling the mixture ingredients.
While the original recipe is far easier to assemble – I must say I personally prefer eating kibbeh in “appetiser” form. There’s just something about biting into the perfectly baked bulgur crust to meet a wonderful medley of spiced spinach, chickpeas and toasted walnuts.
Have I mentioned it goes great with a tahini dipping sauce?
Recipe notes, as always:
- You can definitely substitute butternut squash or even canned pumpkin in a pinch, if you need to.
- Shaping the little kibbeh nuggets into perfect ovals with pinched pointed edges is an acquired skill that admittedly takes a lot long time to master. When I’m making this in a hurry I stick with easy rounded oval shapes instead.
- If you have excess filling, don’t worry. It freezes just fine and is also delicious on its own or on top of some rice or quinoa. I often make extra filling for that purpose alone!
- The kibbeh itself also freezes wonderfully, so this is the perfect dish to whip up in advance for an easy weeknight meal or snack.
Oh, and another thing about this Pumpkin Kibbeh?
It kind of changed my life in ways I never thought possible. But that’s another story, for another time.
Until next time, friends!
Wow! I must make these! I can’t eat wheat, though I have successfully used buckwheat instead of bulgur in the past, I think it would work here too, it has a similar texture to bulgur. Thank you.
Try it with millet, it might work though may be a little crumbly! Hope you love it, please let me know if you do try it how it turns out.
Just seen this in a recipe instead of bulgur:
250g ground rice (not rice flour)
150g millet grain.
But it also has minced meat in it, maybe flax egg would do the trick?? Here is the link: http://www.maysmartallergyfree.co.uk/scrapbook/millet-the-super-grain
Quinoa might work as a substitute as well!
I’ve replaced quinoa for bulgur in salads, it might also work for this recipe.
Wow this looks so lovely, and your story is also very interesting !! But it seems like too much work for me to actually make. I guess I will just drool at the pics :p
Those look amazing and I can’t wait to make them! Super super healthy kibbeh is unheard off- so thanks for reinventing the wheel in this one 👌❤️
I make this recipe all the time …I make it likeeps a big delicious kibbeh brownie or I make them into footballs and fry or bake them. I love mine with ALOT of lemon ♡♡♡
These look so good! I need to try them in the air fryer. I bet they’d be great that way!
I just found your blog and love the looks and description of your foods! I look forward to trying some of your recipes.
Just finished eating these. They were fabulous. Great recipe. Love how the flavors melded. Only change made was to eliminate all oil. Baked them st 400 degrees for about 50 minutes, turning half way through. They came out darker, with a crispy outside, A nice addition and we will be making these regularly. Thanks.
Hi Nada!
Thanks for all your great recipes. 🙂 Does this one call for 2 cups bulgur cooked? Or 2 cups dry? I had assumed it was cooked, but my kibbehs never really firmed up (I ended up cooking for 40 minutes and they got crispy on the outside but mushy on the inside) and I also ended up with a TON of stuffing left over, so I’m wondering if it was supposed to be 2 cups before cooking.
Thanks again!
Tania
I advise newbies to this recipe to make version 1.0!! These were way too advanced for my lebanese partner and I and they turned out disastrously when we tried to serve them at Thanksgiving dinner. We gave up on the ball shape about halfway through and made the rest of the ingredients into the casserole version, which I sent home with him and he actually thought was pretty good.
Tips for newbs:
-both the bulgur and chickpea mix need a lot of salt (I foolishly interpreted “to taste” to mean a sprinkle)
-if I made this again I would use chickpeas or veggie ground round for the filling, as it was very hard to form the balls around the bulky chickpeas (and veggie ground round would be more authentic in flavour and texture). Alternatively, you could blend up the chickpeas, but I didn’t due to point number 3:
-this recipe uses a billion pots and bowls and makes a huge mess! Set aside lots of time (more than the 55 mins quoted) for cooking and expect lots of cleanup
-my boyfriend wanted to try frying them instead of baking to make them more authentic, but they totally fell apart and wasted quite a bit of ingredients and oil, so we did the next batch in the oven. They were still crumbly, but better
I think after a few more tries (and without the stress of Thanksgiving family dinner) I could probably master this recipe, but it was too time consuming and messy for me to give it another chance. Which was really too bad because I love the site!
This looks so good! I recently discovered your blog and I’m excited I’ll be able to eat all my favorite foods I grew up with! I’m Syrian and have been vegan for almost 2 years now 🙂 Can the dough be eaten like kibbeh nayyeh? That use to be one of my favorite dishes as a kid
Hi Joyce! So glad you’re enjoying my blog an recipes 🙂 The dough can be eaten on its own but it will taste nothing like kibbeh nayyeh I’m afraid!
this recipe has quickly become one of my favorites! the spices are just perfect and i really admire how beautifully yours are formed.
in a pinch, i’ll used canned pumpkin. also, i have subbed brown rice or barley instead of bulgur, which results in a different texture but is still very tasty. and sometimes, when i don’t feel like making it into little kibbehs, i make them into burger-sized patties and bake in the oven!
thank you
Made them last week! The taste was great! Assembling can be tricky but wearing thin rubber gloves and a bowl of water at hand helps. I ended up adding some flour and bread crumbs to get the right dough consistency. Half of them was baked in the oven and the other half deep fried. The latter holded the shape perfectly, didn’t crackle and were absolutely delicious and crispy. It was quite a project, but now I’ve got enough of them in the freezer and we also ate about a dozen of them. Thank you! I’ve been looking for this recipe for quite some time! It’d be great if you could add some step-by-step pictures or a video of the whole process.
Hi Nada,
It sounds delicious! Am planning on making it this Friday for dinner with friends. kibbeh is also good with soup. Any recommendation for a specific soup that will work well, flavor wise, with this Kibbeh?
The red lentil soup would go great with the kibbeh!
Hey, these look delicious and I want to make them as a healthy version of kibbeh. But my bf is not vegan and loves his traditional meat-filled Egyptian food, do you think it’d be possible to make the kibbeh the traditional way with a vegan meat substitute (like gardein or even “raw” beyond meat or would it not puree well enough? Have you ever tried? Let me know, thanks 🙂
I’ve never tried but I’m sure it would work just as well with a faux meat substitute!
Made it for a second time. It is our new favorite. The guests went nuts for it at our party.We made a huge vat of it. We were asked who the caterer was who made it. I said “I did!” The complement goes to the creator of this post. Thank you for sharing.
I agree with the comments made by Jelly and Tania. This is a very interesting recipe, but it is not detailed enough. Taste-wise, salt could be added generously.
The bulgur and squash mix NEEDS breadcrumbs. it is not optional and a large quantity is required to actually handle the dough. I baked my first batch with breadcrumbs for about 30 min and it came out okay. The second one without breadcrumbs stayed in the oven for 45 min at 375 and never firmed up. only the sides dried a little bit making it chewy and hard on the tooth.
Tons of filling leftover because the dough can’t be shaped into balls, it’s too sticky and moist.
Too bad because this recipe takes a long time to make and makes a mess 🙂 I feel like I need to visit the middle east to really learn about their techniques because following this recipe didn’t do the trick!
What do you mean cook the cracked wheat? Can you soak it 20 min and squeeze water out and than use it?
Nada, wow! Great recipe. I have never made kibbeh & I achieved satisfactory success with your recipe on my first try! I followed the recipe except I halved the stuffing. I also made your tahini (YUM!). I had a busy day, so the 2 parts were made, but then covered and left in the refrigerator overnight. The next morning, I had no trouble forming & stuffing the kibbeh. They also crisped up nicely & held the shape with no cracks/breakage. I baked for a total of 40 minutes, turning twice. They did crumble easily in the hand when eating, but the taste is superb! Any suggestions regarding the crumbling? The comments from readers who had trouble with the outer part may have overcooked the bulgur? Thank you for sharing your recipes!
Hi Nikki! I would make a thicker crust and try upping the flax/pumpkin for more moisture/hold perhaps? I’ve found that a mix of wholewheat and regular bulgur also works nicely. So glad you enjoyed the recipe!