In my house we LOVE Persian cuisine. One reason we ended up buying a house in the Inner Sunset in San Francisco was that we would go to that neighborhood for a Persian restaurant called Yas, which sadly closed soon after we moved there. We ordered the same thing every time: Koobideh, which is a grilled mix of lamb and beef flavored with incredible spices. Of all dishes of all cuisines it is still our favorite. In October, we went down to Los Angeles for a wedding we ending up not going to (long story I won’t bore you with) and broke our no meat pledge to have koobideh at one of the city’s fabulous Persian restaurants. But I swore that would be the last time, because I felt guilty afterwards.

But I’ve been pretty satisfied with the non-meat from Beyond and I’d bought their burger mix.

So I thought I’d try making my own Koobideh with it. The main problem was that it is wet out and cold– not grilling weather and all the Koobideh recipes I called for required grilling. I don’t have a grill feature on my stove. Still I ended up with a Koobideh that both spouse and kid loved — she wasn’t even going to have it, but when she saw it she grabbed a piece. This is how I did it.

I pulverized a whole yellow onion in my Cuisinart. Then I added it to the Beyond Beef in a bowl and mixed it up. I added a ton of pepper and my trusty Ted & Barneys h3 seasoning. I added onion powder and garlic powder. Now I know foodies who scoff at onion and garlic powders, but I discovered that for vegetarian food they really boost flavor. I mixed in a large tablespoon of red miso. Plus extra salt. But what made it were too spice blends I had picked up at a gourmet food market in Gualala. They are made by a brand called Villa Jerada. I bought two different ones and used both in this recipe: The Kefta Rub and Urfa Biber, which is made of purple sun-dried pepper flakes from Turkey.

I then shaped the spiced burger mix into logs and placed them on my cast iron fry pan. I covered each log with extra virgin olive oil and placed the pan under the broiler to mimic grilling.

While I had them grilling I made the rice. I set 2 cups of unsweetened coconut milk and 2 cups of water to boil. I don’t pay attention to directions on rice anymore. My Cook’s Illustrated told me that to make the perfect non-sticky rice you need to cook rice more like you cook spaghetti — more water than you think. When the rice is cooked you drain off the water, run it through cold to get off the starchiness, then put it back in the pot to warm it back up.

When the water boiled I added 1 1/2 cups of white basmati rice, some salt, ghee — which is a clarified butter you can now buy in most stores and is widely used in Indian cooking.

I also added some saffron threads. Now saffron is ridiculously expensive, but a few threads go a long way and they do make a big difference. I also threw in some of the pulverized onion I hadn’t used in the burger mix.

Once the rice was done, I portioned it out onto plates, served up two of the Koobideh logs on each. There was one left over, which my teenage daughter took even though she had told me she was just going to have leftover soup. I chopped up some frisbee lettuce I had in the refrigerator and poured a little Italian dressing I had over it and put that on the side for color. And Voila!

So here are the ingredients for the Koobideh:

• 1 package of Beyond Burger
• 1 yellow onion
• Generous amount of pepper and salt
• Onion powder
• Garlic powder
• Miso
• Villa Jerada Urfa Biber spice
• Villa Jerada Kefta rub

Here are the ingredients for the rice:

• Basmati rice
• Yellow onion
• Ghee
• Saffron
• Salt