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Estamboli Polo (Persian Tomato Rice)

By: Author Zari

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Estamboli is a traditional Iranian recipe for a stew of rice, tomato, meat, and vegetables.

Estanboli Iranian tomato rice served for a meal vertical crop

Rice in Iranian cuisine

Rice is the one thing Iranians never get enough of. It’s an inseparable part of Iranian lunch or dinner tables. Throughout Iranian history, you find numerous variations which made this popular food a perpetual member of Iranian lunch and dinner tables.

One popular way of cooking rice is to make estanboli (also written estamboli or istanboli). This delicious dish made with rice, meat, and green beans is one of the most cooked dishes in Iranian houses.

Cooking it might take you some time but its great taste makes up for all the hassle.

What is Estamboli?

Estanboli is an Iranian dish. It is cooked rice mixed with tomato, minced lamb meat, green beans, and spices. The recipes for this dish vary from province to province and even sometimes from home to home. But we can say that there are two main types of this dish.

In one of them, you add green beans to rice and minced lamb meat. In the other, you replace the green beans with chopped, fried potatoes.

That’s the only difference between the two versions of this delicious dish.

Although both of them are savory, I prefer to cook estamboli with green beans. And the recipe you can find here is made with green beans too.

Estanboli Iranian tomato rice served for a meal with herb salad, lavash, doogh

How to serve Estamboli?

We serve a homemade estamboli just like what you can see in the picture above.

A herb salad (a combination of fresh trimmed basil, mint, chives, scallion, and radish) is served with almost all Iranian dishes.

We serve this herb salad with estanboli too.

Another option for serving estamboli is to serve it with yogurt.

In Iran, yogurt is usually served with rice (polo) or bread. It lessens the dryness of rice so it is easier to swallow and digest.

Yogurt and herb salad are good options to serve with estamboli but there is an even better option, which is salad shirazi.

Salad shirazi and estamboli are a match made in heaven. To make this salad all you need to do is to chop a few tomatoes and cucumbers. Next, chop one onion and add it to a bowl and add vinegar, salt, and black pepper. Then mix everything and your shirazi salad will be ready.

Estamboli Iranian tomato rice

You can also serve this dish with lavash bread. It will be more filling.

The side drink for this dish is usually doogh. We make doogh with yogurt, water, salt, dried mint, and dried rose petals. It is a popular drink in Iran and can be served with almost all Iranian dishes.

One Iranian food habit that may be weird for foreigners is that we often eat raw onion with our dishes. Raw onion is the centerpiece of all our meals. And it’s hard to find an Iranian dish that doesn’t contain onion in any form whether boiled or fried. We even garnish our soups with fried onions. That’s how important the onion is in Iranian culture!

So feel free to enjoy a few pieces of raw onion with your estamboli.

Estamboli Iranian tomato rice - Adding the meat to the rice
Adding the meat mixture to the rice.

Other tomato rice dishes around the world

You will see similarities to estamboli in Jollof rice from Ghana and other countries in Africa.

Yield: 6 servings

Estamboli (Iranian Tomato Rice)

Estanboli Iranian tomato rice served for a meal

Estamboli is a traditional Iranian recipe for a stew of rice, tomato, meat, and vegetables.

Prep Time 50 minutes
Cook Time 1 hour
Total Time 1 hour 50 minutes

Ingredients

  • 3 cups of uncooked rice (1 kg)
  • 2 average onions
  • 1 2/3 lbs (750 g) fresh green beans
  • 1 cup of oil (divided)
  • 2/3 lbs (300 g) minced (ground) lamb meat
  • 3 tablespoons of tomato paste
  • (To taste) turmeric
  • (To taste) black pepper
  • (To taste) salt
  • 1/2 cup water
  • Water (to cook the rice)
  • 3 Tbsp salt (for the rice)

For serving

  • 1 loaf of Lavash bread
  • 2 cups of yogurt *
  • ¼ of a teaspoon of dried rose petals *
  • 1 teaspoon of dried mint *
  • 5 average cucumbers **
  • 7 average tomatoes **
  • 1 large onion **
  • 1/2 cup of vinegar **
  • (To taste) black pepper **
  • (To taste) salt **

Instructions

Prepare your ingredients

  1. To a large bowl, add three cups of rice and rinse it. To do so, Fill the bowl of rice with tap water and use your hands to stir and swirl the rice in the water. Let it soak for 30 minutes.
  2. Dice two average-sized onions.
  3. Chop the green beans. To do so line up your green beans on a cutting board and have the tips aligned. Cut off the tips and the ends and slice the bunch into one-centimeter-length pieces.
  4. Next, add the sliced green beans to a small pot and cover the beans with water. Set it over medium heat and let it cook for 20 minutes. Then, using a colander, drain the water. Set the green beans aside.

Cook the meat and vegetable mixture

  1. Set a frying pan over medium-low heat and add ¾ cup of oil (or as much as you think will be enough). After the oil is hot enough, add the diced onions and fry until golden.
  2. Next, add a pinch of turmeric and black pepper.
  3. Add the sliced green beans to the pan and fry and stir for 5 minutes.
  4. Add meat to the pan and fry and stir the mixture for 10 minutes. Be patient with frying the meat because under-fried meat gives off an unpleasant smell which will ruin the smell of the dish. So fry it enough until the raw smell of the meat is completely removed.
  5. Add the tomato paste, additional turmeric, black pepper, and salt. Fry and stir for 5 more minutes. Then add 1/2 cup of water to the pan and mix. This will help your cooked rice have a better color at the end. Remove the frying pan from the heat.

Cook the rice

  1. Fill a large pot with water and set it over high heat. Let it come to a boil.
  2. Add salt (3 tablespoons of salt will be enough for three cups of rice). Next, add the rinsed and soaked rice. You can drain the excess water from the rinsing bowl or add it to the pot.
  3. Let the rice cook for a few minutes. When the rice has softened a little but not in a mushy way, drain it in a fine mesh colander. (To make sure the rice is cooked enough, press the grain of rice between your fingers. If it's easy to squeeze it means it's time to drain it in the colander.)

Put it all together

  1. Add ¼ cup of oil to the empty rice pot.
  2. Then, add the drained rice back to the pot.
  3. Add the meat and vegetable mixture to the pot. Mix well and cover the pot. Let it simmer for 30 minutes over low heat.
  4. Your Estamboli is ready! You can serve it with Salad Shirazi, yogurt, raw onion, bread, doogh, or any other thing you like.

Notes

*For serving, you can mix the yogurt, rose petals, and mint so serve with the rice.

**For serving, you can chop the vegetables and mix them with vinegar, salt, and pepper. (Or see this recipe for Salad Shirazi.)

Nutrition Information:

Yield:

6
Amount Per Serving: Calories: 627
© Zari
Cuisine: Iranian / Category: Dinner Recipes

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