Kuku Sabzi (Persian Herb Omelette) Sandwich

Kuku sabzi is an Iranian herb omelette or frittata. This simple recipe is easy to prepare, you can make it ahead and enjoy many ways, like in a sandwich, as we are featuring today!

What is kuku sabzi?

In Persian cuisine, kuku refers to any type of dish that is made with egg and a main component like grated potato, chopped herb, minced meat, etc.

There are different kinds of kuku: sabzi (herb), sibi (potato), and bademjan (eggplant).

But among all of them, kuku sabzi is the most popular since it’s the easiest to cook.

Kuku sabzi is an Iranian dish. It’s a dish similar to a frittata or an omelet. But the main difference is that fewer eggs are used in kuku sabzi.

While the base of the omelet and frittata is the egg, in kuku sabzi, the egg is just a binder to stick all the herbs together. It’s primarily an herb-based dish.

That’s why it’s called kuku sabzi. In Farsi sabzi means herb.

Kuku sabzi history

Kuku sabzi dates back to the Gajar dynasty in Iran, in the 18th century. It used to be a royal dish. Different kinds of it along with other dishes were served to the king and queen.

Ali Akbar Kashani, the chef of the royal court during the Gajar dynasty, in his cooking book “Sofré Atamé” mentions thirteen types of kuku including kuku sabzi, potato kuku, fish kuku, quince kuku, and others.

Later, this simple dish became part of Iranian’s lunch and dinner tables.

How to serve and eat this Persian herb omelette?

For serving kuku, you have tons of options. You can serve it with polo (cooked rice) or with different kinds of bread. The French baguettes work well with this recipe.

The essentials for serving kuku sabzi are tomato, pickled cucumber, lettuce, and mayonnaise sauce.

To serve it, add chopped lettuce to a French baguette. Then add a few kuku. Slice tomato and pickled cucumbers and add them to the baguette.

Different pickles also work well with this dish. You can add a little eggplant pickle or any other pickle to your taste in the baguette. The pickles we use for this dish are salty, made from soaking vegetables in a brine of vinegar, salt, water, and spices. Although using pickles is optional here, adding them can complete the great taste of this dish.

The last and most important step is to add the sauce. This dish is usually served with mayonnaise sauce or even seasoned tomato sauce. (Although the best sauce for this dish is mayonnaise.)

To keep your sandwich from falling apart, you can roll it in paper and tape the ends.

As a garnish, you can add a little barberry on top which is optional.

What is a barberry?

A barberry is the long red berry of the barberries vulgaris plant. The vulgaris plant is a shrub that grows in Europe, North Africa, and the Middle East.

The barberry is a small red pulpy fruit usually without a pit. Its tart flavor comes in handy in cooking different dishes. They are often used dried.

In Iran, we usually use dried barberries for garnishing food, especially rice.

For that use, we fry dried barberries for 1-2 minutes over low heat. And we add sugar to them to have a sweet-and-sour taste.

Barberries have many health benefits. They can manage diabetes, they can also reduce infection and skin disorders.

In some recipes for kuku sabzi people add dried barberries and chopped walnuts to the mixture before frying. They also top the dish with them as a garnish. I personally prefer not to add barberries or walnuts to the mixture. I prefer to add just a little as a garnish.