If you own a Weber BBQ you will, at one point or another, have done some experimentation in terms of what can be cooked on and in it. And when you consider all the attachments available from Weber today, why wouldn’t you?
You can use your BBQ to cook pizza, roast chicken, casseroles and much more. Some may even had tried to grill a Turducken on their BBQ. This dish consists of a deboned turkey, stuffed with a deboned duck that, in turn, has been stuffed with a chicken. Outrageous, right?
Not really, when you take into consideration that certain Bedouin tribes in North Africa eat stuffed camel. Originally this was widely considered to be a myth, but in actual fact, it is a traditional dish served at weddings and other special events, primarily those of sheikhs.
It is listed in the Guinness Book of Records as the “largest item on any menu in the world”. It takes stuffing to a whole new level, consisting of a camel, stuffed with sheep or lambs that has been stuffed with chickens and fish. It is then slow roasted over an open fire or a very large BBQ.
A traditional recipe is said to be made up of the following ingredients:
- 1 medium camel
- 4 lambs
- 20 chickens (roasted)
- 150 eggs (boiled)
- 40kg tomatoes
- Salt and other seasonings
The preparation starts with the smallest items in the following order: you start by stuffing individual tomatoes with eggs. Next, the tomatoes are stuffed inside the whole lambs, after which they are stuffed inside the camel.
Other recipes indicate the use of a variety of nuts and rice that are stuffed into the chickens instead of tomatoes. It is easy to assume that with a dish this size, there are many different ways to cook your camel. It is also mentioned that the poultry and sheep shouldn’t be raw when the stuffing process begins, in order for the entire dish to be cooked correctly.
Once everything has been placed inside everything else, you can ask a few of your strongest friends to help you carry it over to your fire-pit or BBQ. Before being cooked, the camel should be wrapped in palm leaves to aid the roasting process. Next, you should attach it to a very large rotisserie which will hold it in place above the fire.
It should take between 20 and 24 hours before it’s ready, which means that you and your mates will have to take it in shifts to ensure that nothing goes wrong. Once it’s finished cooking, a few things need to happen. First, you are going to need a lot of plates and cutlery for about 100 to 150 of your closest friends to enjoy the feast with you. Second, decide what you are going to serve with your layered delight. Lastly, get yourself a large portion of stuffed camel to see what all the hype is about.
So next time you want to impress your friends around the BBQ, why not wheel out a truly daring culinary extravaganza; Camlambken anyone?
Deon is a digital marketer and culinary genius in the making. He enjoys spending his weekends trying out interesting new recipes using his Weber BBQ.
