Khoresht Kadoo (Kadu) Recipe

Persian cuisine is full of meals named stews (Khoresht) that include a wide range from vegetable or fruit-based one to animal products stews such as Ghormeh Sabzi, Fesenjan, Gheimeh, chicken, and so on. We always serve Stews a long with brewed rice. In this article, we are going to talk about Khoresht-e-Kadoo (Khoresh Kado, Khoresht Kadu, خورشت کدو). It is popular in every country. The word “Kadoo” (کدو) is the translation of zucchini, in Farsi. Courgette is another name of zucchini which is a summer squash vegetable that belongs to Cucurbita pepo. Its colour can change in a different range of green, dark to light. Farmers usually pick it up unripe when its seeds are still soft and immature for the use of cooking. We can use it to prepare various meals such as Borani-e-Kadoo as well as Khoresht-e-Kadoo. Khoresht-e-Kadoo is a delicious summer stew that is tasty and flavorful with different spices and flavourings. We serve it along with rice like other stews.

Different types of Khoresht-e-Kadoo:

There are different recipe types that come from a different country for making Khoresht-e-Kadoo. So we will have it with various tastes. We can prepare it with potato past, or we can easily replace potato paste with pomegranate paste and make a new taste. Also, we can cook Khoresht-e-Kadoo with or without meat. If you want to prepare Khoresht-e-Kadoo with meat, you can use chicken meat, or even red meat.

Important nutrition facts of Khoresht-e-Kadoo:

Zucchini is a summer squash, in Cucurbita plant family. We also classify it as a vegetable or even as a fruit. So it is a rich source of vitamins, minerals, and other essential plant compounds. One cup of cooked zucchini is almost 250 grams that can provide 17 calories, 1gr protein, 3gr carbohydrate, and 1 gr fibre. Also, its remarkable vitamins include 40% vitamin A, 14% vitamin C, 7% vitamin B6, 9% vitamin K, and 5% Thiamin. The essential mineral properties of it contain manganese, potassium, magnesium, copper, phosphorus, and folate. The antioxidant properties of zucchini used in cooking provide more health to our body and reduce ageing and risk of diseases like heart disease and cancers. Zucchini is also rich in the amount of water, soluble, and insoluble fibre. So it improves healthy digestion and prevents constipation, gut disorders, and its symptoms. Since it is a rich type of vegetable, it can promote heart health, vision strength, bones health, thyroid function, prostate function and it can help losing weight quickly. So we advise you to put Khoresht-e-Kadoo and other zucchini related meals in your diet at least three times a week.

Vegetarian tips:

Khoresht-e-Kadoo’s main ingredients are vegetable-based. But as mentioned earlier, we can cook it with or without meat. So if a vegetarian or a vegan likes to taste this stew, the meatless type of Khoresht-e-Kadoo is easily available for them.

Serving style of Khoresht-e-Kadoo:

As mentioned earlier, we serve Khoresht-e-Kadoo as a stew along with brewed rice for our lunch or dinner. It will be more delicious with Salad Shirazi (a kind of salad made with cucumber, potato, and onion, verjuice, and salt). A jar of dough (Persian yoghurt drink) will make it more pleasant, too. Sometimes you can also serve it as a meal dip and along with flatbread instead of rice for a light dinner. This type of service will be much more savoury along with fresh Noon-e-Sangak, slices of onion, and shallot yoghurt (Mast-e-Mosir).

What are the ingredients of Khoresht-e-Kadoo?

The main ingredients of Khoresht-e-Kadoo are zucchini, onion, garlic, salt, turmeric, and any kinds of flavourings (Advieh) depend on your taste, potato, potato past, lemon juice or Persian lime (Limo Amani), vegetable oil, and meat. Also, you can use any kinds of meat such as chicken meat, lamb meat, or even fish meat according to your preference. You can use fresh zucchini in summer months or stored type on the other months.

How to cook Khoresht-e-Kadoo?

It is an easy but consuming time recipe. First of all, you should place your meat in the medium-size pan and put it on a medium flame. You should allow it to cook for almost 1 hour. Meanwhile, you have to prepare the zucchinis. So after washing and peeling their skins, you should slice them. Then you need to pour vegetable oil in a pan and heat it. When the oil starts shimmering, you have to begin to fry the zucchinis on both sides. You should lay the slice of zucchini in the oil and let it fry and then turn it to another side to fry. After frying all the zucchinis and gathering them up, you need to add some more oil in the same pan and heat it again. Now you have to sauté the onion and garlic in it. After sautéing the onion and garlic, you should add the potato past, salt, turmeric, and other spices and sauté them for some additional minutes. After that, you need to add meat stock and lemon juice and stir it until the potato past dissolves completely. You should let it boil. After boiling it, it is time to add the zucchinis and meat. You need to let them simmer some more minutes with meat stock to taste more. It is ready to serve.

Recipe:

This recipe is adequate for four people. The preparation time of Khoresht-e-Kadoo is 15 minutes, and its cooking time is 50 minutes. You can have this delicious meal in 50 minutes.