Char, Crunch and a Good Dressing
A kebab bowl succeeds or fails on three things: getting real char on the meat, cutting the salad small enough to eat in one spoonful, and making a dressing with enough acid to cut through the richness. Bison is lean and beefy, taking on warm spices without being overwhelmed by them, and a lemon-heavy tahini dressing pulls the whole bowl together.
Ingredients
Serves 4 | Cost: $7.75 per serving | Total: $31.00 | Ready in 25 min
- 600 g (1⅓ lb) ground bison
- 2 teaspoons ground cumin
- 2 teaspoons ground coriander
- 1 teaspoon sumac, plus extra to finish
- 3 tablespoons tahini
- 2 lemons, juiced
- 3 tablespoons olive oil
- 2 Lebanese cucumbers, finely diced
- 300 g (10½ oz) cherry tomatoes, quartered
- Large handful flat-leaf parsley, chopped
- Sea salt and black pepper, to taste
Instructions
- Season and shape. Mix the ground bison with the cumin, coriander, sumac, 1½ teaspoons of salt and plenty of pepper. Divide into eight portions and shape each into a flat oval kebab around 2 cm thick. Chill for 10 minutes to firm up.
- Make the dressing. Whisk the tahini with the juice of one and a half lemons and 4 tablespoons of cold water until smooth and pourable. It will seize before it loosens — keep whisking and add water a spoonful at a time. Season with salt.
- Build the salad. Toss the diced cucumber, quartered cherry tomatoes and chopped parsley with the remaining lemon juice, 1 tablespoon of the olive oil, salt and pepper.
- Grill the kebabs. Heat the remaining olive oil in a heavy griddle or frying pan over high heat. Cook the kebabs for 3–4 minutes per side until well charred outside and just cooked through. Rest for 3 minutes.
- Assemble. Spoon the chopped salad into four bowls, lay two kebabs on each, and drizzle generously with the tahini dressing. Finish with an extra pinch of sumac.
Nutritional & Dietary Notes
Gluten-Free
Every ingredient in this recipe is naturally free from wheat, barley and rye. If you are cooking for someone with coeliac disease, double-check any stock, sauce or spice blend you buy in, as gluten-containing thickeners and malt derivatives are common hidden additions in commercial products.
Keto
Carbohydrates are kept deliberately low here. The bulk of the energy in this dish comes from quality protein and natural fats, so it slots neatly into a ketogenic day without pushing you out of ketosis. If you are tracking closely, weigh any starchy vegetables and adjust the portion to suit your own daily carbohydrate target.
Paleo
This recipe sticks to whole, unprocessed ingredients: quality meat, vegetables, herbs, natural fats and spices. There are no grains, legumes, refined sugars or industrial seed oils, so it fits cleanly within a paleo framework.
Featured HOTRO.ca Product
This recipe is built around Ground Bison from HOTRO.ca. We source premium BC-raised and ethically farmed meats and slow-simmered bone broth, so the quality of the core ingredient does most of the work for you. Substituting a lesser product will change the result more than any other single change you could make to this recipe.
Grilled spiced bison kebabs over a crunchy chopped salad with lemon and tahini dressing.