Osbane
Sausage casings filled with rice, offal, herbs and a great deal of chard, simmered and then sliced into a stew. The most Tunisian thing in this volume and the least exported.
Photograph credit: Tunis Osbane Djerba by Rais67 · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Make Ahead and Storage
Refrigerated for 3 days in the broth. It freezes cooked for 2 months.
Photograph credit: Tunis Osbane Sahel by Rais67 · Public domain · Wikimedia Commons
Osbane: The Method
Tap a step to highlight it, or turn on Cook Mode for large type and step-by-step focus.
-
Rinse the casings inside and out and soak them in cold water for 20 minutes.
-
Mix all the filling ingredients thoroughly. The rice and the greens both stay raw, and the mixture should look overwhelmingly green.
-
Slide a casing onto a funnel and fill it no more than a third full. Tie off in 15 cm lengths and prick each one several times.
-
For the broth, fry the tomato purée and harissa in the 3 tbsp oil for 2 minutes until the oil runs red, then add the chickpeas, salt and water.
-
Lower the osbane into the broth and bring to a bare simmer. A rolling boil will burst them.
-
Simmer very gently 75 minutes, until the rice inside is tender.
-
Lift out, slice thickly, and return the slices to the broth to serve.
Related guides: Prep, cook and total time · Choosing rice.
Something wrong or unclear in this recipe? Report a problem with this recipe.
A Few Pointers
- A third full, pricked, bare simmer. All three or they burst.
- The filling should look far too green. It collapses.
- Slice after cooking, never before.
Why the Method Is What It Is
Filled loosely, pricked, and simmered gently — the same three rules as every rice-stuffed casing, and for the same reason: the grain triples and steam has to escape somewhere other than the seam. What makes osbane distinct is the sheer volume of greens, which should be roughly equal in bulk to the rice. They collapse to almost nothing during cooking, so a filling that looks alarmingly green going in is correct.
Serving Ideas
Khobz tabouna · Harissa · Lemon wedges
Quick Answers
How long does Osbane take to make?
1 hour of preparation and 1 hour 15 minutes of cooking, plus 20 minutes of soaking, so allow 2 hours 35 minutes from start to finish. The recipe serves 6.
Nutrition per Serving
No nutrition figures are given for this recipe: they cannot be worked out reliably from its ingredient list (some ingredient lines cannot be read). Why some recipes have none.
Your notes on this recipe
Cooked this? Keep a note for next time
Compiled by Turab
Checked by script for timings, diet labels and nutrition arithmetic. How the recipes are checked. Found a mistake? Tell us.
First published ; last changed .
You Might Also Like
More Tunisian cooking and dinner ideas from Weekly Delight.
Marqa Hlouwa
Lamb stewed with quince, prunes and cinnamon into something sweet against the harissa. Made for Eid, and the…
Mermez
Lamb and chickpeas in a thin red broth with a lot of onion, poured over bread or couscous. The plainest of the…
Couscous Tunisien
Lamb and vegetables in a red harissa broth, with the couscous steamed over the pot so it takes the vapour. The…
Berkoukes
Hand-rolled semolina pearls the size of peppercorns, cooked in a lamb and vegetable broth. Larger than couscous…
Felfel Mahchi
Long green peppers stuffed with spiced meat and rice and braised in a red sauce until the skins blister and slip…
Kamounia
Liver or beef stewed slowly with an aggressive quantity of cumin — kamoun — until the sauce is dark and thick. One…