Mad about Madfoon

Madfoon is one of the Arabian Peninsula’s most time-honoured recipes and a remnant of the period when Bedouins cooked their food in buried underground pits, writes Soumya Gayatri

I had just arrived at the outdoor majlis (a seating area for guests in Arabic) of a desert resort in AlUla, Saudi Arabia when the rich, savoury aroma of roasted lamb filled the air. I let my nose lead me to the spot where all the action was happening. Oven mitts and pot holders in place, the sous chef and his team of four were busy digging out, from under the earth, the most exciting dish of our meal that night — the Madfoon.

The cooking technique

Madfoon, translating to “buried” in Arabic, is a signature Middle Eastern dish that’s believed to have originated in the deserts of Yemen and Saudi Arabia centuries ago. It consists of roasted meat, usually lamb, slow-cooked in an underground pit or oven, and then served on a bed of flavoured saffron rice.

In this unique underground cooking technique, also known as the madfoon, the meat is marinated with spices and herbs, covered with aluminium foil (ancient people used leaves) and placed in large containers inside the earth over a bed of hot charcoal. The pit is then covered with sand and the meat is left to roast slowly underground, sometimes longer than 8-9 hours.

“The slow-cooking method below the earth’s surface makes the meat juicy, tender and aromatic and infuses it with a rich, smoky flavour. It also ensures that the meat is thoroughly infused with spices, giving it a rich taste,” says Chef Rudita Yan Dwitama. “The sand layer at the top traps the heat and maintains an optimum temperature underground. This guarantees that the cooking process is even and continues undisturbed, even when no one is keeping a watch,” he explains. Saudi Arabia’s tradition of underground cooking goes back to antiquity when nomadic tribes roamed the Arabian Desert and cooked with minimal resources available to them. Digging a pit and finding sand to cover it was easy in the desert. Additionally, underground ovens were easy to move and kept the food safe from predator animals. Soon, underground cooking became an inextricable part of life and culture in Saudi Arabia.

Around the world...

Interestingly, the Arabian Desert is not the only place in the world with a history of underground ovens. From the hãngî cooking of Maori tribes in New Zealand and the pachamanca feast of Peru to the madfoon dishes of Saudi Arabia and the khad cuisine of India, subterranean cooking hearths have always been a part of tribal lifestyle around the world. According to research published in the American Antiquity Journal, the origin of underground or “earth” ovens can be traced back tens of thousands of years ago, to the Neolithic Age when hunter-gatherer communities cooked communal meals in subterranean pits.

“Khad underground cooking has existed for centuries in Rajasthan,” says Dipali Khandelwal, founder of The Kindness Meal, a community-based platform dedicated to preserving Rajasthan’s disappearing food cultures. “Usually game meat was cooked using this method but now lamb and chicken have replaced them giving us khad maas and khad murg in the process”, she adds.

“Even though the exact origins of khad are unknown, it is believed that this cooking style evolved during wars when soldiers cooked their meat underground so that enemies could not spot them from far away,” says Khandelwal. Similar to other underground cooking techniques around the world, “khad cooking was also born from the ingenuity of people who inhabited a difficult landscape with limited raw materials and could only tweak their techniques to make their food tastier,” she adds. Although these methods of underground cooking evolved separately in different parts of the world, it is not difficult to see a common thread that ties them all together — a thread of resilience and creativity. The need to feed a community amidst adverse landscapes brought about extraordinary innovations such as the madfoon, the khad, and the hãngî.

Reviving a lost tradition

Sadly, these traditional cooking techniques are disappearing slowly, thanks to urbanisation around the world and the emergence of fast food centres and modern kitchen equipment. But hope is still alive in the deserts of Saudi Arabia as locals begin to trace their roots and visualise how their ancestors lived. Nowadays, it is not uncommon to have madfoon on hotel menus and as part of weddings and celebrations where family and friends come together to share this historic dish. Dating back centuries, Saudi Arabia’s madfoon is not just a mouthwatering food of the desert but also a brilliant example of human creativity and resilience.