Name: Isku Dhex Karis (Somali Rice Dish)
Prep time: 40 min
Cook time: 30 min
Total time: 1 h 10 min
Cuisine: African
Ingredients: 3-4 lbs lamb, cubed (or beef); Vegetable oil; 3-6 cloves garlic, minced; 2 tbsp cumin; 1 large onion, diced; 1/2 bunch cilantro, chopped coarsely; 2 Hot peppers, remove stems and cut in two pieces each salt and pepper (use lots of pepper); 3 large carrots, diced; 2 large white potatoes, diced; White rice (I believe Basmati is the closest approximate)

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Welcome to The Storied Recipe Podcast, a podcast about food, culture, and love.

I invite you to listen to my podcast guest, Rachael Pieh Jones in her episode, Djiboutian Food at the Crossroads of Culture and Religion, as you make her Isku Dhex Karis.

woman holding pan of ingredients for classic djiboutian food

This Isku Dhex Karis recipe, a Somalian rice dish, comes to us from Rachel Pieh Jones, an author and mother of 3 third-culture kids. Rachel has lived in Djibouti for almost 20 years. As Rachel shares in her podcast episode, this was the first dish she ever learned to make in Somalia, where she lived less than a year before fleeing to Djibouti.

Here's what Rachel had to say about Isku Dhex Karis:

"This is a popular Somali dish that basically means "cook it all together" and is one of the first things I learned to make in Somaliland and which my family ate often in Djibouti as well. I'm sharing it because I think it highlights several things - the abundance of carbs (rice AND potatoes), the local love for bananas and adding them to things (the best bananas in the world are from Mogadishu and I can barely eat the cardboardy dry ones in the US anymore!), hot sauce, lamb, and the ability to take a dish and grow it and grow it if you are serving many people."

When I assembled the ingredients for this recipe, I decided it was probably the most unusual combination any guest ever gave me! However, trying new recipes from guests each week has taught me to put aside my skepticism when approaching a new dish. I can genuinely say we loved this Somali rice dish! My niece had come over to help me photograph the recipe. The smell of the spiced meat, vegetables, and rice cooking all together were so enticing to her, that she scooped out a bowl for herself and pronounced it delicious!

I wasn't quite willing to use the level of hot sauce that, as Rachel says, "makes grown men cry". (In fact, I wasn't willing to even come close.) I also couldn't quite eat the banana in the same bites as my rice and lamb. However! I did leave them on top and intersperse them with bites and found it quite a refreshing complementary flavor! I think I may try bananas on the side of rice dishes more often.

Two more notes about this recipe:

There are hundreds of types of rice in the world and I'm fairly confident that those of us in the U.S. won't be using the kind either Djiboutians or Somalis use. After talking it over with Rachel, I believe basmati is the closest approximate.
Many Somalis also put raisins in their Isku Dhex Karis. Feel free to add some!