Overview
Saloona is the Emirati equivalent of a household tomato stew, the kind of dish every UAE mother cooks weekly without thinking, the way Italians make pasta sauce or Greeks make pastitsio. The base is beef or lamb, slow-simmered with onion, garlic, tomato, dried lime, and a generous pinch of Emirati bzar spice, then bulked up with potato, courgette and carrot. Less ceremonial than machboos, less special than thareed, more everyday than mansaf. This is the dish that gets eaten on a regular Tuesday lunch when the family is hungry and there is no plan. Served either over rice or with bread to scoop. The red colour comes from tomato paste reduced into the broth until it goes dark, glossy, deeply spiced.
The Ingredients
- • 600g beef shoulder or lamb, cubed
- • 1 large Brown Onion (Crysp)
- • 4 garlic cloves, crushed
- • 200g Cherry Tomatoes on the Vine (Crysp)
- • 300g Small Potatoes (Crysp), halved
- • 200g Carrots (Crysp), thick rounds
- • 1 Green Bell Capsicum (Crysp), cubed
- • 20g Coriander (Crysp)
- • 1 tbsp Peashoots (Crysp), to garnish
- • 3 tbsp tomato paste
- • 2 dried limes (loomi), pierced
- • 1 cinnamon stick
- • 4 cardamom pods
- • 2 bay leaves
- • 1 tbsp bzar (or baharat)
- • 1 tsp turmeric
- • 1 tsp ground cumin
- • 3 tbsp ghee or oil
- • Salt & black pepper
- • Steamed rice or bread, to serve
Instructions
Sear the Meat
Pat the meat cubes dry, season with salt, pepper, and half the bzar. Heat the ghee in a heavy pot over medium-high. Sear in two batches, 5 minutes per batch, turning until each side has a deep brown crust. Transfer to a plate.
Bloom the Aromatics
In the same pot, add the diced onion, cook 5 minutes until golden. Add garlic, bay leaves, cinnamon stick, cardamom pods. Cook 1 minute. Stir in tomato paste, remaining bzar, turmeric and cumin, cook 2 minutes until the paste darkens to deep red-brown.
Build the Broth
Halve the cherry tomatoes, add to the pot, press to release juice. Cook 3 minutes until they break down. Return the meat with any resting juices. Pierce the dried limes, add to the pot. Pour in 1 litre of water, just enough to cover everything by 2cm. Bring to a boil, skim foam, cover, drop the heat, simmer 50 minutes.
Add the Vegetables
Add the halved potatoes and carrot rounds to the pot. Cover, simmer 15 minutes. Then add the cubed capsicum, simmer 10 minutes more. The vegetables should be tender at the centre when pierced with a knife but still hold their shape. The broth will have thickened slightly from the potato starch.
Finish and Adjust
Off the heat, fish out the dried limes, cinnamon stick and bay leaves. Roughly chop the coriander, stir half through the stew. Taste, adjust salt. The saloona should be thick, rich, deep red-brown, with chunks of vegetable and meat in a glossy sauce.
Serve the Emirati Way
Ladle the saloona into a wide shallow serving bowl. Scatter the remaining chopped coriander across the surface. Pile peashoots in the centre. Serve with steamed basmati rice in a separate dish (the rice gets ladled into individual bowls and topped with saloona) or with warm pita bread for scooping. Most Emirati families serve it both ways at the same meal, rice for the main portion, bread for the broth at the end.
The Tradition
Saloona is the Emirati household stew that gets cooked at home far more often than the ceremonial dishes that show up on tourism websites. Where balaleet, machboos and harees are weekend or special occasion food, saloona is what working families eat on a regular Wednesday. The bzar spice blend (cumin, cardamom, dried lime powder, cinnamon, black pepper, cloves) is the Emirati signature, sold in pre-mixed packets at every UAE supermarket. Saloona shares DNA with thareed (also tomato-based, also slow-simmered) but is lighter, more vegetable-forward, and crucially does not need bread underneath. The dish is the unsung backbone of Emirati home cooking, served at lunch tables in Al Ain, Sharjah, Fujairah and across the smaller emirates daily.
💡 Pro Tip: The dried lime is what separates saloona from a generic Mediterranean tomato stew. Always pierce the limes (3 holes minimum) before adding them to the pot, otherwise they cannot release their flavour into the broth. After cooking, fish them out and break one open with a spoon, the dark sticky flesh inside can be scraped onto your plate for an extra hit of intense sour-smoky concentrate. Most Emiratis do this, the loomi flesh on rice is a small ritual.
