No main dish in an Iranian household is complete without polo or rice or alternatively bread. Persians love to leave the table with their stomachs totally full. They even take pride in serving excessively big portions to their guests. Persian main dishes generally consist of rice and stew or bread and stew. Simply put, we need either rice or bread to serve as a bed for our juicy and herbaceous stews.
As serving meat to guests has been an essential sign of respect, Iranians are obsessed with lamb, beef and chicken as these are the main ingredients of lots of stews and kebabs. There are lots of vegetarian Persian dishes all over the country but I personally believe that the love for meat has in a way made us a little negligent of our vegetarian dishes. Therefore we do not consider lots of vegetarian dishes as main but side dishes.
