Beshbarmak

Ingredients

• Beef on the bone — brisket or shoulder1.5 kg
• Kazy or horsemeat — optional300 g
• Flour500 g
• Egg2
• Water for the dough180 ml
• Onion4
• Bay leaf2
• Black peppercorns10
• Herbs20 g
• Saltto taste

Salt and spices grow more slowly than the rest: doubling a dish does not double the pepper.

Weight converts to ounces and volume to cups. Grams of flour are not turned into cups, because that depends on how tightly it is packed.

Method

1. 1

   Cover the meat with cold water, bring it up, skim, and simmer on the lowest heat for two and a half hours with the peppercorns and bay.

   155 min

2. 2

   Knead a stiff dough from the flour, eggs, water and salt and rest it under film for forty minutes.

   50 min

3. 3

   Roll the dough a millimetre thick and cut it into squares of about eight centimetres.

   20 min

4. 4

   Slice the onion into rings, pour a ladle of hot broth over it and leave it ten minutes; this is the sorpa that dresses the dish.

   12 min

5. 5

   Lift out the meat, skim the fat into a separate bowl and boil the dough squares in that broth in batches, three to four minutes each.

   15 min

6. 6

   Pull the meat apart into thin sheets across the grain. Lay the dough on a large platter, the meat on top, the onions and their broth over that.

   12 min

7. 7

   Serve the remaining broth hot in bowls with herbs; it is drunk before the dish or alongside it.

   5 min

About the dish

The name means "five fingers": beshbarmak is eaten by hand, and that is a method rather than a performance. The meat is cut so a piece can be picked up together with a sheet of dough.

The dough is boiled in the meat broth, not in water. It takes up the fat and the flavour, and without that step the dish is just noodles with boiled beef.

The order of service is fixed: sorpa in bowls first, then the dish itself. In the ceremonial version the sheep's head goes to the eldest at the table, who distributes parts of it by the standing of the guests.

Worth knowing

• — Never boil the broth hard. It dries the meat and clouds the sorpa, which is drunk on its own, so how it looks matters.
• — The dough is boiled last and plated at once. Left in a colander, the squares stick into a lump.
• — Kazy, the horse sausage, is optional, but it is what makes beshbarmak festive. It goes into the pot with the meat for the last forty minutes.

Nutrition

Per serving at the base yield, calculated from the ingredients rather than measured in a lab.

Calories

690 kcal

Protein

45 g

Fat

28 g

Carbs

63 g

More from Kazakhstan

• Baursak — Squares of yeast dough deep-fried into hollow puffs. The bread of the tea table and of every feast.