Kyrgyz beshbarmak

Ingredients

• Mutton on the bone1.8 kg
• Flour500 g
• Eggs2
• Water for the dough170 ml
• Onions5
• Mutton fat100 g
• Black peppercorns10
• Bay leaf2
• Coriander30 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 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 forty minutes.

   50 min

3. 3

   Roll it a millimetre thick and cut it into diamonds six centimetres across.

   22 min

4. 4

   Render the mutton fat and cook the sliced onion in it until soft.

   12 min

5. 5

   Add two ladles of broth to the onion and stew ten minutes into a thick gravy; that is the chyk.

   12 min

6. 6

   Boil the dough diamonds in the strained broth in batches, four minutes each, and plate them straight away.

   15 min

7. 7

   Pull the meat into sheets, lay it over the dough, spoon the chyk over and scatter with coriander. Serve the broth in bowls.

   12 min

About the dish

It differs from the Kazakh version in its meat and its sauce: mutton here, and the onion is not merely doused in broth but stewed in fat and broth into a thick gravy.

The dough is rolled thinner and cut into diamonds rather than squares. A small difference, but the first one a Kyrgyz cook will point out.

The sheep's head goes to the eldest guest, who distributes parts by seniority: an ear to the youngest so that they listen to their elders, an eye to someone wished sharp sight. That is a living custom, not a display.

Worth knowing

• — The broth should barely tremble. A hard boil leaves mutton dry and stringy.
• — The dough is boiled last of all. Five minutes in a colander and the diamonds fuse into one lump.
• — Do not replace the mutton fat with vegetable oil: without it the chyk loses both flavour and texture.

Nutrition

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

Calories

700 kcal

Protein

44 g

Fat

32 g

Carbs

58 g

More from Kyrgyzstan

• Lagman — Hand-pulled noodles with a meat and vegetable sauce called vaja. A Dungan dish that became common across Central Asia.