Boorsok

Ingredients

• Flour700 g
• Warm milk350 ml
• Dry yeast10 g
• Sugar40 g
• Egg1
• Butter60 g
• Oil for frying900 ml
• Salt1 tbsp

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

   Dissolve the yeast with the sugar in the warm milk and leave it fifteen minutes, until it foams.

   17 min

2. 2

   Knead a soft dough from the flour, sponge, egg, melted butter and salt.

   15 min

3. 3

   Let it rise somewhere warm for an hour, until doubled.

   62 min

4. 4

   Knock the dough back and roll it out to exactly a centimetre thick.

   10 min

5. 5

   Cut it into four-centimetre diamonds and let them rest twenty minutes.

   25 min

6. 6

   Heat the oil to 180 °C and lower the diamonds in in small batches.

   8 min

7. 7

   Fry them a minute and a half a side, turning with a slotted spoon, to golden puffs.

   25 min

About the dish

The dough is rolled to a centimetre and cut into diamonds. Thin ones will not puff; thick ones stay raw in the middle.

The oil is held at 180 degrees and not allowed to overheat. Hotter, it browns a boorsok in twenty seconds and leaves the dough inside uncooked.

Boorsok is fried for every gathering and for wakes alike. In a Kyrgyz house it appears on the dastarkhan first, before the tea.

Worth knowing

• — The diamonds should surface at once. If they sit on the bottom the oil is not hot enough and the boorsok soaks up fat.
• — Ten pieces to a batch, no more. Beyond that the oil temperature drops and the dough will not puff.
• — Drain them on a rack rather than in a bowl. In a bowl the ones underneath go damp from the steam of those above.

Nutrition

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

Calories

320 kcal

Protein

7 g

Fat

14 g

Carbs

42 g

More from Kyrgyzstan

• Kyrgyz beshbarmak — Mutton with home-made noodles in an onion sauce called chyk. The Kyrgyz version: mutton, and no potato.
• Lagman — Hand-pulled noodles with a meat and vegetable sauce called vaja. A Dungan dish that became common across Central Asia.
• Kuurdak — Lamb fried in its own tail fat with onion and potato.