Dograma

Ingredients

• Mutton on the bone1.5 kg
• Unleavened çörek flatbread500 g
• Onions3
• Tomatoes — optional2
• Black pepper1 tsp
• Bay leaf2
• 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 mutton with cold water, bring it up and skim thoroughly.

   20 min

2. 2

   Simmer two hours with the bay, until the meat comes away from the bone.

   125 min

3. 3

   Lift out the meat, cool it and pull it into threads by hand, discarding bones and sinew.

   15 min

4. 4

   Crumble the flatbread by hand into pieces the size of a fingernail. Do not cut it.

   12 min

5. 5

   Slice the onion thin and work it with a pinch of salt so it softens.

   8 min

6. 6

   Mix the bread, meat and onion dry in a large bowl, and season.

   6 min

7. 7

   Divide between bowls and pour over the strained boiling broth immediately before serving.

   6 min

About the dish

Everything is crumbled by hand rather than cut with a knife. That is the point: the word dograma means "crumbled", and even cubes give a different texture and a different soup.

The çörek flatbread is baked unleavened and specifically for this. It has to be dense enough not to collapse in the broth at once.

The meat, bread and onion are mixed dry in a bowl and the broth goes on only at serving. Left to stand, dograma turns to mush.

Worth knowing

• — The broth has to be boiling as it goes in. Warm broth will not soften the bread properly and the dograma stays dry.
• — Fresh soft bread will not do — it disintegrates instantly. It has to be yesterday's and dense.
• — The mixture is made ahead and kept dry. Broth goes over portion by portion, as people sit down.

Nutrition

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

Calories

620 kcal

Protein

42 g

Fat

26 g

Carbs

52 g

More from Turkmenistan

• Ichlekli — A large closed pie of mutton and onion baked in ashes. The dish of Turkmen herders.