Beshbarmak recipe

Boiled meat served over sheets of hand-rolled noodle with chyk, onions softened in the hot broth fat rather than fried.

3 hoursmedium8 ingredients

Ingredients

• 1500 g bone-in lamb
• 500 g flour
• 2 eggs
• 3 onions
• 1 tsp black peppercorns
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 tsp salt
• 3000 ml water

How to make Beshbarmak

1. Put 1.5 kg of bone-in lamb in a large pot, cover with cold water, bring to the boil and skim off the foam. At a feast the meat is horse rump, or chuchuk horsemeat sausage, which no shop outside Central Asia will sell you.
2. Add 1 halved onion, 2 bay leaves, 1 teaspoon of peppercorns and 2 teaspoons of salt and simmer gently for 2 to 2.5 hours. The broth, sorpo, matters as much as the meat.
3. Knead 500 g of flour, 2 eggs, 3000 ml of water and a pinch of salt into a firm dough, cover it and rest it 40 minutes.
4. Roll the dough out to 1 to 2 mm, thin enough to see the board through it, and cut it into 8 to 10 cm squares. Thick noodles are the commonest mistake.
5. Lift out the meat, strain the broth, and skim a ladle of the fat floating on the surface.
6. Slice 2 onions into thin rings in a bowl, pour the hot fat and a ladle of boiling broth over them, cover and leave 10 minutes. This is chyk, the onion sauce; the onions are softened, never fried.
7. Boil the noodle squares in the strained broth for 4 to 5 minutes, then lift them onto a large communal platter.
8. Pull the meat off the bone in thin slices, pile it on the noodles and spoon the chyk with its juices over the top.
9. Serve bowls of hot sorpo alongside, and eat it with the hands as the name, five fingers, says.

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