Now let’s cook
Beshbarmak, also known as et or asylghan et. Boiled meat, thin sheets of dough and onion softened in the broth.
Ingredients
- 2000 g bone-in lamb shoulderLamb shoulder with the bone left in; the bone simmers with the meat.
- 2000 ml waterPlain drinking water.
- 1 g bay leafA dried bay leaf.
- 0.2 g black peppercornsWhole dried black peppercorns.
- 300 g plain wheat flourPlain (all-purpose) white wheat flour.
- 50 g eggLarge hen’s egg, about 50 g without the shell.
- 6 g fine saltFine table salt.
- 100 ml waterPlain drinking water.
- 720 g potatoOrdinary potatoes; tubers of a similar size cook evenly.
- 10 g fine saltFine table salt.
- 160 g onionYellow onion, cut into half-rings.
- 2 g black pepperFreshly ground black pepper, added at the end.
Method
Rinse the lamb and put it in a large pot. Add the bay leaf and 3 peppercorns, pour in 2 l of cold water and bring to the boil, skimming off the foam. After 10 minutes, take out the bay leaf.
Turn the heat down low and simmer the meat for 2–2.5 hours, until tender.
While the meat cooks, make the dough. Sift the flour, add the egg, the salt and 100 ml of water, and knead a stiff dough.
Divide the dough into 5 pieces and roll each one out as thinly as you can. Lay the sheets on paper and leave them to dry for 30–40 minutes.
Peel the potatoes and the onions. Cut the potatoes into large chunks and the onions into half-rings.
When the meat has 30 minutes left, salt the broth and add the potatoes.
Lift the meat and potatoes out of the broth. Take the meat off the bone, cut it into medium pieces and return it to the broth for 1–2 minutes to warm through. Put the potatoes in a saucepan.
Put the onions on top of the potatoes, season generously with pepper and pour in 2 ladles of hot broth. Simmer for 5 minutes: this is the tuzdyk.
Cut each dried sheet of dough into 4–5 pieces. Drop them into the boiling broth and cook for 4–5 minutes, stirring.
With a slotted spoon, lay the dough on a large flat platter, arrange the potatoes around the edge and the meat in the centre. Spoon the onions from the tuzdyk over the top and pour over a little broth.
Safety
Simmer the lamb until a thermometer in the thickest part of the meat reads at least 63 °C.
Do not taste the raw dough: it contains raw egg. Boil the dough in the broth until cooked through.
Where this dish comes from
Asylghan et means “boiled meat” in Kazakh; the dish is also popularly called beshbarmak, or simply et or et asu. Horse meat, lamb or beef is simmered in large pieces; thinly rolled dough, zhaima, is cooked in the broth; and tuzdyk, onion softened in the same broth, goes on top. The Kyrgyz, Uzbeks, Tatars and Uyghurs also eat meat over dough, and they call it beshbarmak as well. Not everyone adds potatoes: beshbarmak with potatoes is often seen as the home version.