If you find yourself on a holiday in Kazakhstan, consider yourself lucky, because you will definitely be offered to taste beshbarmak or beshbarmak with potatoes. Its taste exceeds all expectations. With our amazing recipe beshbarmak with potatoes, you can cook the dish yourself and be sure that the time spent on its preparation is worth it.
Beshbarmak is a national dish of Kazakh nomads. In Kazakh, "besh" is five, and "barmak" is a finger, i.e. fives. Nomadic tribes did not use cutlery while eating, but took the food with their hands, hence its name. I propose to be a nomad today and go to Kazakhstan for the recipe of this national dish, at the same time and get acquainted with the words that sound in Kazakh, they will be used in brackets of the text.
Features in cooking
In Kazakhstan, almost no festive feast is complete without the traditional beshbarmak. As a rule, beshbarmak is prepared in honor of receiving dear guests or on major holidays. They cook in different ways in different regions. Every corner of Kazakhstan has its own subtleties of cooking this dish. Classic beshbarmak is made from any meat. So, in the northern regions of Kazakhstan, in addition to dough, ordinary potatoes are also boiled in broth. In the west, instead of meat, they put large fish in beshbarmak, in the south they often cut the dough into noodles rather than diamonds. And in Almaty, some housewives also steamed tomatoes and onions in addition. Other housewives add meat a day before cooking. And you can add tongue and horse sausage (kazy) to the meat. And yet, the basis for all varieties of beshbarmak is the same - boiled meat and noodles in the form of large diamonds. In our version - also boiled potatoes. Let's take a look at some of the tricks for preparing these three main ingredients in a dish.
Meat Cooking Tricks
- Meat for beshbarmak in a finished dish should be as soft as possible so that it is easy to chew. Choose fatty varieties of pork, beef, or lamb. For chicken and duck recipes, it is also best to use skinned chunks (boil, then peel off).
- Before cooking, wash the piece thoroughly, remove cartilage, films, fat can be left. Cut off fat only if there is a lot of it and it has a rich yellow color, which indicates the "advanced age" of the animal or bird.
- Cook meat depending on the variety: beef and lamb for at least 3 hours, pork - 1 - 1.5 hours, chicken - 1 hour.
- Before serving, it is necessary to remove all bones, veins, skin from the meat. Depending on the recipe, the meat can be torn by hand into long fibers, cut into slices, thin slices or neat cubes.
Dough tricks
- The dough is always based on eggs and water, but it will be much tastier if you use yolk and broth.
- There is practically no need to salt the noodles or dough pieces.
- It is advisable to use flour white or even slightly yellow, always of the highest grade.
- When rolling out the dough, observe the sheet thickness - a maximum of 2 mm, so that it is boiled and not stiff.
- Each piece must sink in the broth separately, so you need to lower the diamonds in turn, and not all at once, so that they do not stick together.
Tips for cooking potatoes
- It is advisable to take potato tubers of the same size, in this case they are ready at the same time.
- Cook potatoes over low heat for 20-30 minutes.
- After laying the potatoes, as soon as the broth boils, skim off the foam.
Features of use
Beshbarmak is eaten with hands from a common, large, flat dish (lyagan). Therefore, before a meal, all household and guests thoroughly wash their hands up to the elbows. Then, sitting comfortably at the served table (dastarkhan), they take a piece of dough (kamyr), put meat on it, season it with onions and put it in the mouth. It is the finely chopped meat that remains the unchanged ingredient in the dish. The tradition of processing boiled meat in this way goes back to antiquity: this method of processing shows the owner's respect for guests, especially aksakals, who, due to their age, cannot chew large pieces. After chewing thoroughly, wash it down with broth (sorpa). After such a fatty food, it is customary to drink tea with milk.
Recipe for cooking beshbarmak with potatoes
Preparing this dish is very easy and simple. In essence, it is meat with dough and potatoes. Very satisfying, tasty and aromatic. Amazing results with a minimum of effort. A simple and interesting recipe for making beshbarmak with potatoes with the application of a step-by-step photo is offered to your attention today. And the zest when cooking will be Kazakh words that you will encounter while reading.
Ingredients
- Meat, it is possible with a small bone - 1 kg;
- small potatoes - 10 pieces;
- onions - 0.5 kg;
- carrots - 1 piece;
- chicken egg - 3 pieces;
- flour - 0.5 kg;
- ground black pepper - to taste;
- allspice peas - to taste;
- salt to taste;
- hops-suneli - to taste;
- basil - to taste;
- bay leaf to taste.
Preparation
1. Rinse the meat well, put it in a saucepan with (necessarily!) Cold water and put it on a gas stove to cook. Periodically remove the foam and part of the fat (it will still be useful to us) from the broth (sorpa), then it will be transparent. Cook the meat for a long time (until it becomes easily separated from the bones) for about three to three and a half hours on very low heat, so that the broth (sorpa) boils almost imperceptibly. An hour before the end of cooking, put a whole peeled onion, carrots, allspice peas, bay leaf and salt into the broth (sorpa) (you don't need to put vegetables in the broth, but only spices).
2. While the meat is boiling, prepare the dough as for noodles. Pour sifted flour into a bowl (half the norm), pour in loose eggs, add salt and water (or cold broth). Knead the tough dough, adding the rest of the flour. In a well-mixed dough, there should be no air bubbles in the cut. Wrap the finished dough in plastic wrap or in a slightly damp towel and leave for half an hour. On the table, thickly sprinkled with flour, roll out the dough, taking from the whole piece a part the size of an average apple (the rest of the dough, so as not to wind up, wrap it back in plastic). Roll out the dough to a thickness of 1.5-2 mm. Next, cut the layers of dough (kamyr) into strips, and then into rhombuses, sprinkle with thick flour and let them lie on the table until the meat is ready. Ready diamonds, evenly spread on the board, can be put aside for now - let them dry out.
3. When the meat is cooked, remove it with a slotted spoon, and also remove spices and vegetables from the broth (sorpa). Strain the broth. Separate the meat from the bones and cut into small pieces, set aside in a separate bowl - let it cool while it cools. Cut the slightly cooled meat into small flat (0.5 cm) rectangular pieces.
4. Let's peel the potatoes. Peeled potatoes, if small, cut in half, if large - into four parts and put in hot broth (sorpa).
5. As soon as the potatoes are cooked, take them out and now you need to do the noodles (kamyr). Cook rhombuses from dough (kamyr) until cooked in the same broth (sorpa). Cut the onion into rings and steam in a closed clay pot, pour broth (sorpa) and add spices - ground pepper, basil, suneli hops. Throw the boiled dough (kamyr) into a colander so that the excess glass liquid and mix with a part of the steamed onion to make rhombuses did not stick together.
6. On a large flat dish (lyagan), first put the potatoes, boiled rhombuses (kamyr), and place pieces of meat in the center of the plate on top. Put onion and pepper steamed in broth (sorpa) on the meat. Serve hot broth (sorpa) with spices poured in large bowls (keas) to beshbarmak, sometimes dried salted cottage cheese (kurt), lemon wedges or ayran are added to them.
7. All parts of our dish do not need to be mixed, but laid out in layers: below - potatoes, on it - dough, on top - meat and onions.
