Kyrgyz Cuisine - Meat Dishes

Meat Dishes

Meat in various forms has always been an essential part of Kyrgyz cuisine. Among the most popular meat dishes are horse-meat sausages, roasted sheep's liver, beshbarmak, which is a dish containing boiled meat with thin noodles, and various other delicacies made from horse meat.

Beshbarmak is the Kyrgyz national dish, although it is also common in Kazakhstan and in Xinjiang (where it is called narin). It consists of horse meat (and sometimes mutton or beef) boiled in its own broth for several hours and served over homemade noodles sprinkled with parsley and coriander. Beshbarmak means "Five Fingers" in the Kyrgyz language, and is so called probably because the dish is typically eaten with the hands. Beshbarmak is most often made during a feast to celebrate the birth of a new child, an important birthday, or to mourn a death in the family, either at a funeral or on an anniversary. If mutton is used instead of horse meat, a boiled sheep's head is placed on the table in front of the most honored guest, who cuts bits and parts from the head and offers them around to the other guests at the table.

Shashlik, skewered chunks of mutton grilled over smoking coals that come with raw sliced onions, is served in restaurants and often sold on the street. The meat is usually marinated for hours before cooking. Shashlik can also be made from beef, chicken, and fish. Each shashlik typically has a fat-to-meat ratio of one-to-one. They are delicious when eaten fresh off the grill, but after being allowed to sit for a time (as is often the case with street vendors) they cool into greasy blobs.

Shorpa (or shorpo) is a meat and vegetable soup.