Persia and the Caucasus · Volume 12, The South Caucasus and the Disputed Table
Khash
Armenia
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 55 hours
- Researched
- 8 sources cited
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
Beef feet, and reportedly tripe, cooked overnight over low heat, historically a social and ceremonial dish, men gathering in the evening to cook it together through the night, eaten traditionally very early in the morning, classically after heavy drinking or feasting.
As tradition built it
Serves 6. Soak 10 to 48 hours, then around 7 hours simmering.
Ingredients
- 2 kg beef feet, cleaned
- to cover fresh water, generous
- to taste garlic, crushed, to serve
- to taste salt, to serve
- to taste lemon, to serve
- to taste vinegar, to serve
- a handful chopped radish, to serve
- to taste, torn in dried lavash, to serve
Method
- Soak the trotters in cold water in the fridge for 10 to 48 hours, changing the water roughly every two hours for the first 10 hours, to leach blood and impurities.
- Cover with fresh water, bring to a simmer for 40 minutes, then discard that water.
- Cover again with fresh water and simmer a further 6 to 8 hours, topping up hourly, until the trotters are completely soft and the broth has thickened with released gelatine.
- Serve hot, with crushed garlic, salt, lemon, vinegar and chopped radish added by each diner at the table, dried lavash broken into the bowl.
Notes
The origin of this dish is genuinely contested; see The Disputed Table above. This chapter does not adjudicate it here or anywhere else.
What a modern chef changes
The same long extraction, run with more precision.
Rung 5
Method
- Run the long simmer as a steady 90 to 95°C rather than a rolling boil, whether on the hob or in a sous vide bath, for a cleaner extraction of gelatine without the broth clouding from agitation.
- Do not shorten the initial soak. The blood and impurity leaching is what keeps the finished broth clear rather than muddy, and it is a time-based step, not a flavour step, so there is nothing to gain by rushing it.
- Keep the table-side ritual intact, garlic, lemon, vinegar and radish added by the diner, not the cook. The dish's real character is as much in that ritual as in the broth itself.