Central Asia and the steppe · Volume 57, The Nomad Steppe
Naryn
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan
An illustration of the dish, not a photograph of it cooked.
- Time
- 2 hours 30
- Reviewed
- Not yet reviewed from inside the tradition
- Cooked
- Not yet cooked and reported
A Kazakh saying holds that the best makers of naryn are the Kyrgyz, and this chapter repeats it as it stands, a rare piece of one steppe cuisine crediting the other by name rather than an outside observer doing the sorting. The dish itself is meat, kazy sausage and the thinnest noodles a knife can manage, tossed together and dressed with hot broth just before serving, eaten cold or barely warm rather than piping hot.
As tradition built it
Serves 4. About 2.5 hours, plus cooling.
Ingredients
- 600 g horsemeat or beef on the bone
- 200 g kazy sausage (see Dish 2), sliced
- 300 g plain flour
- 1 egg
- 120 ml water
- To taste salt
- 1 onion, thinly sliced
Method
- Simmer the meat in salted water about 2 hours until tender. Lift out, cool completely, then shred or slice into very thin strips. Reserve the broth.
- Make a firm dough from the flour, egg, water and a pinch of salt. Rest 30 minutes, then roll as thin as the dough allows and cut into hair fine noodles.
- Boil the noodles briefly in the reserved broth, a minute or two, then drain and cool.
- Toss the cooled noodles with the shredded meat and sliced kazy.
- Just before serving, warm a ladleful of the broth with the sliced onion and pour over the top.
What a modern chef changes
A cleaner broth, and knife work made honest
Rung 2
Method
- A chinois clarified finishing broth. Strain the reserved broth through a chinois after skimming, rather than serving it as caught, for a clear, clean liquid that dresses the cold noodles without clouding the dish or carrying stray fat through.
- Sous vide the meat before shredding. Cook the meat portion sous vide at 68°C for 6 hours instead of a rolling simmer, which gives a more evenly tender result for slicing paper thin, closer to what real knife skill and patience achieve by hand.