Mastava – Uzbek soup
Posted on May 10, 2010 in Dairy-Free, Dinner, Food, Gluten-Free, Kosher, Lamb, Meat, Nut-Free, Soup, Uzbek food | 6 comments
Mastava, Uzbek Lamb and Rice Soup
After our last visit to Chaihana, I’ve been wanting to make this recipe and I was lucky enough to have a recipe handy. As a matter of fact, I actually have two. One is from Lynn Visson’s book and one is from a Russian-published book. This attempt is from the Russian-published version and I don’t know how authentic it is. Anyone with such knowledge, please let me know if this is even remotely authentic.
Best Recipes of the Uzbek Kitchen
Russian Mastava Recipe
That’s the book and the page with the recipe. If you can read Russian, please take a close look at it. For those who don’t read Russian, here’s the rundown of issues with this recipe:
1. It’s not clear enough in directions; it refers to “spices” but doesn’t define what it means. Is it like mirepoix, is it something else? I interpreted that as “use whatever you want” and I used freshly ground back pepper and cumin.
2. It doesn’t specify all the quantities (how much water do I need?)
3. It doesn’t specify how long to cook it for, it just says “until done”. Is that 5 minutes or 50? How do I know? I’ve never made this before.
But I just happened to have two carrots and 3 potatoes, the exact quantities the recipe is calling for. I love it when a plan comes together.
And since you already know I’m not good with directions, you should also know I’m really not good with metric values. I know, I could look it up. But I was lazy and didn’t. So here’s what I used.
Mastava ingredients
Ingredients:
1 lb of lamb diced in bite-sized pieces (had it in the freezer since last summer, figured I should use it)
2 medium-large carrots, cut up in bite-sized quarter-moons (the recipe says to cube it, but I’m just not into all that chopping at 8PM)
3 small-medium potatoes (cut the same size as the carrots)
1 large onion, diced
1.5 cups of washed rice (the recipe calls for 300 grams and I don’t have a scale; but 1.5 cups was waaay too much, made it more like a stew; I think 3/4 cups would be better)
6-9 cups of water (I lost track after 6, but I think I used close to 8 or so; the recipe has no quantity specified for water)
1 can of tomatoes (the recipe actually calls for 3 tomatoes, but I didn’t have any and improvised; this gave the soup a much darker and redder look than is typical, I think)
olive oil (the recipe calls for fat, but I assume it’s calling for lamb fat and I didn’t have any, so olive oil it is)
spices: salt, black pepper, coriander, cumin (to taste)
cilantro and scallions (to garnish, optional)
* A note about washing/rinsing rice. I don’t know for sure, but I think it removes some of the starch and quickens cooking time. It somehow makes a difference.
Steps:
Season throughout the cooking process
1. Brown the meat.
2. Add onions and let cook with the meat for a few minutes.
3. Add tomatoes and cook for a few minutes.
4. Add carrots and potatoes and cook for a few minutes (5-10 minutes)
5. Add water (depending on how much you use, but start with 5 cups) and let boil for about 20 minutes.
6. Add rice and cook “until done”; if you rinse the rice, it’s about 10-13 minutes (probably less if you use less rice)
Brown lamb
Added tomatoes
Added carrots and potatoes
Added rice
Enjoy!
6 Comments
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Looks great!
Thanks!
Well as Uzbek I can suggest only few things. Initially when you add onions fry them longer, same goes for tomatoes. Add paprika. The end result should be a soup that is more reddish than yellowish. The Russian book might be a bit off due to the fact that Russians tend to adapt Uzbek recepies to their tastes. A real Uzbek mastava is fried really well in a kazan (a type of a bigger dutch oven). Many Uzbek soups are made using the same process. Ingridients are fried well and only then the water is added and it is all boiled into a soup. As the recepie in your Russian books states you need some lamb fat that you should cut into pieces and melt the oil out of it and fry ingridients in it. But if you are in America or Europe you can’t get a hold of the type of lamb fat that is used. Sheep in the West are of different breed and have a tail. Central Asian sheep have large ball of fat where the tail should be, and only that fat is good for cooking with this method. So you should use cooking oil instead which you did. Addressing your question about spices: Good call with cumin. You should use a pinch of cumin, and a pinch of coriander. Thank you for the recepie and plese don’t get me wrong. I’m not criticizing and wrote this because you asked for feedback and how authentic the dish is. Respect.
Musafir,
Thank you for the feedback. I’ll definitely try your suggestions. And you’re right, here in America we can’t find the lamb fat needed for cooking (I think it’s called “dumba”, but I could be wrong), so yeah, we use oil instead. The other thing I think I need to modify in this recipe is the amount of rice. I followed the recipe from the book, but it turned out to be way too much rice, and turned into a soupy kasha, so I had to add a lot more liquid, but my pot could only hold so much.
You could use good quality sunflower oil, it really does a good job. Here in London I use non-GM sunflower oil. I am not sure if you can find non-GM oil in America. If you do not have “qozon” (uzbek name) deep and thick iron made casserols are perfect to cook some of the Uzbek dishes, including “osh” of all types. Musafir above is right in suggesting to cook the onions to brownish colour, but you should really be careful because onion can easily turn into burned stage. Both osh and mastava can be cooked with dipping the onion or the meat first, The difference is, if you want perfect brownish colour of your dish then tuck in the onion first, but if you want the smell of the well cooked meat from your dish then go for the meat first. Well, at least my mom from Ferghana valley taught me to cook this way. Now, some tips for choosing the rice: I have never been able to cook perfect mastava or osh using long grain amrican rice, it has always made my dish “kasha” style. Then I found perfect pakistani rice called “Layla”. It is absolyutely delightful both for osh and mastava, however you should not keep the rice in water at all as we usually do in Uzbekistan. Just wash it perfectly and put into your dish. To cook mastava for 5 people get the rice of more than half but less than full size of one medium piyola rice. If you have been to Uzbekistan you know what piyola is. Well, good luck! If you visit London let me know I will show you how to cook both of mastava and osh, free of charge. My email is above.
Thank you so much! And when I’m in London, I’ll definitely take you up on your offer.
I’ll see if I can find that rice here, as we’ve had the hardest time trying to find the right kind. Do you know if the rice is “short grain” or “low starch” or some other general kind? And yes, I definitely know what a piala is. 
My preferred choice for drinking tea out of.