Uzbek Shashlik

Name: Uzbek Shashlik
Total time: 1 h
Yield: 4
Cuisine: Uzbek
Ingredients: 1 kg Lamb shoulder, cut into 3 cm cubes; 200 g Lamb tail fat or fatty lamb trim, cut into 2 cm cubes; 4 Onions, sliced into rings; 4 tbsp White wine vinegar; 2 tsp Cumin seeds, crushed; 1 tsp Ground coriander; 1.5 tsp Black pepper, coarsely ground; 2 tsp Salt; 100 ml Water; 2 onions, 1 tbsp Extra onion rings and sumac to serve; 2 Non or flatbread to serve

Cubes of lamb threaded fat-and-lean alternately onto flat skewers and grilled over charcoal, after a night in raw onion, cumin and vinegar — the smell of every Uzbek bazaar.

Quelle

Rezept von Uzbek home kitchens · 🏺 Traditionell · Everyday cooking of Uzbek households — the settled, oasis-city cuisine of Samarkand, Bukhara and the Fergana Valley, built around rice, lamb and the kazan.

Uzbek · charcoal skewer — An ownerless traditional dish, so no cook is credited. The cited article confirms the skewered-and-grilled cubed meat form and its spread across Central Asia, the Caucasus and the former Soviet states — it is not an Uzbekistan-only article, and that is said here rather than glossed over. Quantities, the split-salt method and the fat-cube spacing are this book's own.

Hintergrund auf Wikipedia ↗

Zubereitung im Video · 3 Videos

Mr Skewer International Cuisines BOB FOODTRIP

⏱ 60 Min.🍽 4 Portionen🔥 560 kcal🇺🇿 Usbekistan🌶️

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Zubereitung

Squeeze the sliced onions hard with 1 tsp of the salt until they weep, then mix them through the meat with the vinegar, cumin, coriander, pepper and water.
💡 Squeeze the onions first. Whole rings sit on the surface; crushed ones release juice that actually gets into the meat.
Cover and refrigerate at least 6 hours, ideally overnight. Add the rest of the salt only 30 minutes before grilling.
💡 Salting early draws the water out and firms the meat. In late, it seasons without drying — this is why the salt is split.
Thread onto flat metal skewers: three pieces of meat, one of fat, three of meat, one of fat. Push them tight together.
Get the coals white-hot with no flame. Lay the skewers on and turn every 90 seconds.
💡 No flames. Fat drips and flares, and a flare-up puts soot on the meat instead of colour. Move the skewer, do not blow on it.
Cook 10 to 12 minutes total. The fat cubes should be translucent and the meat browned but still giving.
Slide off onto warm flatbread, pile raw onion rings on top and scatter sumac over. Rest 2 minutes before eating.

💡 Tipps

Flat skewers, not round. Round ones let the meat spin back to the same side every time you turn them.
The raw onion under the meat is a Central Asian habit and it works — it soaks the fat and cuts it at the same time.
Beef and chicken shashlik both exist, but lamb with tail fat is the Uzbek default and the reason it tastes the way it does.