It takes 10 hours to prepare a 5 liter pot of bozbash.
How to cook bozbash
Products
Per pan 5 liters Lamb on the bone – 500 grams
Chickpeas – 1/3 cup
Potatoes – 3 pieces
Onions – 1 head
Carrots – 1 piece
Cilantro, dill – half a bunch
Pomegranate juice (ideally freshly squeezed) – a quarter cup
Apple – 1 piece
Cherry plum – 10 pieces
Tomatoes – 2 medium
peppercorns – 10 peas
Salt – 1 tablespoon with a slide
Food Preparation
1. Put the chickpeas in a bowl, add water and leave at room temperature for 8 hours (you can overnight).
2. Rinse the swollen chickpeas.
3. Defrost lamb (if frozen), rinse, put in a saucepan and pour 3 liters of water.
4. Add chickpeas and salt to the lamb, put the pot on the fire and cook after boiling for 1.5 hours.
5. When cooking bozbash, remove the foam with a spoon or slotted spoon.
6. Put the meat out of the broth on a plate and cool, strain the broth and return to the pan.
7. When the lamb has cooled down a bit, cut it into cubes with a side of 2-3 centimeters or separate with your hands.
8. Heat the pan, put the butter on it and melt it.
9. Put the meat in the pan and fry it until golden brown for 7 minutes over medium heat.
10. Put the fried meat into the soup, add the chickpeas there and continue cooking for 20 minutes.
11. While the lamb with chickpeas is cooking, peel and cut the potatoes into cubes with a side of 2 centimeters, put in the soup.
12. Peel onions and carrots, chop and fry on the remaining oil from frying meat.
13. Wash the tomatoes, cut the stalks, generously pour boiling water over each tomato and remove the skin.
14. Cut the tomatoes into cubes and add to the onions and carrots, cook for 5 minutes.
15. Wash the apple and cherry plum, separate the edible part, cut and add to the soup, cook for 3 minutes.
16. Wash and finely chop the greens, add to the soup, cook for another 5 minutes.
17. Pour pomegranate juice into the bozbash and cook the soup for 5 minutes.
Meatballs for kyufta bozbash
Products
Per pan 5 liters
Lamb on the bone – 500 grams
Chicken egg – 1 piece
Onion – 1 head Cherry plum
– 10 pieces
Salt – 1 teaspoon
Ground black pepper – 1 teaspoon
How to cook meatballs in bozbash
1. Separate the lamb meat from the bone – the bone is needed to cook the broth for bozbash.
2. Cook rice (long grain or round grain).
3. Pass the lamb pulp through a meat grinder along with the onion, mix with rice and a raw chicken egg with your hands.
4. Wash the cherry plum, remove the stone from each berry.
5. Wrap each cherry plum with minced meat so that you get a ball with a diameter of 3-5 centimeters.
6. Add meatballs half an hour before the end of cooking soup.
Tasty Facts
– Bozbash is a dish of Caucasian cuisine, common as a familiar dish in Azerbaijan and Armenia.
– Chestnuts in bozbash can be replaced with potatoes, lamb with beef, cilantro with parsley, chickpeas with beans, pomegranate juice with lemon.
– The name of the soup comes from the color of the dish – from the ancient “boz” – light gray and “bash” – head.
– There are several types of bozbash – the most common of them are brocade-bozbash (with boiled chestnuts) and kyufta-bozbash (with meatballs).
– Bozbash is one of the few soups in which the meat is additionally fried after cooking.
– Seasonings in bozbash – basil, ginger, peppermint, roasted hot capsicum, tarragon, saffron.
– Additionally, dried apricots and prunes can be added to the soup.