First courses of Uzbek cuisine - soup and its types

Mashkhurda, Uzbek Soups

Uzbek soups - a storehouse of flavor and taste

Soups are very popular in Uzbekistan and take an important place in national culinary. Uzbek soups are quite thick and rich of such vegetables as carrot, beet, onion, greens and various spices.

The most popular Uzbek soup is shurpa. There are dozens of recipes of shurpa: “shurpa-chaban” – soup with meat, potato, onion and tomato, “shurpa-mash” – mutton soup with green gram, “kaurma-shurpa” – soup with turnip, potato and carrot, “kiyma-shurpa” – soup with meatballs, “sholgom-shurpa”- mutton soup with turnip, “kifta-shurpa” – soup with meat sausages, pea and other vegetables, and others.

Another popular Uzbek soup is mastava – soup with meat and vegetables, in which the sour milk, pepper and greens are added at serving. Also not less popular soup is mashkhurda – soup with green gram, rice, potato, which is also dressed with sour milk, greens and onion, and cholop – cold soup with cucumbers, radish, greens and sour milk.

Use of sour milk in soups originated in that time, when Turks, ancestors of today Uzbeks, were nomadic tribes. The general name of soups with sour milk is katikli.