Manti: Uzbekistan's Steamed Dumplings
Big steamed dumplings of lamb and onion, the pumpkin version worth waiting for autumn for, how they are made and how to order them properly.
Plov gets the attention. Ask an Uzbek what they actually want to eat on a cold day and a good number will say manti.
They are large steamed dumplings, one or two bites each if you are ambitious, filled with chopped lamb and onion or with pumpkin, and cooked in a stacked steamer over an hour. They are not related to anything you will have eaten in a Chinese restaurant, and they are much better than the word "dumpling" suggests.
What is inside
The classic filling is lamb, hand-chopped rather than minced, with a very large quantity of onion and a piece of tail fat for richness. The onion is the point: it releases water as the dumpling steams, which produces the mouthful of juice that makes a good manti and the disappointment when it is absent.
The main variations you will meet:
- Pumpkin (qovoq manti). Sweet, orange, autumn and winter, often with a little fat and pepper. Many Uzbeks prefer these to the meat ones and so do many visitors.
- Beef. Common in cities, cheaper, drier.
- Potato. Plain, filling, found in home cooking.
- Mixed meat and pumpkin. The best of both, and worth ordering if you see it.
Vegetarians should ask carefully about pumpkin manti: they are frequently made with fat in the filling or steamed above a meat dish. Our vegetarian guide has the phrases for asking.
How they are made
The dough is flour, water and salt, kneaded firm, rested and rolled thin. Squares are cut, filled, and folded into shape, usually with the corners drawn up and pinched so that the parcel is sealed on top but the shape holds.
Cooking is done in a mantovarka or kaskan, a stacked steamer of perforated trays over boiling water. The trays are oiled so that the dumplings do not stick, and they steam for roughly 40 to 45 minutes.
Two details separate good manti from bad. The dough should be thin enough to see the filling through and strong enough to hold the juice, which takes practice. And the meat must be chopped, not machine-minced: minced filling turns to paste and loses the texture entirely.
How to eat them
They arrive on a plate, usually three to five for a portion, sometimes dusted with black pepper.
- Accompaniments: qatiq or suzma, the thick sour yoghurt, spooned over or beside; sometimes vinegar, sometimes a tomato and onion salad, sometimes melted butter.
- Eating: with your hands or with a fork. Bite a small hole first and let the juice out, or you will wear it.
- Drink: green tea. This is fatty food and hot tea is the local answer to it.
- Portion: four manti is a full meal for most people. They are heavier than they look.
If you are given the plate first as a guest, take from the edge nearest you rather than reaching across, and do not be surprised when more arrive.
Making them at home
If you want to carry something back from this trip other than a ceramic plate, manti are the most portable thing in Uzbek cooking: no special ingredients, one piece of equipment, and the technique is the whole recipe.
The dough is roughly two parts flour to one part water by weight with a good pinch of salt, kneaded for ten minutes until smooth, then rested under a cloth for half an hour so the gluten relaxes and it rolls thin without springing back.
For the filling, use lamb shoulder with some fat on it, chopped by hand into pieces the size of a lentil, and at least as much onion by volume as meat, sliced fine rather than grated. Season with salt, black pepper and cumin. Resist the food processor; it is the one shortcut that ruins the dish.
Roll the dough thin, cut squares of about ten centimetres, put a spoonful in each, and seal by bringing the corners together and pinching the edges. Oil the steamer trays properly, leave space between the dumplings because they swell, and steam for 40 to 45 minutes.
Serve with thick yoghurt thinned with a little water and a crushed garlic clove, and a bowl of green tea. A standard tiered steamer over a pan works perfectly well if you do not own a kaskan.
Where to eat them
Manti are cooked in batches and sold until they run out, so timing matters.
Bazaar kitchens are the best value and often the best quality. Look for the steamer stack and the queue: Chorsu in Tashkent and Siab in Samarkand both have them.
Manti shops exist in every city, usually plain rooms selling nothing else, and they are where locals eat.
Restaurants serve them everywhere, reliably and less interestingly. Our Tashkent eating guide covers the options in the capital.
Guesthouses will often make them if you ask the day before, and a home-made manti is a different thing from a restaurant one.
Prices are low: a portion costs a fraction of a restaurant main, and at a bazaar it is street-food money.
Manti and its relatives
The dish travels. Versions appear from Turkey to Korea, and the family resemblance is not a coincidence: steamed filled dough moved along the same routes as everything else.
Within Uzbekistan, keep three dishes straight.
Manti are large, steamed, and eaten with yoghurt. Chuchvara are small dumplings served in broth or fried, closer to a ravioli or a pelmeni. Samsa are baked in a tandoor with a pastry crust, not steamed at all, and are our subject in the samsa guide.
You will also meet khanum, a rolled steamed dish of the same dough and filling, cut into slices, which is what a household makes when it does not have time to fold individual dumplings.
For the wider menu, our Uzbek food guide covers what else to order and when, and the plov guide handles the national dish itself. Manti will not be the meal you photograph most on a trip to Uzbekistan. There is a fair chance it is the one you miss afterwards.
Featured image: Scudsvlad (CC BY-SA 4.0) via Wikimedia Commons.