Shurpa and Mastava: Uzbek Soups Explained
The lamb broth, the rice soup, the mung bean porridge and the dumpling soup: what each one is, when Uzbeks eat it and how to order.
Uzbek menus list half a dozen soups and translate all of them as "soup", which helps nobody. They are quite different things, eaten at different times of day and year, and two of them are among the best food in the country.
This is what is behind each name.
Shurpa
The foundation. Lamb on the bone simmered slowly with onion, carrot, potato and tomato, served as a bowl of clear, fatty, deeply savoury broth with the vegetables and a piece of meat in it.
There are two main versions. Qaynatma shurpa is boiled from raw, giving a clearer, lighter broth. Qovurma shurpa starts by frying the meat and vegetables, which produces a darker, richer soup. Both are seasoned simply: salt, black pepper, sometimes cumin, and a handful of herbs at the end.
It arrives with bread and, often, the broth and the solids served separately, the liquid in a bowl and the meat and vegetables on a plate. Do not be confused by this; it is one dish.
Shurpa is winter and mountain food above all, and it is what Uzbeks reach for when someone is unwell or tired.
Mastava
Often described as plov in soup form, and the comparison is fair. Rice, small pieces of meat, carrot, onion and tomato in a light broth, finished with herbs and eaten with a spoonful of thick sour yoghurt stirred in.
It is lighter than shurpa and more sustaining than it looks, and the yoghurt is not optional: it cuts the fat and turns the soup from decent to very good.
Mastava is everyday food, cooked at home, served at lunch, and common on restaurant menus year round. If you are unsure what to order in a chaikhana on a cool day, this is the safe answer.
Moshkichiri and mosh hurda
Mung beans, called mosh, are a staple here and give two related dishes.
Moshkichiri is a thick porridge of mung beans and rice cooked with meat and fat until everything collapses together. It is heavy, plain and comforting, and it is the most obviously home-style thing on this list.
Mosh hurda is the soupier version, thinner and eaten as a bowl rather than a plate.
Both are traditional invalid food and winter food, and both are rarely found in tourist restaurants. A guesthouse will make one if you ask.
Chuchvara soup
Chuchvara are small dumplings, a distant relative of pelmeni and ravioli, filled with minced meat and onion. Served in clear broth with herbs and a spoonful of yoghurt or sour cream, they make the lightest soup in the Uzbek repertoire.
They also appear fried, without broth, which is a different and very good thing. If a menu offers both, the fried version is the better one to try once and the soup is the better one to eat when you are tired.
Do not confuse chuchvara with the larger steamed manti, which are a separate dish entirely.
Others you will meet
- Lagman, when served in broth rather than fried, is effectively a noodle soup: hand-pulled noodles, vegetables and meat in a spiced stock. Our lagman guide covers both versions.
- Norin is not a soup but is often served with a bowl of broth beside it: cold hand-cut noodles with boiled horse meat, a Tashkent speciality.
- Kholodets and other Russian and Korean dishes appear on many menus, a legacy of the 20th century.
- Ugra osh is a home-made noodle soup, closer to a European chicken soup in spirit.
When each one is eaten
Uzbek food follows the calendar and the clock more strictly than most visitors realise, and soups are the clearest case.
In winter, soup is the centre of the diet. Shurpa, moshkichiri and mosh hurda all belong to the cold months, when the fat and the long simmering make obvious sense and when the bazaars have root vegetables rather than tomatoes.
In summer, soup does not disappear but changes register. Mastava and chuchvara soup are eaten year round, often at lunch, and in the hottest weeks many households eat soup in the evening instead of the heavier fried dishes.
There is also a convalescent tradition. Shurpa broth and mosh hurda are what you are given when you are ill, run down or have just travelled a long way, and a guesthouse owner who notices you look tired may simply produce a bowl without being asked.
And there is a morning tradition. Some soups are breakfast, sold from around six and gone by nine, particularly in bazaars; if you see a queue at a soup pot at seven in the morning, join it.
How to order and eat them
A few conventions that make life easier.
Soup is a first course at lunch and a meal in itself in the evening. Bread comes with it automatically and you should tear rather than cut it.
Ask for yoghurt, qatiq or suzma, with mastava and chuchvara; many places serve it by default, and where they do not, it is worth requesting.
Expect fat on the surface. This is not a fault and skimming it in front of your hosts is mildly rude. The Uzbek view is that the fat is the flavour and the point.
Vegetarians should be careful with all of these: the broth is the dish, and the broth is meat. Our vegetarian guide explains how to ask and what to order instead.
Where to eat the best version
Restaurant soup is fine and homemade soup is better, which is true everywhere and particularly true here.
Chaikhanas, the neighbourhood teahouses, usually cook one or two soups a day in quantity and serve them until they are gone. That is the best bet for a visitor: cheap, fresh, made this morning, and eaten in a room full of people who came for the same reason.
Mountain and roadside places do the best shurpa, for the plain reason that lamb from those valleys is better and the setting suits it. On the drive between Samarkand and the Fergana Valley or south towards Boysun, stopping at a roadside chaikhana for shurpa is one of the better meals in the country.
For the wider menu, see our Uzbek food guide, and for the dish these soups are all measured against, the plov guide.
Featured image: Olexdj (CC0) via Wikimedia Commons.