Khan burgers

Mongolian cuisine is well-known for being about meat – lamb or mutton, to be more exact – and little else. And this makes a lot of sense when you are talking about cooking and eating on endless grassland surrounded by little more than a bunch of sheep. I mean, you eat what’s available.

But in the cities like the capital of Inner Mongolia – Hohhot – vegetables and seasonings are in readier supply, and so the foods there are much more refined and flavorful, as in this delicious dish. The traditional recipe for hushuur calls for a mere scattering of cilantro, but I've come to adore this with huge handfuls of both cilantro and parsley, as they fade into the background with their aromas, while lightening the meat and making it more supple and moist.

This recipe takes the idea of a hamburger and transforms it into something incredible. Instead of a thin patty that tastes of nothing but meh-quality meat, these are more like juicy meatballs lightened with big handfuls of cilantro and parsley, pan-fried until the exteriors are crispy and well browned, and then seasoned with a savory, slightly spicy sauce. It’s nothing short of a revelation.

Mix with your hand!

Soy sauce and other seasonings are added to the ground lamb, too, which then leak out into the pan as the meat fries, and then even more flavors are tossed in to the gutsy sauce. I like to pour off most of the oil once the burgers have been browned, leaving the heavier juices still roaming around the bottom of the pan. The final addition of the stock can be used to deglaze the caramelized bits.

Hushuur is perfect over noodles or rice, but perhaps best when accompanied by a simple grilled bread that both soaks up the sauce and offers a quiet counterpart to all of the fireworks in this dish.

As with all Chinese ground meat dishes, this lamb benefits from being chopped up again, which makes the meat fluffier and helps it absorb the liquids better. Use a cleaver or heavy chef’s knife to whack away at the lamb until it has softened up, and then swirl it around in a work bowl, using the fingers of one hand as your personal spoon and spatula. Once you get used to mixing meats this way, it will be difficult to go back to clumsy utensils.

Mongolian fried lamb burgers with cilantro 
Hushuur

Mongolia
Serves 4 to 6

Lamb:

Pan-fry the burgers

1 pound ground lamb (see Tips)

2 green onions, trimmed and finely chopped

4 cloves garlic, peeled and minced

2 tablespoons regular soy sauce

¼ cup rice wine or unsalted stock

2 teaspoons sugar

1 cup chopped cilantro

1 cup chopped parsley

Oil for frying

Sauce:

½ cup unsalted stock

1 teaspoon smoked paprika or mild ground chilies

Sea salt to taste

Garnish:

Chopped cilantro

1. Place the lamb on a chopping board and chop it again with a cleaver or heavy chef’s knife until it is light and fluffy. Use your blade to scrape all of the meat up and into a medium work bowl. Toss in the green onions, garlic, soy sauce, rice wine or stock, and sugar, and stir the meat around in one direction until the liquids have been incorporated. Pick up clumps of the meat and throw them back into the bowl to make the meat even more tensile. Once it looks fluffy again, stir the cilantro and parsley into the meat, again stirring in only one direction. (The lamb can be prepared ahead of time up to this point and refrigerated for no more than an hour; if it needs to sit longer than that, hold off on adding the onions, garlic, cilantro, and parsley until you are ready to cook the lamb.)

Smoked paprika becoming smoky

2. Divide the lamb into a dozen even pieces and roll them into balls. Flatten each one into a fat little burger. Place a large skillet over medium-high heat until it is nice and hot, and then film the bottom with a couple tablespoons of oil. As soon as the oil starts to shimmer, arrange the burgers in the skillet so that they do not touch each other. Fry them on one side until they are browned and then turn them over and brown the other side. Pour off most of the oil.

3. Add the remaining stock and paprika to the skillet, turn the heat up to high, and quickly reduce the stock to a syrupy sauce, turning the burgers over in the sauce. Serve the hushuur hot with an extra sprinkling of cilantro as garnish.

Tips

Use boneless lamb, if you prefer, and chop it finely yourself. Be sure to remove any tendons (silver skin) and large pieces of fat.

Adjust the seasonings and greens as you like. Use all parsley instead of cilantro, if you wish, or lots of green onions. 

A surprisingly amazing salad from Xinjiang

At first glance, this looks like it could be little more than a boring salad. And if you are not in any way a huge fan of cilantro, this probably looks more like fluffy green death on a plate.

But you would be deceived.

I put this together as an afterthought when I realized that my dinner of lamb kebabs and pilaf ran the visual gamut of brown to beige. Something colorful – a preferably bright emerald – was needed to perk up the plates. 

I had been sidetracked by other things while cooking, and vegetable matter had slipped my mind, so when I hastily flipped through a Chinese cookbook specializing in the Northwest, this beautiful recipe popped out at me. 

And, to my delight, I had everything on hand, so into the mixing bowl went everything and out came the most startlingly delicious salad I've tried in a long time.

Tossed cilantro and peanuts 
Huāshēngmĭ bàn xiāngcài 花生米拌香菜
Xinjiang

Serves 4 to 6 as an appetizer, 2 to 3 as a side salad

½ cup fried or toasted peanuts 

1 bunch very fresh cilantro (see Tips)

The main ingredients

½ red sweet pepper

1 teaspoon regular soy sauce

½ teaspoon sugar

¼ teaspoon sea salt

2 tablespoons any kind of mingyou, but Shallot Oil is highly recommended

1 tablespoon Toasted Sesame Seeds, optional

1. If you have not prepared the peanuts yet, cook them now and let them cool off completely before mixing them with the rest of the ingredients.

2. Rinse the cilantro carefully in cold water, shake it dry, and remove any less than stellar leaves and stalks. Trim off the ends and cut the cilantro into 1-inch pieces before placing them in a mixing bowl. Trim the pepper, removing the inside ridges and seeds, and the cut the pepper into pieces about the same size as the peanuts; add this to the cilantro along with the cooled, cooked peanuts. (The salad can be made ahead of time up to this point, covered, and chilled. Toss in the dressing just before serving.)

3. Toss the cilantro, pepper, and peanuts with the rest of the ingredients; taste and adjust seasoning. Serve as an appetizer or side salad.

Some hairy-chested sprigs

Tips

Use the freshest, most virile bunch of cilantro you can find. By this I mean that the stalks should be really crisp and tender, as if it were picked at the peak of freshness. There should be no spoilage, of course, and the leaves ought to be tender yet feel very much alive. As cilantro is the star of this show, use the best bunch you can find.

If you really and truly cannot stand cilantro, parsley would be an admirable substitute.