Mongolian Steamed Dumplings: Buuz

Mongolia is an Asian country with no outlet to any of the world's great seas. The country has great variation to its landscape, generally with the Gobi Desert in the south, and the Altai mountain range in the west and north. The land and the climate have naturally molded the people's view of food, with fatty meats being seen favorably as a way to give people endurance against the long cold winters. Mutton and beef are common types of meat used in Mongolia, and Mongolians use both types to make these dumplings, which are then steamed. "Mutton" is meat from older sheep, as opposed to "lamb," from young sheep, generally less than about 14 or 15 months old. In the United States, mutton has long been out of favor, and you likely will have great difficulty finding it in supermarkets or butcher shops. My parents and grandparents talked about mutton being fatty and with a strong taste, but I don't believe I've ever eaten it, unless it was when I was quite young. Exactly why mutton lost popularity in the U.S. seems to have something to do with price (the older the sheep, the more it costs to raise them to that age) and the steep decline in the use of wool as a common fabric (less need to raise sheep to be old enough for them to develop their thick coats), and I would assume increasingly health conscious people turned away from fatty mutton. As Americans got away from eating mutton, many of those who then tried the meat found its greasy and stronger taste to be unappealing, which led to mutton being left out of meat cases in most parts of the country. Myself, I generally like strong flavors, but when I checked on getting some mutton, the owner of the lamb and goat meat shop I go to told me he can get it, but only in fairly large quantities, like 50 to 100 pounds. Since my living space is too small to host a significant part of the U.S. Army, I decided against buying such a large amount, and so I bought ONE POUND of ground lamb instead (I hope this guy doesn't go on vacation now!).

"Buuz" (pronounced kind of like "buss," with the 'u' like the double 'o' of 'book') are easy to make, although shaping the dumplings can take some trial and error, with emphasis on the 'error' part for me. I checked about 25 recipes and I found very little variation in recipes, and many recipes mentioned that Mongolians tend not to use lots of flavorings in their foods. The variations I did find in recipes were relatively minor. For example, a few put a pinch or two of salt in the dough, but most recipes used only flour and water for the dough. Those with no salt in the dough made up for this, however, by adding a good dose of salt to the meat filling. As for other variations in recipes, I found, in a recipe or two, some grated carrot added to the filling, or some ground coriander was used, rather than caraway seed. And that was about it; so, a pretty consistent recipe. About the dough. I haven't put precise measurements in the text below, and I used these amounts to simply provide some very general idea of what you'll need. Use an amount of water to form a dough that isn't terribly sticky. When you take the dough out to roll it into a log shape, you can dust it with some flour to remove stickiness. The same is true for when you roll out the small clumps of dough for the dumplings and you can dust it with some flour to remove any remaining stickiness. If you aren't into making the dough, you can buy a package of wonton wrappers, but they are usually made with eggs, and likely some other ingredients beyond flour and water, so they won't be quite the same. Or you can buy spring roll wrappers, some of which are made with flour, water and a little salt, if you are looking for more authenticity, but many use rice flour and other ingredients, if that matters to you. So, to be honest, much of what makes Mongolian "buzz" more unique is the use of the simple flour and water dough for the wrappers. One of the other variations in recipes is about the shape of the dumplings, and there are several, but I'm more than a little bad at such things, so I chose what I felt was easiest (see below). "Buuz" are commonly served with soy sauce or ketchup for dipping.             

Ingredients:

Dough:
2/3 to 3/4 cup flour + more for dusting and rolling
about 4 to 5 ounces water

Filling:
1/2 pound ground mutton or lamb or beef
1/4 cup onion, finely chopped
2 garlic cloves, minced
1 teaspoon caraway seed
1/2 teaspoon ground black pepper
1 teaspoon salt
3 or 4 tablespoons water

Make the dough by gradually mixing water into the flour until a dough forms. Mix it until the dough is less sticky and then cover it for about 15 to 20 minutes. Use that time to make the filling by mixing the ingredients together, but add only 2 tablespoons of water to start. After getting the filling well mixed, add another tablespoon or two of water so that it's "moist," but not "wet." Make sure your onion is finely chopped, as it will cook easily that way. Sprinkle some flour on your counter or board and knead the dough briefly, and roll the dough into a log shape of about 3/4 inch thickness. Then cut the "log" into pieces of about 1 inch in length. Take a piece of the dough and flatten and round it in your hand until it's about 3 to 3 1/2 inches diameter. You can also use a rolling pin to roll out the pieces of dough, which is what I do. Whether you use a rolling pin or just your hands, the rounds should not be extremely thin. Hold a round in your hand and put about a teaspoon of the meat filling in the middle. Begin pulling the dough up around the filling, leaving an opening at the top, but pinch the dough together at four places to form sort of a rectangle. Use a steamer basket (I have a stainless steel steamer) and add and heat the water per the instructions for your own steamer. I use my finger to just dab a bit of oil onto the bottom of each dumpling to prevent sticking. Cover the steamer or steamer basket and steam the dumplings for about 15 to 20 minutes (more likely the latter). Carefully remove the dumplings from the steamer, as there will be a little "broth" in each one; that is, the rendering of the filling from cooking, and it is to be eaten along with the dumpling. I've tried both soy sauce and ketchup with these dumplings, but I'm a ketchup man, although I found I liked them with ketchup mixed with a little soy sauce.   


The top two photos are of "buuz" made with packaged sheets of dough. The other two photos are of "buuz" with traditional homemade dough, simply made with flour and water ...

WORD HISTORY:
Bushel-The origin of this word is uncertain, with some speculating that it goes back to an Indo European form, "gwosdh," meaning "branch," but I'm not convinced. "Bushel" does go back to Old Celtic,^ a language of the Indo European family of languages. Old Celtic had "bosta" meaning "palm or hollow of the hand," but also "fist." This gave Gaulish "bostia," meaning, "handful," which became a part of the Gallo-Roman dialects of Gaul, and evolved into Old French "boisse," which meant "a measurement of grain," and this produced "boissel," "a unit of measurement." English borrowed the word (initially as "busshel?") in the first half of the 1300s (meaning: 4 pecks or 8 gallons). Baskets were developed to hold a "bushel," thus, "a bushel basket," and the translated biblical expression, "hide (a light or lamp) under a bushel."    

^ See "Etymological Dictionary of Proto-Celtic" by Ranko Matasović, Brill (Publisher), 2009