Ash Reshteh

Ingredients

Makes 4 servings

• dried chickpeas 100 g
• dried pinto beans 100 g
• lentils 100 g
• ash herbs — leek greens, parsley, coriander, dill and spinach in roughly equal parts 500 g
• ash noodles 200 g
• onions, sliced thin 2 large
• garlic, finely chopped 4 cloves
• dried mint 2 tbsp
• kashk (fermented whey) 200 g
• turmeric 1 tsp
• plain flour 1 tbsp
• oil 10 tbsp
• water 1.6 L
• salt 1 tsp
• black pepper 0.5 tsp

Method

1. Soak the chickpeas and pinto beans overnight, at least twelve hours, and change the water two or three times while they sit. The lentils need no more than an hour and are cooked apart, because they soften long before the other two and will otherwise collapse into the pot.

2. Drain the chickpeas and beans, cover them with fresh water and simmer for about an hour, until they crush easily between two fingers. Skim the foam. Add no salt at this stage — it slows them down. Boil the lentils separately until just tender and drain them.

3. While they cook, make the three garnishes. Fry the onion in plenty of oil until deep golden — this is پیاز داغ and it should go well past pale. Fry the garlic separately with the turmeric. Warm the dried mint in two tablespoons of oil off the direct heat for no more than half a minute: mint burns almost instantly and burnt mint turns the whole pot bitter. Set half of each aside for the table.

4. Bring the water to the boil in a pot noticeably larger than the volume of soup you expect — the noodles need room or they clump. Add the drained pulses and the chopped herbs. Leave the lid off from here on: a closed lid dulls the green.

5. Stir in half the fried onion and half the fried garlic with the pepper, and simmer for about half an hour, until the herbs have softened and darkened.

6. Break the noodles in half and add them a handful at a time, stirring as you go so they do not stick to one another. Slacken the flour in a little cold water — cold, or it lumps — and stir that in too. Give it fifteen minutes at a gentle simmer. The noodles should be soft with no raw floury smell; a hard boil makes them gluey.

7. Boil the kashk on its own for twenty minutes first, thinned with a little water. This is a food-safety step, not a flavour one, and it is not optional with traditional kashk. Let it cool to roughly the temperature of the pot, keep two tablespoons back, then stir the rest in off the boil. Kashk added to a rolling boil, or at a very different temperature, splits.

8. Taste for salt only now — kashk is salty and salting earlier overshoots. Turn the heat off and let the pot settle for ten minutes: it is ready when a thin gloss sits on the surface. Serve with the reserved kashk, fried onion, fried garlic and mint oil spooned over.

Cook's notes

Background

Ash Reshteh is not only a home dish; it also appears at Nowruz, communal offerings, winter gatherings, and family occasions. Its kashk, fried-onion, and mint garnish is an important part of its presentation and hospitality.

Nutrition

Diet

• Vegetarian
• No walnut, almond or pistachio

Where this comes from

Official documentation strongly supports the dish or geographic attribution, but all recipe fields are not traceable to one dish-specific official recipe page.

Record: IR0023 · Evidence: B (Officially supported)

Open the source page https://visitiran.ir/fa/type/persian-foods