Shashlik

What to expect

Taste

Lamb, salt and smoke, in that order, and it is a plainer flavour than the long marinade suggests. The vinegar does not survive as sourness — after eight hours it has done its work on the texture and left only a faint tang at the edge of the meat. Ground coriander is the one spice you can actually taste and it is warm and slightly citrus. What dominates is the fat: rendered lamb fat is sweet and it has been dripping onto the coals and coming back up as smoke for fifteen minutes, so it is both in the meat and on it. The raw onion rings alongside are the counterweight and they are properly sharp, and the lemon does the same job again.

Aroma

The best smell in this collection and it is not in the kitchen. Lamb fat hitting hot coals produces a smoke that carries a long way, and the dish is largely eaten by people who have been smelling it for twenty minutes. Underneath it, coriander seed toasting on the surface of the meat and the sharp raw smell of the cut onion on the platter.

Texture

A crusted, slightly chewy exterior against meat that is tender in a specific way — the overnight onion has loosened the fibres, so it gives rather than resists, and it is a softer texture than the same cut simply grilled. The rendered fat is soft and yielding rather than solid. And then the raw onion, which is the only crunch in the dish and is there entirely for that reason.

Sound

Fat dripping onto coals and hissing, which is the sound of the dish and is more or less continuous for fifteen minutes. Every few minutes a flare-up, and the hiss of water flicked at it. Nothing else — the meat itself makes very little noise on a skewer.

How the flavour moves

Char and salt first, and they are the loudest things in the first second. The fat's sweetness comes in immediately behind and fills the middle of the mouthful. Coriander and bay sit underneath as a warmth rather than a flavour you could name. The finish is smoke, which lingers. Then a piece of raw onion or a squeeze of lemon resets the whole mouth, which is why they are on the platter and why the next piece tastes as good as the first.

Serve it

Very hot off the skewer and rested five minutes, and it is eaten standing up more often than sitting down, so it is usually eaten hotter than a plated dish would be. The flatbread underneath is warm from what has run into it.

Goes with

Flatbread underneath, raw onion and lemon on top, and something sharp and pickled alongside — salted cucumbers do the job. Kvass or beer. Tomatoes and peppers grilled over the same coals are common in the Caucasus and are a separate dish rather than part of this one.

Cook's notes

Difficulty

Easy, and the two decisions that matter are both about waiting — long enough in the marinade, and long enough for the fire.

Cost

Moderate. Lamb shoulder is the only real cost and 1.5kg feeds six.

Equipment

Flat metal skewers rather than round ones — meat spins loose on a round skewer every time it is turned — and a mangal or a grill that holds the coals in a narrow bed about 10 to 12cm below the meat.

When to make it

Outdoors, in warm weather, with the marinade started the night before.

Best season

The first warm weekend of spring through to autumn — it is a seasonal dish by custom rather than by ingredient.

You know it is done when

The outside crusted deep brown in patches rather than uniformly, the fat rendered and gone translucent and glossy rather than white and opaque, and the surface no longer wet. Char at the edges is wanted; soot is not, and the difference is visible.

And it feels like

Firm with real give under a fingertip, and a cube should pull cleanly off the skewer rather than dragging. Cut open, the centre is faintly pink and juicy at 65C/150F rather than grey.

Food safety

65C/150F at the centre of a cube is the figure this recipe works to. Keep the meat refrigerated for the whole of the marinade rather than out on a warm day, and do not put cooked skewers back on the dish the raw ones came off. Flick water at flare-ups rather than letting them burn out, since soot from burning fat settles on the meat and tastes of it.

Where it goes wrong

• Trimming the fat off, which leaves meat that goes dry within a minute of being done.
• Using onion rings instead of grated onion, so nothing tenderises anything.
• Cooking over live flame, which blackens the outside while the middle is still raw and feeds the flames with dripping fat.
• Marinating past a day, after which the acid goes through the surface and leaves the meat pale, soft and mealy.
• Round skewers, on which the meat spins loose every time it is turned.
• Letting flare-ups burn, so soot from burning fat settles on the meat and tastes of it.

If it does go wrong

Dry: the fat was trimmed, or it went past 65C. Pale and mealy: it was left in the marinade too long, and there is no recovering from that. Black outside and raw inside: the coals were still flaming. Tasting of soot rather than smoke: flare-ups were not knocked down. Meat spinning as you turn it: round skewers. Tough despite the overnight: the onion was chopped rather than grated, or not worked in.

Making it ahead

The marinade has to be made ahead — 8 hours is the floor and 12 the ceiling. Thread the skewers while the charcoal is lighting.

Keeping it

Keeps 2 days refrigerated, though it is a dish that loses more than most by being kept.

Reheating

Briefly in a hot dry pan rather than an oven, which dries it.

Freezing

The raw marinated meat freezes well for a month and can go on the skewers from thawed. Cooked, it is not worth freezing.

Leftovers

Cold in bread with the raw onion and a squeeze of lemon is genuinely good, and is what happens to it in practice.

Scaling it

Scales as far as the fire does. The constraint is the length of the mangal and the number of skewers that fit over the coals at once, so cook in relays and serve as they come off rather than holding them.

Substitutions

Marinades vary sharply by region and argument: vinegar and onion is the Soviet standard, while pomegranate juice, wine, kefir and plain onion all have their partisans, and none of them is the correct one. Pork neck is the other very common cut in Russia and is more forgiving than lamb. Beef is used but wants a different marinade.

Dietary swaps

Contains sulphites from the vinegar. Naturally gluten free, dairy free, egg free and nut free as written — though it is almost always eaten with flatbread, which is not.

Shopping for it

Flat metal skewers are worth buying and cost very little. Lamb shoulder with the fat left on, from a butcher who will not trim it. Lump charcoal rather than briquettes, which burn cleaner.

Keeping the cost down

Shoulder rather than leg, and ask for it unbutchered and cube it yourself — the fat you would be paying somebody to remove is the fat this recipe needs.

Sustainability

Lamb is a high-impact meat and this is 1.5kg of it, though it feeds six and uses a cheap cut completely.

Nutrition

High in protein and in fat, and the fat is doing the cooking as well as the flavour.

Worth it?

The overnight is the dish. Everything that happens over the coals takes eighteen minutes and none of it can produce what the grated onion did while you were asleep.

Where it comes from

Origin

The Caucasus, not Russia, and it has never stopped being a Caucasian dish.

Also called

Шашлык (shashlyk). Its close relatives keep their own names: mtsvadi in Georgia, khorovats in Armenia.

Said out loud

shash-LIK.

What the name means

From a Turkic root meaning skewer, which entered Russian as shashlyk. The same element sits in shish kebab.

History

Skewer-grilled meat is ancient across the Caucasus, Anatolia and Central Asia and cannot be dated or attributed. Its route into Russian cooking is more traceable and is also genuinely contested in its detail: the dish spread into Russia from the Caucasus during the nineteenth century, first through restaurants in the cities and later and far more widely through Soviet holiday and dacha culture, which is what turned it from a regional speciality into the default thing Russians cook outdoors. Accounts that give it a single point of entry or a founding restaurant should be treated with caution.

Why it matters

Cooked outdoors from the first warm weekend of spring until autumn across Russia and the former Soviet states, at dachas, in parks and at roadside cafes, and sold from mangals at markets and festivals. Going for shashlik is an activity rather than a meal, and the cooking is usually done by one person while everyone else waits.

When it is eaten

The first warm weekend of the year above all, and every outdoor gathering after it.

The traditional way

Grated onion as the tenderiser, flat skewers rather than round ones, and a mangal — a long open-topped steel box, roughly the width of a skewer, that holds the coals in a narrow bed under the meat so nothing is wasted heating air.

How it changed

Mineral water in the marinade is a Soviet-era addition rather than an old one. The vinegar-and-onion formula itself became standard through that period and is now argued about as though it were ancient.

Regional variations

The marinade is the argument: pomegranate juice, dry wine, kefir, and plain onion with no acid at all each have their partisans, and each produces a noticeably different result. Georgian mtsvadi is often cooked with no marinade at all over grapevine cuttings.

Sources and credit

No author. A Caucasian dish adopted into Russian life with no individual credit attached.

Related recipes

Categories