Mantu

Afghan steamed dumplings of beef and a great deal of onion, served on garlic yoghurt under a yellow split pea and tomato sauce

Origin: Kabul & Afghanistan

From the journey of Wheat.

The word travels further than almost any other food word in Asia. Chinese mantou is a steamed bun with nothing in it; Korean mandu, Turkish mantı, Uzbek manti, Armenian manti, and Afghan mantu are all filled and all different. They are cousins carried along the same roads rather than versions of one dish, and the Afghan branch is distinguished by three things: the size, which is large; the filling, which is more onion than meat by volume; and the sauce, which is made of yellow split peas. The onion is not a background aromatic here. Afghan cooks use roughly as much chopped onion as beef, salt it, and let it weep before mixing, and the finished dumpling tastes sweet and juicy in a way a meat-heavy filling never does. Skimping on it produces something perfectly pleasant that Afghans will not recognise. The topping is a dish in its own right. Yellow split peas are simmered with tomato and turmeric into a thick dal, and this goes over the dumplings along with the garlic yoghurt and a scatter of dried mint. Some households add a spiced meat sauce as well, and some serve the dal alone; the split peas are what mark mantu out from the other dumplings on the family tree. It belongs to hospitality rather than to weekday cooking. The dumplings are pleated by hand, which takes an afternoon and is usually done by several people at once, and a household making mantu is expecting company. They steam in a stacked mantu-pallow, an Afghan multi-tier steamer, and they are served on a single wide platter with the sauces poured over at the table.

Ingredients

Dough

  • 400 g plain flour
  • 1 tsp salt
  • 220 ml warm water, approximately

Filling

  • 400 g minced beef
  • 400 g onions, very finely chopped
  • 1.5 tsp salt
  • 1 tsp freshly ground black pepper
  • 1 tsp ground coriander
  • 2 tbsp oil

Split pea sauce

  • 150 g yellow split peas, rinsed
  • 1 onion, chopped
  • 2 tbsp tomato purée
  • 1 tsp ground turmeric
  • 1 tsp ground coriander
  • 700 ml water

Yoghurt

  • 500 g thick natural yoghurt
  • 3 garlic cloves, crushed to a paste with salt

To finish

  • 2 tsp dried mint

Method

  1. Make the dough: mix flour, salt, and water to a firm dough, knead eight minutes, and rest it covered for thirty minutes.
  2. Salt the chopped onions and leave them in a colander for fifteen minutes, then squeeze out the liquid. Wet onion makes a wet filling and a split dumpling.
  3. Mix the squeezed onion with the beef, pepper, coriander, remaining salt, and oil. Do not overwork it.
  4. Start the split peas: simmer them with the chopped onion, tomato purée, turmeric, coriander, and water for forty minutes until collapsing and thick. Season well.
  5. Stir the crushed garlic into the yoghurt with a pinch of salt and leave it at room temperature.
  6. Roll the dough very thin and cut it into 10cm squares. Afghan mantu are large; do not cut them small.
  7. Put a heaped tablespoon of filling in the centre of each square. Bring the four corners up to meet in the middle and pinch the four seams closed, leaving the sides slightly open.
  8. Oil the tiers of a steamer well, since these stick badly, and arrange the dumplings without letting them touch.
  9. Steam over a steady boil for thirty-five to forty minutes. They are ready when the wrapper is translucent and the filling is firm.
  10. Spread most of the garlic yoghurt across a wide warm platter and lay the steamed dumplings on it.
  11. Spoon the split pea sauce over the middle, dot the remaining yoghurt around, and crush the dried mint over the top.
  12. Serve warm. The yoghurt is not heated at any point.

Notes

Match the onion to the beef by weight; that ratio is what makes an Afghan mantu taste Afghan, and cutting it back is the commonest way this dish goes wrong abroad. Squeeze the onion after salting or the filling will leak. Oil the steamer tiers generously, as these are large and stick readily. Yellow split peas are not interchangeable with red lentils here, since red lentils dissolve to a purée and the sauce wants some texture. The pleated dumplings freeze raw and steam from frozen with ten minutes added, which is how most Afghan households actually manage them.

The Gastrographer

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Ingredient originTrade or transit route
Became a culinary stapleColonial / trade control
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