Name: Buuz review by Gamze at Happy momo, Berlin, Germany
Item: Buuz
Rating: 4.4
Author: Gamze

Buuz are the steamed meat dumplings of Mongolia and of Buryatia across the Russian border: a thick wheat-flour wrapper pleated by hand around a filling of chopped mutton or beef with onion, garlic and salt, gathered at the top so that a small hole is left open, and steamed until the wrapper is glossy and the inside has filled with broth. They are the dish of Tsagaan Sar, the lunar new year in February, when a household will make and freeze several hundred in advance and steam them for every visitor over several days, and they are everyday food in the guanz canteens of Ulaanbaatar, where a plate of five to eight with a bowl of salty milk tea is lunch. The Buryat version, pronounced buuza or pozy, is slightly larger and more often made with a mix of beef and pork; in both places the dumpling is eaten in the hand and the first bite is taken at the base so the broth can be drunk before the rest.

The filling is the point and it is simple: mutton or beef, ideally with a good share of fat, chopped by hand rather than minced so it holds its texture, mixed with finely chopped onion, a little garlic, salt, pepper and a splash of water or stock so the meat releases juice as it steams. No soy, no ginger, no herbs beyond the occasional caraway in Buryatia. The dough is flour, water and salt, kneaded firm, rested and rolled into discs about eight centimetres across, thicker in the centre than at the edge. A spoon of filling goes in the middle and the edge is pinched upward in a ring of small pleats, fifteen to thirty of them in a skilled hand, leaving a hole at the top the width of a finger. The buuz sit without touching in a steamer over boiling water for about twenty minutes, until the wrapper is translucent at the thin spots and the tops have gone shiny.

Lift one and look at it before biting: the pleats should be even and still distinct after steaming, the wrapper taut and glossy, the base intact with no broth leaked into the steamer. The first bite at the bottom should release hot, fatty broth, and the meat inside should be in soft pieces, juicy and tasting of mutton and onion with salt as the only seasoning. The wrapper should be chewy but not thick enough to dominate, and cooked through with no floury taste. Mark down a dry filling with no broth, which means lean meat or no added liquid, a wrapper that has split and let the juice out, dough so thick the dumpling is mostly bread, meat that has been minced to a paste or seasoned to taste like something else, and buuz that have been reheated or left to sit, which turn hard at the pleats. They are served with nothing but a small dish of soy or ketchup in the city, and in the country with nothing at all.

Buuz

Germany

Happy momo

I have tried the ones with beef minced meat, I liked the texture, filling and sauces. One of the bests in Belin!

Buuz review by Gamze at Happy momo, Berlin, Germany

Buuz

Happy momo

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