Chuchuk (Чучук)
Kyrgyz counterpart of the Kazakh kazy: a horse sausage stuffed into the large intestine, boiled and served at the nomad festivals. More fat than the Kazakh version.
| Lean horse meat | 250 g |
| Fine salt | 25 g |
| Ground wild cumin (zira) | 10 g |
| Fresh garlic, crushed | 10 g |
| Crushed black pepper | 5 g |
| Grated onion (optional) | 30 g |
| Horse flank with fat | 750 g |
| Horse’s (or ox’s) large intestine | — |
- Preparation: Cut the horse flank into strips 4 to 5 cm wide. The lean meat may be coarsely chopped with a knife and mixed with the flank strips to fill the gaps in the intestine.
- Seasoning: Rub the meat generously with the salt, the cumin, the garlic and the pepper. Add the grated onion if using. Leave to marinate for 24 hours in the cold.
- Cleaning the intestine: Clean the horse’s large intestine in cold salted water, turning it inside out and scraping it carefully. The large intestine, thicker than the small, gives the chuchuk its characteristic format, more voluminous than the standard kazy.
- Stuffing: Introduce the strips of meat into the large intestine, packing well. Tie the ends securely. The chuchuk should be 6 to 8 cm in diameter.
- Cooking: Plunge into cold water. Bring slowly to the boil, skimming regularly. Cook at a gentle simmer for 2½ to 3 hours, depending on thickness.
- Cooling: Leave to cool in the broth. This broth, fragrant and rich in gelatine, is eaten on its own as a soup.
- Serving: Slice into thick rounds of 2 to 3 cm. Serve hot with flat noodles (beshbarmak) and onions melted in butter, or cold as a starter with salt and vinegar.
The chuchuk is the Kyrgyz counterpart of the Kazakh kazy, with which it shares its origin, its raw material and its festive dimension. The difference lies in the casing: the chuchuk uses the horse’s large intestine, which is thicker and more gelatinous than the small intestine used for the kazy, giving it a more imposing format. In Kyrgyz tradition, the size of the chuchuk indicates the host’s generosity.
The word chuchuk belongs to the same etymological family as the Kazakh shuzhuk and the Turkish sucuk, which confirms a common origin in the traditions of the nomadic Turkic peoples. The first ethnographic descriptions appear in Russian sources of the nineteenth century.
The gelatinous wall of the large intestine requires a longer poaching than the kazy’s to soften without bursting. The cooking broth, rich in gelatine and scented with cumin and horse meat, is eaten separately as a soup, nothing of the carcass being lost in the tradition of the soğım. The regional variants bear on the proportion of garlic and the optional addition of grated onion, more frequent in the south of the country, around Osh and Jalal-Abad.
The Naadam, the Kyrgyz national games that include wrestling, horsemanship, and archery, is the festive setting par excellence for the chuchuk. The families who host riders and wrestlers serve the chuchuk in thick rounds with the beshbarmak and onions melted in butter. It also appears at weddings, circumcisions and mourning ceremonies.
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