Shuzhuk (Шұжық)
Spiced horse-meat sausage, stuffed into the small intestine. Fattier and more ordinary than the kazy, it is the everyday piece of Kazakh horse charcuterie.
| Lean horse rib meat | 550 g |
| Horse fat (or fat-tail fat) | 450 g |
| Fine salt | 22 g |
| Ground cumin | 10 g |
| Fresh garlic, crushed | 20 g |
| Ground black pepper | 4 g |
| Horse’s small intestine | — |
- Note: the traditional shuzhuk is a sausage that is smoked and then dried for several days, and boiled at the time of serving. The recipe below offers a simplified, fresh, direct-poach preparation without the maturing stage. For the dried-smoked form, refer to the smoking and drying options described in the kazy entry.
- Preparing the meat: Bone the rib meat and cut it, with the fat, into 2 cm cubes. Refrigerate at 0 °C for 2 hours.
- Mincing: Mince through the 6 to 8 mm plate. The texture must remain rustic, with visible pieces: the shuzhuk is not an emulsified sausage.
- Seasoning: Add the salt, the cumin, the crushed garlic, the pepper and the cold water. Knead vigorously for 5 minutes to a homogeneous, sticky forcemeat.
- Resting: Refrigerate for 12 to 24 hours to let the aromas develop.
- Cleaning the intestine: Turn the horse’s intestine inside out and rinse abundantly. Soak for 30 minutes in cold salted water.
- Stuffing: Stuff into the small intestine, forming sausages of 20 to 30 cm. Tie at the ends.
- Cooking: Plunge into cold water, bring to the boil, then cook at a simmer for 1½ hours. Leave to cool before slicing.
- Serving: Serve hot in the beshbarmak (the national dish), or cold, in thin slices, with raw onions and vinegar.
The shuzhuk is the everyday sausage of Kazakh charcuterie. It starts with the same rib meat as the kazy, but while the latter keeps the whole strip rolled in the casing, the shuzhuk bones it, cuts it into pieces, and enriches it with fat, which makes it a fattier sausage and easier to portion. In its traditional form, it is smoked and then dried, and keeps that way for several weeks; it is this version, sliced cold, that appears on the great festive tables alongside the kazy, the latter keeping the place of honour. It completes the triptych born of the soğım, the winter slaughter (see the kazy entry).
Its name shares the same Turkic root as the Turkish sucuk, the Armenian soudjouk and the Bulgarian sudjuk, a family whose diffusion, from the Kazakh steppes to the Balkans and the Levant, accompanies the expansion of the Turkic peoples and the circulation of their charcuterie techniques across medieval Eurasia. The shuzhuk is the version closest to the original form: horse meat, horse intestine, dominant cumin, while its western cousins replaced the horse with beef and developed their own spice profiles.
The cumin used is the zira (Bunium persicum), the wild variety of the Tian Shan mountains, whose proportion in the forcemeat exceeds that of the sausages of Central Europe or the Mediterranean. The zone’s introduction details the characteristics of this spice and its unifying role within the Central Asian charcuteries.
The variants affect the proportion of meat to fat and the mode of preparation. In the south, around Almaty and Shymkent, the shuzhuk is readily cold-smoked over saxaul or apricot wood before drying, which accentuates the smoky note. Grated onion is sometimes added to the forcemeat. The sources also mention shuzhuk made from cuts other than ribs, which is firmer and less fine.
It is served hot in the beshbarmak (boiled shuzhuk over flat noodles with an onion sauce) or cold, cut into thin slices, with raw onions and vinegar. It stands alongside the kazy as the supporting piece, while the latter holds the place of honour.
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