Tashkent specialty of boiled horse meat and kazy (smoked horse sausage), finely sliced and tossed with thin hand-cut noodles, raw onion, and black pepper, moistened with the cooking broth. Served cold or as a hot noodle soup.
A festive and guest dish of northern Uzbekistan, above all Tashkent, rooted in the horse-meat tradition of Central Asia's nomadic peoples. Silk Road merchants once dried horse meat and kazy for travel, then boiled and sliced it over fresh hand-cut noodles for a filling meal served fast. It remains the Friday-gathering and wedding dish, and comes in two forms: quruq (dry, cold) norin and xo'l (wet) norin served with broth poured over.
Sato Norinxona near Chorsu Bazaar opened in 1959 and is on its third generation of the same family; sells out by 11 a.m. The dish is so identified with Tashkent that other cities import the kazy from there.
Pale noodles, dark fine-sliced horse meat and kazy, translucent raw onion through it. Bite is salty-fatty and sharp with black pepper; the thin noodle keeps the dish from feeling heavy. A ladle of hot broth poured at table turns the cold dish warm.
Horse meat is first air-dried two to three days in the cold to firm it, then boiled 40-50 minutes until tender and sliced into thin strips once cooled; kazy is poached or sliced in. Noodles are rolled paper-thin, cut into fine threads, boiled, then oiled and spread flat to chill so they don't clump. Tossed with raw onion and pepper, which carries the dish more than salt.
Variations
Tashkent classic (kazy with cold noodle), a stir-fried lamb (kovurma) version, modern beef-and-kazy versions in restaurants for non-horse-eaters, and a wedding form mixing horse and lamb served on large platters. Divided by broth into quruq (dry) and xo'l (wet) norin.
On the Palate
Where Norin sits in the Uzbek flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 6How it's made
5 steps · 1 hour 50 min active + 8 min waiting
- 190 min
Cook 500 g horse meat with 1 onion, salt, bay leaves in water 1.5 hr until tender; chop fine.
Watch outSimmer the horse meat low and slow — a bare tremble, not a rolling boil — until a strand pulls apart with no chew; boiling hard just toughens and dries it.
- 213 min
Make noodle dough: 400 g flour + 200 ml water + 1 egg + 5 g salt; knead 8 min.
- 38 min
Roll dough paper-thin; cut into 5 mm wide strips; boil 2 min; cool with cold water.
Watch outRoll the dough until you can almost see your hand through it, then rinse the boiled noodles in cold water and toss with a little oil — spread them out so they chill separate and don't clump into a lump.
- 45 min
Toss chopped horse meat + cold noodles + 1 raw sliced onion + 1 tsp black pepper.
Watch outGo heavy on the raw onion and black pepper — they, not salt, carry this cold dish; taste and let the pepper bite come through.
- 52 min
Serve cold with bowl of warm meat broth on side.
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