Spring-equinox Navruz pudding — wheat-sprout extract cooked into dark, sweet, hours-long-stirred paste. Made communally.
Zoroastrian Navruz ritual dish, pre-Islamic; the Persian samanu is the cognate. Made only around the spring equinox, it is traditionally cooked by a group of women who take turns stirring for 12-24 hours through the night while singing. The culture of cooking sumanak/sumalak was inscribed on UNESCO's Intangible Cultural Heritage list in 2025.
UNESCO listed Navruz including sumalak-making in 2009 (extended 2016). Tashkent neighborhood mahalla committees pool wheat in February; one 50 kg pot feeds 200 households a small dish each. The seven 7-stones-in-the-pot tradition is documented in 11th-c. Khorezmi texts.
Dark mahogany paste, glossy, the texture of thick caramel. Tastes of toasted wheat, dark malt, faint smoke — sweet without added sugar. Eaten with a small spoon from the communal kazan, the first bite blessed and shared after a wish.
Sprouted wheat (the grain germinated about a week into green grass) is mashed and pressed for its juice; the juice cooks down with flour over 12-24 hours of constant stirring in a 50-100 L kazan. Amylase from the sprouting converts starch to maltose, doing the sweetening — no sugar added. Small stones laid in the bottom keep it from scorching and help spread the heat; finding one in your portion is considered lucky.
Variations
Tashkent standard (wheat-only), Bukharan with added flour 1:1 (denser), Khorezm with stone-decoration ritual emphasized, Samarkand with seven-grain blend, Tajik Pamiri samanu thinner and runnier.
On the Palate
Where Sumalak sits in the Uzbek flavor cloud
The sweetness comes entirely from the sprouting, not from sugar — the amylase in the germinated wheat converts starch to maltose, so cook it low and slow, stirring nonstop for hours until it turns deep brown and sweetens on its own.
Ingredients
Serves 12How it's made
4 steps · 12 hours 25 min active + 5 days waiting
- 17200 min
Sprout 1 kg wheat berries 5 days; grind to extract green wheat juice.
Watch outThe wheat is ready when the shoots stand up like green grass and the juice you press out runs sweet and milky.
- 215 min
Combine wheat juice with 5 L water + 2 kg flour + 2 kg oil in massive kazan.
- 3720 min
Heat over low fire; stir CONTINUOUSLY 8–12 hours, day and night, communally.
Watch outKeep the fire low enough that it barely blips; take turns so someone's stirring every minute for hours.
- 410 min
Sumalak ready when deep brown and naturally sweet; portion into bowls.
Watch outIt's done when the color deepens to chestnut-brown and it tastes sweet without any sugar.
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