In Kyrgyzstan the sheep is a way of life. A culture whose favorite meat is mutton,
almost any large gathering will have boiled sheep, handicrafts are made from
wool along with their yurts, they also have children’s game played with the
knees from sheep chuko. In the village wealth
is measured in the amount of sheep or other livestock you own, at the animal
bazar you choose a sheep by the amount of fat it has in its butt. People go to the lush mountain valleys in
summer to graze their sheep and other livestock. Sheep play a huge role in Kyrgyz life and
culture so this blog is dedicated to my least favorite animal in Kyrgyzstan.
The Sheep.
I have come to despise sheep. The meat is gross, smelly, tough, and very
fatty. There are sheep feces everywhere I
go. I go on a hike 3 hours into the
mountains and there is sheep poop, I go to a beautiful beach on the lake and
there is sheep poop everywhere. You can
not escape it. Every large gathering I
go to there is boiled sheep, the jokes about me eating the slices of sheep fat
have not stopped after a year, locals insist that I eat the fat and intestines
so I become strong. You would think
after a year of me refusing to eat slices of pure sheep fat my Kyrgyz family
would get bored of trying to get me to eat it, but no they have not. Sheep also create traffic problems crossing
the road en masse and until very recently (this year) the jail time for
stealing a sheep in Kyrgyzstan was more than stealing a woman to be your wife. I don’t now if I mentioned it but I hate
sheep!
This blog will not be about my hatred of this animal
though. It will be about the process of
how the sheep goes from grazing to being on a plate in front of you for
dinner. It will be bloody, graphic and
gross (just be happy you don’t get to experience the smells that go along with
the actual process). I’m hoping to
prepare my parents for their upcoming visit.
1. Get a sheep. Many people
have and raise sheep. If you don’t own
them you will buy one either from a friend or neighbor in the village or from
an animal bazar in a larger town. From
asking around the going price for a full grown sheep is about in the 3000-5000
som range (60-100 dollars) depending on how fat it is etc…
2. Tie it up. Sheep
are small but like any creature with a dull knife next to it’s neck it will
fight back. Usually one rope around the
hooves is plenty. To tie it up you
simply flip the sheep on its back, grab the legs and tie them together. From this point you are ready for the
slaughter.
3. Omean (sp.)
Omeaning is the equivalent to saying a prayer. For this part the women, kids, and men will
come together for a quick prayer followed by the words omean. They do this before any kind of animal
slaughter.
4.. Slaughter
it. No girls allowed. It is not pretty, it is not clean, but it is
relatively fast. Usually a quick slice
to the neck and the sheep will bleed out relatively quickly. They bring over a container to catch the
blood. Once the sheep is dead they will
untie the legs and get it ready to be butchered.
5.. Skin it. The
first thing they do in butchering it is skin it. It consists of gingerly knife cuts along with
jamming fists in between the skin and body cavity to detach the skin. They take care to not hurt the hide as they
can sell it for a small amount, up to $10.
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| Gingerly skinning |
6.. Remove the innards.
Once the hide is detached they leave it under the body to act as a nice
clean working surface. From here they
will slice down the ventral side of the body cavity. Once completed they will remove the innards
into a bowl.
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| Organ removal |
7. Clean the
innards. This is always a woman’s
job. They will wash, rinse, and braid
the intestines. They empty the green smelly
stomach contents away from the work area but never far enough. It is a horrendous smell. This smell and taste never leaves the
intestines in my opinion no matter how much cleaning they do. They often will use a small twig to help with
the cleaning. I think of it like a pipe
cleaner. The heart, lungs, liver,
kidneys, stomach, and intestines will all be eaten.
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| A bowl of guts |
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| My Apa (mother) cleaning the innards |
8. Cut it up. As they butcher the sheep they will cut the
sheep into manageable parts. There is no
nice clean butcher cuts like you would get in America though. From here the parts will all go to the kazan
(large metal pot). All of the pieces
will go in except for the head and lower parts of the legs.
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| Note the green gunk, that's what is in the stomach |
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| Ready to be thrown into the Kazan |
9. Singe the head and legs.
This can be done in numerous ways.
The goal is to remove all of the hair from the parts and cook them at
the same time. This is done through
burning it, then scarping it with a knife until clean. It smells like burning hair and is not
pleasant. I’ve seen this done using a
blow torch and a fire.
10. Boil it. All of
the sheep parts, innards and meat are thrown in the kazan to boil for
hours. During this time the women tend
to be inside preparing other things for the meal and the men smoke, drink, and
stir the sheep around. Sometimes people
will separate the innards and the meat and cook them separate. These people are heroes. The meat isn’t good in the first place, but
when you boil it with the innards it makes it even worse.
11. Serve it up. Now
the sheep is cooked and the table is set.
Time to eat. It usually begins
with a young boy going around to wash everyone’s hands. While he is pouring water over your hands it
is customary to say some wishes for the pourer.
From here they split up the meat.
The large chunk of pure fat from the butt almost always goes to the
eldest lady in the room, or if it is an honored guest it will go to the woman
if there is a male and female (possibly my mother when they visit). The eldest male, will sometimes get the head
or the honored male guest (possibly my dad when they visit) . While these parts are served to them, they
share. From here they pass out chunks of
bone and meat in chronological order, the older you are the more food you get. The youngest females usually get the smallest
amount and worse cuts of meat. Normally
2-4 middle aged men will begin shredding some of the meat, fat and intestines
for the besh barmak. The ingredients for
the besh barmak are simple, shredded sheep parts, plain noodles, and sheep
broth. They mix the ingredients up in a
large bowl and then every one grabs their helping. Traditionally this is eaten only with your
hands, but many people use silverware now.
I tend to use my hands, but the after affect is horrid, hands that smell
like sheep for days.
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| Head and intestines |
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| Passing out the pieces |
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| Intestines braided to look like a snake |
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| Rib bones count as silverware |
12. Omean. At the end of the meal the hand washer will
come back around, this time your hands are greasy and smelly, but soap is never
used and everyone will use the same towel to dry their hands. Once your hands are sparkling clean you omean
again. Thanking the guests, and wishing
them fortunes. Depending on what the
occasion is for the prayer will sometimes be directed at them. Once this is done everyone prepares their
doggy bags. These consist of plastic
bags full of chunks of fat, meat, and left over besh barmak. There is often times a separate bag with
candy, bread, and borsok (fried bread).
When ever I leave one of these I tend to wash my hands at least 2 more
times with lots of soap and water.
So that is the typical process in my experience of how a sheep
goes from pasture to plastic doggy bag.
The first time I experienced this I was wide eyed and taking it all
in. Now I dread it. I hope for the day when it is a goat,
chicken, cow or horse slaughter in stead of a sheep. Despite what the lyrics from a CAKE song say, in my mind, goats go to heaven, sheep go to hell.
