Armenia - Madzoon ov Kufteh

Location of Armenia

Barev and shnorhavor Nor Tari!

Hello and Happy New Year! For the first post of 2016 we travel to Armenia for Madzoon ov Kufteh, a creamy meatball soup with a yogurt base! 

The ease of making this soup is good omen for 2016, actually, because I have been neglecting you, readers. [Cue Hail to the Chief Instrumental] The citizens and visitors to this blog's posts deserve better. I have been neglecting you all and that must change. From here on out, I resolve in 2016 to make soup with greater regularity than ever before! It won’t be every day! And it likely won’t even be every week! But if I can make a soup for you lovely people more than once a month, I will onsider my promise to you fulfilled! Together we can. Together we soup.

Ingredients Used

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Well, now that we have that out of the way, we can move forward with our Armenian soup, Madzoon ov Kufteh, translated literally to yogurt with meat! I was lucky enough to have a great assistant, Tara, when making this soup! Many thanks to Mrs. Tara's Mom for providing us with her authentic recipe to go by! Note that all the measurements presented below are approximations as Tara informed me of the Armenian cooking phenomenon known as atchkee chop. Atchkee chop is the idea that dishes can (and should!) be made without

Mixing the bulgur into the meat

measuring anything but rather by going with what looks and feels right. a.k.a. my style of cooking! a.k.a. the reason I hate baking!! No, really, while I don’t cook as often as I’d like to (cooking for one seems like way more effort than cooking for more!), when I do throw something on the stove it’s a 2 second pour of wine here, a spoon and a half-ish of chopped garlic there, how about some more wine? Have we put pepper in yet? Let’s put in some pepper, and Viola! Culinary splendor. Because what are measuring spoons really good for really? “Atchkee chop” is yet another reason I loved making this soup.

Make sure your meatballs are tiny!

While I don't have a cost estimate like I usually do, I can tell you that most of the ingredients used are generally cheap and readily available, although you may have to look around for the bulgur. In my case Tara, the curator of this recipe, provided me with some that she bought from the local Armenian market. Without further ado, let’s get started!

Madzoon ov Kufteh

Ingredients

Scoop only a few meatballs at a time

For the Meatballs

• 1 lb Ground Beef 
• 1 Cup Bulgur 
• Salt 
• Pepper

For the Soup

• 1 Can Chicken Broth 
• 1 Can Beef Broth 
• 1/2 Can Warm Water 
• 1/3 Cup Cal Rose Rice 
• 3/4 of a 750g Tub Plain 2% Greek Yogurt 
• 2 TBSP Dried Mint

Directions

1. We will begin by forming the meatballs; In a small bowl combine bulgur with maybe about ¾ cup to 1 cup cold water and let soak. The goal here is to soften the grain before mixing it into the meat. 
2. Mix meat with a generous amount of salt and pepper and, when slightly softened and ready, the bulgur that was previously set aside. Mix well. 
3. Pinching off small sections, roll meat to form small 3/8-½ inch balls (the smaller the better!) and place on cookie sheet. (A tip that I have for those that plan to make this at home: when crafting the meatballs, keep a small dish with cold water next to you. If you wet your hands occasionally it will help you form the balls without problem.) 
4. When done, place cookie sheet in the freezer for about ten minutes to set the meat. 
5. While the meatballs are in the freezer, pour the chicken broth, the beef broth and ½ can

   

   Slowly mix broth into yogurt

   of water into a pot. Bring to a boil.
6. Add Rice and stir. Slowly add meatballs, 4-6 at a time, so that they don’t bring the broth temperature down. They should brown in the hot water fairly quickly. 
7. Once all meatballs are added we begin the process of incorporating the yogurt. Place yogurt in a medium sized mixing bowl. 
8. Taking broth from the pot, mix slowly into the yogurt one ladle-full at a time. Mixture should be creamy and warmed. You may need to transfer most of the broth from the pot to the yogurt bowl for this to happen. 
9. Once mixture is creamy and warmed, slowly add back to the pot, again one ladle-full at a time. 
10. The yogurt mixture should not break up in the broth. If it does, you may need to go back and make sure the mixture is warm enough and mixed sufficiently. I had to use a wire whisk to mix well enough. 
11. Once yogurt mixture is completely transferred to pot, wait for the rice to soften, stirring occasionally to make sure it doesn’t settle and burn on the bottom of the stove. 
12. Once rice seems tender, stir mint into soup and serve!

Slowly again, add broth and
yogurt mixture back to the pot

As always, this soup was a welcome addition to my kitchen. While I am always more surprised than I should be at the ease of some of these soup recipes (I’m looking at you, every country I’ve done so far except for Andorra!) this one, by far, required the least time and effort investment! The whole thing from start to finish took maybe 45 minutes, with the bulk of time being dedicated to the meatball-making! What made this soup unique from others I’ve previously enjoyed was the use of yogurt to create a cream base. When I was initially told of the soup that would ultimately be the representation of Tara's people to my blog I got pretty nervous. I thought a

Use as much mint at you see fit!
Atchkee Chop!

yogurt soup would be a thick, cold, weird dish that I wouldn't like at all! It came as a pleasant surprise when the yogurt ended up giving our warm soup a nice tart flavor, tricking me into thinking we had used a lemon somewhere along the line! Between that and the loads of mint we used, this unique flavor profile should have no problem being enjoyed in the warmer months of summer ahead!

I hope you enjoyed this soupy trip to Armenia!

Up next, Australia!

The finished product with a bit of Chardonnay!

“The world is a pot; Man, a spoon in it.” ~ Armenian Proverb