Ash e Mast | Persian Yogurt Soup

Yogurt soup is a test of patience and restraint. If you’re easily distracted, skip it. If you can mind a pot, stirring, singularly-focused, for half an hour or perhaps longer, you’ll be rewarded with a beautiful, herbed, Persian yogurt soup: Ashe Mast (yogurt soup).

Ash mast is so nutritious, considering its ingredients. It also contains a good amount of Calcium, due to the yogurt and rice in it and it is also very tasty like all Iranian dishes such as Eshkeneh.

Let’s see how this tasty Persian food is made:

Asheh Mast | Persian Yogurt Soup

Ash mast is one of the most favorable Persian foods and has a lot of fans in Iran. This food can be made both with and without meat. If cooked with meat, mutton or minced beef meat balls are used in the recipe.

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Course Main Course, Side Dish

Cuisine persian

Servings 6 people

Ingredients

  

• 1 cup cotyledons
• 1 cup lentils
• 1 cup rice
• 1 large onion
• 700 grams Vegetables for Ash (Sabzi Ash) (including ,parsley , coriander, scallion, spinach)
• 300 grams mined beef
• 1 grated onion
• 2 glasses sour yogurt
• 3 tablespoons fried mints
• Salt, turmeric and pepper as much as required
• Piaz Dagh and Sir Dagh as much as required

Instructions

 

• First, soak the rice, cotyledons and lentils in separate bowls from the night (12 hours) before you want to cook Ash Mast, and change the water with fresh water at least 4times.
• Choose a suitable pot and pour 4 or 5 liters water into it and place the pot on the heat. When water boils, add cotyledons.
• Wait for 20 minutes, then add lentils and leave the ingredients for some minutes till they boil gently.
• In this step, add rinsed and drained rice to the pot. Wait till the whole combinations gets a thicker texture.
• Add fried onions which you'd made before, some salt and black pepper. Put the pot lid and Let the content cook over low heat gently.
• In the meantime, grate the second onion and one garlic clove. Place them in a bowl and add 1/8 tablespoon turmeric, salt and pepper.
• Mix them well together. Add the minced meat and once again mix the ingredients all well.

  Make meatballs with the meat mixture about the size of a cherry.
• Sauté meatballs with a little oil and then add them to the pot.
• Add fried mint and wait till yoghurt soup cooks with the rest of the ingredients.
• Turn off the heat and taste your dish and check if you need to add some salt.
• Once Ash e Mast is ready, you can either add 2 cups of yogurt to the pot or a dollop of yogurt to each bowl.
• Mix the yogurt, and enjoy the dish.

6 Useful Tips which will help you have a better yogurt soup

• If you are adding yogurt to the pot, let it warm through gently and make sure it does not boil.
• This Ash is tastier with sour yogurt. If yogurt is sweet, let it be outside the fridge for some days, to become sour.
• Using too much mint in Ash can make it bitter.
• If you need your Ash to be more watery while cooking, add boiling water to it (not cold water) like what you do to Ashe doogh.
• Meat balls should be small. Otherwise, they don’t cook well in Ash.
• Adding more turmeric to Ash, gives it a better color.

How To Serve Ash Mast

• Ash mast is nutritious enough to be considered as a main meal, but Iranians also use it as an appetizer. You can top your dish with fried garlic, fried mint and/or fried onions. Enjoy it!
• This Type of Ash is usually served alone, but sometimes a crunchy type of bread is served next to it.
• It has a really magnificent taste, that’s why it’s served in bigger amounts.

More About Ashe Mast

Ashe mast is one of the Persian soups that are made in other countries like Turkey and Afghanistan too. This dish is made in different parts of Iran and the main ingredients are rice, yogurt and vegetables. This Ash is also called Mast Ba. “Ba” is stew and “Mast” is yogurt. As the other famous Persian stew is called Shour ba. Making this ash goes way back in Persian history and the dish is very delicious. It has been made in different seasons among different people of various regions. You can read more about the history of Persian food and thus Ashe Mast if you are interested.