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Kazakhstan · Dough and pastry
Kazakh Manty
Local name: Қазақша мәнті / Manty
Large steamed Kazakh dumplings with a hand-chopped lamb and onion filling in thin dough.
- Servings4
- Prep1 h 20 min
- Cooking45 min
- Total time2 h 5 min
- DifficultyMedium
Contains glutenContains dairy
About this dish
Manty are large steamed dumplings filled with lamb and onion in a thin dough wrapper. In Kazakhstan they are made for everyday meals, for guests and for family gatherings, and they are also sold as street food, often sprinkled with hot red pepper.
The Kazakh version usually has a filling of lamb, plenty of onion and black pepper, sometimes with diced pumpkin. Manty are never boiled: they are steamed in a multi-tiered steamer (mantovarka) and served with butter, sour cream or an onion sauce.
Ingredients
Tick the ingredients off like a shopping list.
Dough
Filling
Steaming and serving
Method
Put the flour and salt in a large bowl, add the water gradually while mixing, then knead for 10 minutes until the dough is firm but smooth. Depending on your flour, if the dough still looks dry and cracked, add water 1 tablespoon at a time while kneading; it should be firm but kneadable.
Cover the dough and let it rest at room temperature for 30 minutes.
Chop the lamb with a knife into pieces about 5 mm in size; avoid a grinder, as hand-chopped meat gives a juicier filling.
Mix the chopped lamb with the onions, pumpkin, salt, black pepper and cumin. Add the cold water and stir the filling well by hand.
Divide the dough in two and roll each piece on a floured surface to 1-2 mm thick, then cut it into squares of about 10x10 cm.
Put about 1 tablespoon of filling in the centre of each square. Bring two opposite corners together over the filling, then join the other two corners and pinch the edges firmly closed.
Fill the bottom pot of the steamer with water and bring it to a boil. Grease the steamer tiers with oil.
Arrange the manty on the tiers with space between them and set the tiers over the pot.
Cover and steam over medium heat for 45 minutes.
Transfer the hot manty to plates, pour melted butter over them and serve with sour cream and hot red pepper if you like.
💡 Tips
- Chop the meat with a knife instead of grinding it; the manty will be juicier and tastier.
- Adding cold water to the filling gives a juicy broth inside as they steam.
- Roll the dough as thin as you can, and keep the squares covered so they do not dry out and crack at the edges.
- Grease the steamer tiers and leave gaps between the dumplings so they do not stick together.
- Pumpkin makes the filling softer and slightly sweet; if you skip it, add a little more onion.
🛒 Can't find it abroad?
- Lamb — Use beef plus 80-100 g beef or lamb suet or fat trimmings; if you have none, choose fatty minced beef.
- Sour cream — Use plain thick yogurt.
- Pumpkin — Leave it out or replace with the same weight of extra onion.
This recipe was prepared with the help of AI, following the traditional home-style method; quantities, times and steps were checked automatically for consistency. Ovens and stoves differ, so check doneness by eye.
