Shawle-Traditional food of Karakalpaks

Shawle

Shawle is one of the delicious traditional meals of Karakalpaks and it is very often cooked at any Karakalpak family. This meal is also served to guests in different celebrations.

 Below I will give you the recipe and instruction to cook it and you will feel the real taste of Karakalpak national meal.

I will give you the recipe for cooking a meal enough for 4 people. In order to cook Shawle, you will need:

-2 kilo rice;

-2 kilo carrot;

-1 kilo meat;

-0.5 liter oil;

-0.1 kilo onion;

-2 liters water;

-Salt depending on your taste;
-a bulb of garlic (if you want);
and a bigger pot to cook in.

Firstly, you should clean the carrots and cut into long and thin pieces. Then wash the rice in cool water. To begin cooking you should pour the oil into the pot on an oven. When the oil is heated enough put the meat into oil to fry it. Then onions and salt should be added to the frying meat. When meat turns into brown add the cut carrot to them to fry for a while. Then pour a bit water enough to cover the carrot’s surface. Let all the ingredients boil till they are half ready. Next you can add the rice but don’t mix it with other ingredients. Then pour water enough to cover the surface with about 4sm level. You can add extra salt if you think it is not enough. Then boil them till the rice is ready to eat. Now you can serve it with salads.

    

The history of this meal is not exactly known. But some scientists give the following assumption:

As you see this meal is very similar to Uzbek traditional meal pilaf. So, Shawle may be a kind of quick version of Pilaf. In the past, Karakalpak tribes had to move very often depending on social-economical or political reasons. They had to face with wars with different enemies. So, during such war times they had to be very quick even when eating a meal and they learned to cook Shawle. Because Shawle takes much less time to cook than Pilaf. Also scientists guess that the word Shawle is derived from the Karakalpak word “Jawla” which means “to invade” or “to attack”.

In modern life of Karakalpaks Shawle is one of the most preferable meals. But now they cook and eat Shawle because it a very tasty, useful and energetic traditional meal, but not because they have to be quick and be ready to fight against an enemy J