Pillowy Kazakh deep-fried dough balls — golden on the outside, airy inside, eaten with honey, jam, or alongside soup, and present at every Kazakh celebration without exception.
No Kazakh celebration is complete without a mountain of baursak. At New Year, at Nowruz, at weddings and funerals, at the first snowfall — baursak is always there. The dough is made with yeast and enriched with a little oil, then torn or cut into pieces and dropped into hot fat where they puff immediately into golden balls. The outside shatters when you bite; the inside is soft and slightly chewy. Kazakh families make baursak in large quantities — dozens, sometimes hundreds for big gatherings — and pile them in wide flat baskets lined with cloth. They are eaten with tea, with honey, with sour cream (kaymak), or alongside a bowl of sorpa (bone broth). Baursak are also made without yeast for a denser, crispier version. The yeasted version is more common in northern Kazakhstan; the unleavened version has its own regional following. For Kazakh children who grew up in the diaspora, the smell of baursak frying is synonymous with visits to grandparents — the most powerful possible sensory memory of home.
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