Xinjiang Food Explained (Real Uyghur Food) Pt. 2

Oh my goodness. I'm definitely getting that. Yeah. To let the world know like we're welcoming people. Some of the best lamb I've ever had in my life. David, the things you do for the YouTube viewers. Come to try Uyghur food. Episode one of what Chinese food are you actually eating found us in the Shanghai Watertown region. For episode two, we're going all the way west to the arid lands and delicious cumin lamb of the Xinjiang province, which borders Central Asia. There's a ton of influence from the ancient Silk Road routes that ran from China to Persia and even Italy. So the Xinjiang food to many people seems like a fascinating mix of Middle East and Far East. We're starting off in Flushing, Queens All right, you guys, we are here with Shehzada. And when you guys say it in your own language, how do you guys say Uyghur? Because a lot of people say Uyghur. Some people say Uyghur. How do you guys say it? Yeah, I know. In my language say Uyghur. So in English translate to in English. So it's going to be like Uyghur. Yeah. Some people say like Uyghur. Yeah. You guys, we had to come all the way to Flushing to Nerlin Uyghur cuisine because there were two dishes that we could not find in Manhattan. One of these was the naan kordak right here. This naan kordak is really good. And you know, what's really interesting, Andrew, is we were always talking about how a lot of some of the Uyghur food, sometimes it looks the same, but the flavor is very different. Sort of like lagman versus like the stir fried noodles. I think in a dish like this, you really feel that salsa vibe that is more central Asian. This is definitely not like dapanji. Dapanji tastes much more Asian or Chinese. Of course, we're going to break the samsa right here. I love trying everybody's version. Everybody does it differently. Here, this is Nerlin Uyghurs. And what I like about this version, it's extra fatty. Maybe dipping the samsa in this is not particularly traditional, but you can't say I'm the first one to do it. That's good. That's really good. Wow. If people ask me like, what kind of food is this? So like, it's not Chinese food. Like our traditional food, Uyghur food. And it, cause we are located by like Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan. So that country is all a little bit mixed. Yeah. So that's why when we are writing, like it's totally different. But the speaking, it's close to 99% Turkish. Yeah. Yeah. Even the Turkish people, when they are speaking, so we understand, and they understand what I'm talking. That means come to try Uyghur food. Next up, we're headed to the financial district, Uyghur Caravan, where the restaurant is run by an entire family. All right, you guys, we are at Caravan Uyghur Cuisine here in the financial district. It has a lot of great decor that's going to give you the vibe and kind of tell you a history about, you know, Xinjiang and Uyghurs in general. Dude, I can tell you straight off the rip, this milk tea is very salty, but actually, you know, salt is just there to enhance flavor. This does remind me almost of a little bit of like some Tibetan or Mongolian tea, Dapanji. Hey man, so right off the bat, I mean, David, what looks different about this Dapanji than other ones that we've had? Because we've definitely had this dish before and we are going to have this dish at other spots, but everybody does it a little bit differently. It's a little bit more soup-like and it's very, very peppery. I'm just going to give it a nice little squeeze, a little pump right there so that it can just soak up all that sauce. Man. This is called Noreen. It's going to be chunks of lamb on top of like this really thin noodle. Almost looks like a really small, like tagliatelle pasta. Noreen. One thing you guys will notice about Xinjiang beef and Xinjiang lamb is that it's really, really ultra high quality and especially the lamb really lacks any sort of gaminess. They were telling us that the reason why lamb is so good in Xinjiang is because the Uyghur farmers, they would feed the lamb a lot of salt when they're young so that their kind of bodies are a little bit more, I guess, salted. Yo, I got to go in for more Noreen, man. Wow. This is my thing. Like I said, I've had a lot of Xinjiang food in my life. This is the first time I had this dish. Of course, Andrew, we cannot talk about anything unless we talk about the Xinjiang kebabs. In modern day, you can get Xinjiang kebabs everywhere in China, but this is the root. When you think of Chinese skewers in 2021, this is the root dish. I mean, these are obviously a little bit more brolic and bigger, but yes, this is where it comes from. It has the same spices. Honestly, guys, I actually think that these are the best kebabs in the world. In Uyghur, these are called Kuey Kuap or, you know, in Mandarin, Yang Rou Chuan. Tender, big pieces of lamb. With the Uyghur kebabs, Xinjiang ones, they definitely put the emphasis on the meat and there's not that many spices. It's cumin, it's salt, pepper, maybe one other thing, but it's not too crazy. All right, here we got the chicken kebab. Lots of flavor, very tender, not too fatty. The food here is actually really clean. These are gigantic lamb kidneys. Now, there's even a dish on this menu that they had called sheep lung and that, you know, they couldn't even serve it anymore, even though that's a traditional dish. So, David, I usually hate kidney. It's not bad. All right, man, I'm going in on the kidney. Usually on these videos, I skip, you know, I'm a little squeamish, but I'm not skipping today. Of course, Andrew, we got the lamb soup. We've got lamb with naan right here. Instead of noodles, you have naan and instead of chicken, you have lamb. I mean, but it's probably a different flavor. I think we got to go for it because this is a dish that not every Uyghur restaurant is even going to serve. Naan right here. This naan has been sunken. Wow, wow. Oh man, look at this lamb. Look at that just fall apart. Oh my goodness. You see that bone and that bone marrow inside? I'm definitely getting that. Yeah, you see that bone marrow? It's soft. Oh my goodness. Yo, this is good. I got to try this. Guys, I have some bone marrow with a lamb slice on top of me eating it like a pizza. It's New York after all. Guys, I'm going in for another piece of lamb. Like you said, the marrow is soft. I mean, I've got to say, guys, I think that this Xinjiang lamb is some of the best lamb I've ever had in my life and it is affordable. You got to come here. This is a steal. You are looking at the Uyghur polo. You can get this with beef or lamb. He gave us the beef version. But I got a big ass piece of lamb soup right here. That's a lamb bone, man. That's clean, clear stew. It's going to have all the lamb flavor in it. Not even that many extra spices. Very pure. Man, you know, every culture has a rice dish and actually like pulao, polo, you know, they're all related. A lot of different countries eat this. Andrew, I had to go and burn my hand just to go get the lamb tail. David, the things you do for the YouTube viewers. It's really interesting because obviously, you know, Xinjiang being so far west, you get a lot of like Western flavors that you almost might find also similarities in like Georgian food. Andrew, I cannot stop eating the polo. Finishing off the meal here. The Uyghur yogurt. I like the inclusion of the dates and the raisins at the same time. In Xinjiang, there are several different ethnic groups that impact the cuisine. The largest of which are the Uyghurs. The others are the Hui, Dongsha, Mongolians, Xianbei, Xibo, and Han. Several of the groups are Muslim, so pork dishes are overall pretty rare in the region. The focus is on roast lamb, naan breads, handmade noodles, and oh yeah, lots of cumin, cinnamon, saffron, and pepper. The flavors come together in a way that is super unique and incredibly delicious. All right, you guys. We are at Tengri Uyghur cuisine. They are from Urumqi, Andrew, which is like sort of the big city where it's actually really, really mixed. That's almost like they're New York. Urumqi, Andrew, more than, for example, Kashgar has a ton of Chinese people in there too. Han, Chinese. And that would explain the presence of things like this, which is their version of a roujiamo, which is obviously a very popular dish in China. All right, so here, David, we have the lagman noodles. Yeah, this is a lamb pancake. This is a roubing in Mandarin. It's gaoshnan in Uyghur. This is in Mandarin called ding ding chow mein. I believe it is a take sort of on a Xi'an yangrou paomo. This is a polo. They call it a polo, but obviously it sounds like pulau. Pulau sounds like pilaf. So this is a very Central Asian thing. Of course, samsa sounds like samosa. What makes this spot unique from even other Uyghur restaurants in New York is that they have a special take on Chinese dishes. So this is a roujiamo and a clamshell bun, but you can tell even the bread that they use is different. This is almost more like, feels more like a Western style bread. Andrew, I know that you have always been sort of like, I don't want to say a critic of the roujiamo. Oh, I'm critical of the roujiamo because sometimes it's just stewed pork and they don't add any extra garnishes or flavors or spices to it. I'm like, guys, this sandwich could be so much more. So Xi'an actually was the landing place of the Silk Road, but Xinjiang was the place that the Silk Road went through. All right, guys, this is known to be the Chinese hamburger. So Uyghur roujiamo. Moving on, guys, we have to cover what I believe is super unique here at Tengri, which is the Uyghur wonton dish right here. This is lamb wontons. Oh, that's pretty interesting. And it does remind me a little bit more of like hui zhutai. Hui people being from, you know, a lot of places like Sichuan or... Wow, look at all the flavor, man. You can really see there's like layers of fat on top. David, I'm sure that's really hot for you, bro. I can't believe you were holding that up. Guys, my hands! What were you doing? Anything for the shot, guys! Why'd you hold it up, though? So hot. God, I'm gonna let it cool down. Those are really good. Those were bursting with juice, man. The lamb soup was just flowing everywhere and it was super hot. I'm not gonna lie, I think I burned the roof of my mouth, but those are delicious. You know what these taste a little bit like? Beef shumais from Northern China. Hold on, I gotta try this broth, man. This broth is hot with lots of oil on top. Rest of my bread in there. Oh my goodness. Soaking up all the fat, baby. I want it all. That was good. Oh my goodness, Andrew. This is delicious. This might be one of the best things I had this month. Pearl noodle. This is called the Mandarin ding ding chow mein. It's that you get all the flavor from a noodle dish, but you don't have to use chopsticks. You can just scoop it up. This is scoopable noodles. In fact, you can't use chopsticks. All right, here we got the samsa. It's similar to a samosa in the triangle shape, but it's got a flakier crust. Let's see what's inside of it. Oh, it's like a meatball. Oh yeah, it's probably lamb. The samsas are up there. This is like one of my favorite meat pies. Wow. Strong lamb flavor. Strong pepper flavor. Pastry crust. You guys, dip it in the lamb wonton soup. Kind of tastes like a croissant. There you go. All right, you guys, we have two different dishes here. One a little bit more traditional, sort of almost the most exemplifying the sort of the Silk Road mixture of Xinjiang. And then for me, Andrew, we've got just their take on like jiaozi, boiled dumplings. Lamb, cabbage, and cumin dumplings. Wow, these are actually really good. You know, unlike David, I'm a vinegar on my dumpling type guy. But Andrew, we witnessed, you know, the mother make these. Shout out to her. She was really cool. By the way, guys, this noodle is one entire piece. So they're not going to be broken up. It does make it a little bit complicated to serve, but I think it kind of adds to the fun. Stir-fried lamb noodles, lagman. I got to get more. Hold on, man. This food is too good. Damn. Yo, everything was really good. And it's so crazy to say, Andrew, I'd have to say that that stir-fried lamb noodle might've been my favorite. All right, you guys, this is the lamb polo, aka the pulau, the pilaf. Andrew, and you are looking at a gaoshnan. Yo, gaoshnan, aka a meat pie. There's a lot of different versions from it. I think it might more, I think the Chinese one, the jingdong roubing, might even more come from this side of the world. I don't know, but it's very possible. Hey, the Silk Road was a long time ago. Gaoshnan. And David, the back of this actually really reminds me of the texture that you get from the Chinese, like curled dough, the mahua, right? And so it's very kind of hard and crispy, but the mahua is used to dip into a lot of things and what do you think I'm gonna do? Wow. I really like how this dish has carrots and raisins. It adds sweetness to it. And I'm always interested in trying this dish at any restaurant that we're at. You know, it can come from the Kazakhs, the Uzbeks. I think even- Kyrgyzstan. Kyrgyzstan, do Pakistanis have this too? I think parts of Pakistan, they eat this as well. You know, just a lot of different countries have this dish, have some form of it. And it's just always cool to see the slight difference. This is probably the most Pan-Central Asian dish you can find. I remember we went to a spot in Afghanistan, you know, they eat this too. Honestly, all the food here at Tengri was really good, top to bottom, side to side. But I think the thing that's gonna stand out to most people as the most unique, even setting itself apart from other Xinjiang Uyghur spots, it's sort of like the Han Chinese fusion Uyghur dishes. Right. And just everything was really good. Honestly, everything was hidden. These are some of the better dumplings I've had recently. I have never had jowls taste like that before in my life. And they were super good. Oh my gosh, the lamb was so good. Yeah, the lamb. I mean, Xinjiang Uyghur is like a master of cooking lamb, so I love it. I hope people can learn about our culture, about the food. I think that's one of the easiest ways to connect. If I eat with you, eat your food specifically. And I want to let the world know, like we're welcoming people, right? And we want our food to represent that. And I hope everyone who comes here have a good time, chat up, have some food. What's your favorite thing on the menu for yourself? My favorite thing isn't on the menu. Like I do like ask my dad to cook me specific type of food. Okay. But on the menu, I like the noodle. Because like that's one of our... And I grew up eating them, right? So for me, that's always an option. For me, I could eat lagman, dapanji, and Uyghur polo every day. I think that Xinjiang food is such an ancient fusion cuisine that has become so seamless over the years. It reminds me of Malaysian or Georgian food in the sense that Xinjiang sits at the crossroads of different worlds and the cuisine is so reflective of that. It's no wonder why the lamb kebabs or Xinjiang Yan Rou Chuan have made it everywhere in China. Who knows? Maybe one day it could be known around the world like a hamburger or pizza. I really think it could because they are that good. All right, you guys. Our last and final spot on the Xinjiang food crawl is Zhang's Kitchen. That Zhang is from Xinjiang. And the owner here is actually a Hui Muslim from Beijing. He's not Uyghur, but he spent a lot of time in Xinjiang and wanted to pay homage to the entire northwestern region. So that's Xinjiang, Inner Mongolia, Shaanxi. That's where this noodle is from. And it's pretty cool. We definitely got some Uyghur stuff on the menu. It is all halal. There's no pork. Let's get into it. Of course, we got to go with the Dapanji. If you guys know the history of this dish, it was actually invented by some Hui Zuren, which are Chinese Muslims, but they're Han. They were immigrating to Xinjiang and they were from Sichuan. So that's why it's kind of like a hybrid of this culture, that culture. All right, you guys. Let's take a look at the potato. I always judge the potatoes on a good Dapanji. I'm solid. I would say middle tone. This Dapanji here at Zhang's Kitchen is really good. There's more of a soy garlic vibe to it, which is more Chinese. But man, I'll tell you this. Every region does Dapanji differently. All right, you guys. Let's check out this samsa right here. Now we are looking at a Shaanxi rolled wheat noodle with beef. This is still halal. It reminds you a little bit of the flavors all in the northwestern region. They do share some similarity. And man, I'm actually really, really excited to try this. Dude, this definitely feels like a pasta. I mean, they almost look like hollow bamboo shoots or little boats or like, I don't know, I guess little caterpillars if you want to look at it in a gross way. But man, this is an awesome way to get the flavor really sucked into each noodle. It's almost like a boat of the cumin every time you take a bite. All right, so here I got a whole bunch of dishes that have a lot of crazy history. I mean, when you're talking about where dishes come from, especially in China, you know, such an old culture with so many different influences, it is really hard to track exactly where these dishes came from. I mean, this is a big lamb rib. It's sprinkled with the Xinjiang spices, but it could have heavy Mongolian influence. Here you have fried lamb that's super fatty and you have like sour cream and pitas on the side. So obviously, you know, this side is going to be more of your Turkish influence. And this is a traditional kind of way to eat fried lamb amongst the Hui people. And here you have these xiaomais that are going to be actually sort of a fusion between the Southern one that you know from dim sum and then like the Mongolian version and the Beijing version and then even like Uyghur mantis. So these are just like, just different dumplings. I don't know. It's very hard to say exactly what is what, but I can tell you this, that it's all good and it's all halal. Oh, I'm about to get in the lamb meat. I'm very excited. My gosh, I'm about to just pull it apart. Dude, he told me this lamb takes like three hours to cook. Serving pitas with it is something that you do not get at other restaurants. So man, all right. I might just, I just got to go in and eat it. Like man, if it's from the Mongolians, I got to go Mongol style. Whoa, that was one of the most tender lamb ribs I've maybe ever had. You got the fried lamb. He told us that this is a dish that a lot of Hui people eat. So maybe it's a Hui style, you know. But also, like I said, delivering the sour cream and the little side pickles, that's definitely not like what you think of as Chinese food. So Chinese food is just really, really diverse. Again, you know. So I'm going to just dip it in some sour cream, dip it in this sauce. I don't even know what this is, but it looks like a chili sauce. A little dabble of the seasoning. Let's go. Throughout this whole video, I think I've had the best lamb I've ever had in my life. Wow. All right, so I got the stewed lamb. I'm about to dip it into this, actually chive flower sauce. It's going to be very, very salty. And it actually comes from the Mongolians a long, long time ago. Just a light dab. This is definitely the definition of fall off the bone. Man, I mean, you know, the root of this food, it could be Mongolian. It could be Manchurian. It could be Uyghur. I mean, a lot of those people and cultures did share a history. You know, obviously the Mongolians went everywhere. So of course there's some of that influence as well. But man, it's all halal and actually everybody can eat it and it's all delicious. All I know is that it really feels like some kind of like nomadic food. You know, you in Beijing during the Yuan dynasty was taken over by the Mongolians. So actually Beijing actually has a lot of Mongolian influence. Even the Hutongs that we all know of in Beijing, that word actually comes from the Mongolians. So here we're going to try the lamb Xiaomai. And I do want to note that the other Uyghur restaurants that we went to, they actually have a manti, but they actually sold out of it by the time we got there, both of them, because it's so popular. So who knows, we might have to go back and get it. But man, I just feel like, man, just the lamb has just been so good. I'm excited. Oh my goodness. When I was filming Andrew going in on this Mongolian lamb. That was really good. That was really good, man. Andrew, do I need the sour cream or not? A little bit, just to tone it down. Let me tell you about this, guys. This Jiu Cai flour sauce, this tastes like it's like a thousand years old. I mean, just the fact that the owner here could put like a pita and some sour cream down next to this lamb and it like basically makes sense is because Xinjiang is an area that borders Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan, Uzbekistan, Turkey. And then of course, obviously, for example, in our first episode, Shanghai, what's it next to? The water. And even in a place like Yunnan, there's a lot of influenced Southern minorities, Hmong, Lao, Thailand. So it just goes to show you that Chinese cuisine is so massive. It really is influenced by like whatever it's next to. I hope people can learn about our culture, about the food. I think that's one of the easiest way to connect if I eat with you.