What is abdoogh khiar?
Abdoogh khiar begins with dry bread torn into an empty bowl and ends with ice dropped in at the table. Everything in between is yogurt loosened with cold water until it pours, plus cucumber, herbs, walnuts and raisins. It is a soup you eat with a spoon, not a dip you scoop up with bread, and the bread lives inside it rather than beside it.
The name is really a description. Ab is water, doogh is the salted yogurt drink, khiar is cucumber. Nothing is cooked. In Iran it is generally a dish of the hottest weeks of the year, when the last thing anyone wants is a lit stove, and it is one of the traditional dishes genuinely better made with bread that has gone stiff.
An honest note first: this is a home dish. Our kitchen on Jumeira Street is a kalle pache house, and abdoogh khiar is not something we serve.
Why does the bread go in first?
In most Persian meals bread is a tool. Here it is the structure. Dried bread torn into the bowl swells as it drinks the thinned yogurt, and that is what turns a savoury drink into something you can spoon. Leave it out and you have doogh with cucumber floating in it.
Tear it, do not cut it: torn edges drink faster than a clean knife edge, and pieces the size of a large coin soften evenly. Sangak is the bread usually reached for here because it is lean and thin, so it dries hard and clean rather than leathery; if you have a sheet left from an earlier meal, here is what to do with leftover sangak. Any dry flatbread works. Fresh soft bread does not, because it collapses into paste.
The bread goes in before the liquid, never after, so you pour to cover it and can see how much it takes up.
What ingredients do you need for abdoogh khiar?
This makes a generous lunch for four.
- 500 g plain full-fat yogurt, unsweetened
- About 500 ml very cold water, plus a jug more for the table
- 2 sheets of dried sangak or other dry flatbread, torn, two large handfuls per person
- 3 Persian or Lebanese cucumbers, diced small
- 1 small bunch each of mint, dill and spring onion, chopped fine, or 2 tablespoons dried mint
- A handful of walnuts, broken by hand
- 2 tablespoons raisins or sultanas, rinsed
- 1 teaspoon salt, then more to taste
- Ice, brought to the table
- Optional: a few dried rose petals, and one hard-boiled egg, peeled and chopped
How do you make abdoogh khiar step by step?
Fifteen minutes of work, then a wait while the bread softens.
- Tear the dried bread into rough coin-sized pieces and drop them into a wide bowl.
- Whisk the yogurt smooth in a jug, stir in the salt, then pour in the cold water a little at a time until it runs off the whisk in a thin stream rather than a ribbon. It will look too thin. It is not.
- Dice the cucumbers small, chop the herbs and spring onion fine, break the walnuts by hand, rinse the raisins.
- Pour about half the thinned yogurt over the bread and leave it alone. This is the only waiting in the recipe: fifteen or twenty minutes, until a piece pressed with a spoon gives way without falling apart.
- Fold in the cucumber, herbs, walnuts and raisins, holding a little of each back.
- Pour in the rest of the yogurt and taste for salt. Bread and cucumber both flatten seasoning, so it will want more than you expect.
- Scatter the reserved walnuts, raisins and herbs over the top, with rose petals and chopped egg if you are using them.
- Carry the bowl to the table, drop in the ice, stir once and serve straight away, with a jug of cold water beside it.
How loose should it be, and when does the ice go in?
Looser than looks right. The test is the spoon: lift one out and the soup should run off the edge in a thin stream, leaving the solids behind. If it mounds, add water.
The bread keeps drinking long after you stop watching, so a bowl that was right when you sat down thickens while you eat. That is why the jug of cold water belongs on the table, and why the salt deserves a second check once the ice has been in a minute.
The ice is not decoration. It is how this dish is made cold, which is why it goes in at the table and not the kitchen: ice added early melts into the bowl and thins the seasoning out of it. Serve in wide shallow bowls so the solids spread instead of sinking into a heap.
Abdoogh khiar or mast-o-khiar, which one are you making?
They share most of a shopping list and almost nothing else. One is deliberately watered down; the other is deliberately not.
| Abdoogh khiar | Mast-o-khiar | |
|---|---|---|
| What it is | A cold soup | A thick yogurt side |
| The yogurt | Loosened with water until it pours | Kept as thick as you can get it |
| The bread | Torn in, part of the dish | Torn alongside, for scooping |
| Ice | Dropped in at the table | None |
| Its job | Lunch, on its own | A side, next to something richer |
If the thick version is what you wanted, our mast-o-khiar recipe is the one to follow. They are not variants of each other.
Does a cold soup make sense as a Dubai lunch?
It makes more sense here than most places. Nothing is cooked, and it is a whole meal built from things that are easy to keep in a Dubai kitchen in July.
Be honest about what it is. This is a light midday meal, not dinner, and not the thing to put in front of people expecting meat. It also does not travel and does not sit: the bread that makes it good is the same bread that turns it to porridge if it waits. Make it, then eat it.
It is not the only Iranian answer to a hot month. We have argued the opposite case in why a hot bowl of kalle pache still makes sense in a Dubai summer, where the pre-dawn hours do the work. The two habits sit together: broth before the sun is up, a cold bowl at noon.
Can you order abdoogh khiar in Dubai?
Not from us, and we would rather say so. Shaun the Sheep is one kitchen at 64 Jumeira Street in Jumeirah 1, no branches, and what we cook is kalle pache: lamb head and trotters simmered about fourteen hours, with Sangak Bread, Mixed Torshi and Doogh on the same menu. Halal.
What we can hand you are the two parts of this bowl you would otherwise make yourself. Sangak Bread and Special Sangak are on our menu, and left out to dry they are exactly the bread this dish wants. Doogh is on the drinks list if you would rather not thin yogurt at home, and our doogh recipe has the ratios if you would.
We are open 24 hours a day, seven days a week, with delivery to 141 Dubai areas, pickup and dine-in; the fee for your area is shown at checkout. See the menu and order page. For anything specific about ingredients, call 04 321 8882 and ask.
