Ash Reshteh (Persian Greens, Bean and Noodle Soup) Recipe (2024)

Do not cook the kashk with the soup. The way most Iranians do it is adding it while serving just a tablespoon for a bowl is enough. Trust me on this.

I confess to not loving the taste of kashk. For an American palate, you might want to taste it before adding the full amount to your ash. Or, substitute Greek yogurt or sour cream. Not as authentic, but I like it better.

My Persian grandfather loves this soup so much I’ve made it for him 3 times in a single week! Each time I varied the amount of herbs and greens a bit based on what I had on hand (including adding a leek, some green onions, etc.). One small tweak: when you’re frying the dried mint at the very end (an essential step, friends), add a few cloves of minced garlic to the oil as well. It’s heavenly and very traditional (as far as my grandparents remember)!

I made this tonight for a dinner party, as written. Delicious!! Very thick and herby, lovely for a spring evening. Served with some crusty bread, and a charcuterie plate. I found both the kashk and the reshteh (new ingredients to me) at a middle eastern market. The kashk was $11 for a jar that was about a cup and a half, so i used it all. It was also available as a dried powder. Reshteh was not labeled as such; it was just called “roasted noodles” but they owner assured me it was reshteh. YUM!

Yum! I was excited to see this Ash recipe, since a Sufi meditation teacher I knew from Iran made this for a group dinner along with jeweled chicken rice. Kashk tastes a bit like feta cheese and yogurt together, and I imagine you could either whip soft feta with greek yogurt to substitute or just use greek yogurt. Reshteh noodles are thin flat noodles, substitute with precooked linguine if necessary. At the Middle Eastern grocery, also look for chocolate chip pomegranate or rose water ice cream

If anyone is having trouble finding kashk, I found 5 lb buckets of it at my local Kashko.

Amazing! I have a Middle Eastern market down the streetThey actually serve this dish...Used 1/2 Swiss chard and 1/2 spinach because that’s what my edible front yard garden had. Since I was not familiar with the end result I followed the recipe closelyIt was perfect! (Well maybe I added just a little more garlic...)

As an Iranian who has cooked forever I am not sure why Samin did not include the red kidney beans and the pinto beans. This soup has chick peas, red kidney beans, pinto beans and some white beans in various proportions. The redness in the kidney beans adds to the color scheme of the soup and it is delicious.

Made this for dinner tonight---what a success! I took some shortcuts to make it in an hour and also made it vegan. I used canned chickpeas, blitzed the roughly chopped herbs, spinach, and onions together once sautéed (I only tore the bunches of herbs above the twist tie, so there were stems), boiled it once I added the lentils instead of simmering, and at the end once the noodles were cooked, I added a can of thick coconut milk and half a lemon's worth of juice. Perfection. Absolutely

Of course you can, and you can make any other minor tweak to the recipe you wish. The recipe quoted here (like all written recipes) is someone's family's recipe. I assure you, the neighbor's family made theirs just a tad differently, and on a given day when they didn't have dill in the garden, so did thiefamily! It is astounding to see a variation on this question in a considerable number of the NYT's Cooking Notes.

I fill a large bowl with cold water, grab a bunch of parsley or cilantro by the stem end, and dunk and swish the leaves around in the cold water a few times. Then I empty and refill the bowl with water and do that once more. I shake the water off the bunch over the sink, and still holding the herbs by the stems, move to the cutting board, where I chop from the leafy end down toward the stems until the stems become thick and I run out of leaves.

Making this brought back wonderful memories of my time in Iran several years ago! Kashk is essential - don’t skip it. Great recipe from Samin.

My Persian mother-in-law made Ash with leeks instead of spring onions and never used kashk probably because we didn't have access to it where we lived. But she did have 2 secrets: 1) she melted a whole stick of salted butter into the soup before serving making it rich and smooth; and 2) she added a tablespoon of apple cider vinegar before garnishing with crunchy fried onions and it added the perfect acidity enhancing each bite.

Giving the weight for spinach, cilantro, and parsley is so nice. Would you give weights for the chives and dill too? Thank you!

Finally - a recipe that uses those Kashk balls I mistakenly purchased from the Persian grocery store thinking they were candy! Won't be making that mistake twice. Perhaps it was because they were over a year old, but those Kashk balls were very hard to rehydrate. The recipe turned out great - I'll definitely be making it again

My mom makes an amazing Ash and drizzles kashk, fried onions, mint oil, golden fried chopped garlic, a few drops of saffron dissolved in warm water, and a bit of ground beef (sautéed with some onions, tomato paste and basic seasoning) in circles on top of the Ash before serving it. It looks like an abstract painting and so beautiful and appetizing.

I know I’m a slow chopper but it took me more than 2 hours just to do the washing, chopping and other prep for half a batch of this. But I wanted to cook the real thing for Persian new year. There’s a Persian grocery nearby so no problems finding ingredients. We enjoyed it, even though we usually eat much spicier foods. (I wonder if I can find an Indian-spiced dish that uses this same abundance of herbs?) It seems so right to welcome spring by cooking a huge pile of greens!

I’ve made this several times and we all love it. The kashk I found at the Persian grocery is thick like peanut butter, so I don’t use as much as this recipe calls for. Leftovers are the best.

Great recipe! Just like the soup I had at a Persian restaurant in Naples, Fl. OnlyThing I will change is less noodles, and perhaps blending some of the spinach mixture.

It’s worth noting that Persian grocery stores have packaged chopped dried herbs for ash reshteh. You soak in water for a few minutes and they rehydrate and taste great in this dish.

This was amazing! Don't buy your herbs at the regular grocery. Go to a middle eastern or Indian store and get more herbs for less. I see so many spent tons on herbs and spinach. I spent sub $10 for mine, and that's only a little over a dollar a serving, which isn't too bad considering. About $2-3 serving when you add other ingredient costs.

Loved this, although it was a 2-day process because I had to make my own kashk. Not hard - my Persian friend said it was good, I'll take that compliment!

Delicious as written. I made my own Kashk because I didn't feel like trekking all the way to the middle eastern store. Really good, filling spring soup.

This was unbelievably delicious and it passed my flexibility test- I used black eyed peas and black lentils because that’s what I had. I found the noodles and the Kashk in my local Armenian store and they were delicious. I halved the herbs and spinach by mistake and it was fine. I omitted cilantro because it’s gross.

I stuck to the measurements and I’m glad I did, because the proportions were perfect. I resisted the urge to quadruple the garlic because I wanted the subtleness of the herbs to come through, and decided to buy kashke instead of subbing in yogurt. This is one of those dishes that doesn’t taste right until it comes together at the end, so trust the process even if it tastes like wet bland mushy spinach for most of the cooking time - the more subtle interesting flavors will be there at the end.

I've made this dish numerous times the long way and have made it with a number of shortcuts. Both are excellent, but this recipe (the long way) is best. What really makes this dish are the toppings (yes, do make them all)- so unusual and delightful to my palate! I couldn't find liquid nor powdered kashk, so I had to pulverize these hard nuggets and reconstitute the resulting powder. This was exceptionally painstaking, but the result (though pungent) was amazing and very unlike sour cream.

My favourite thing is this topped with toum (when you can't find Kashk) followed by an Eric Kim gochujang cookie and a Queensland mango.

This is an extremely expensive dish that frankly, I don’t think is practical in a country that doesn’t have these ingredients in abundance. it’s also pretty unclear what you use at which stage, so I highly recommend reading through all the steps first so you don’t add the wrong things to the wrong steps. it can be a little vague.

I’m with the other Iranian cooks who do not like the flavor of kashk. My mother always served it with sour cream seasoned with garlic powder and lemon juice. Much fresher tasting and delicious. And I also agree with the gentleman that said DO NOT ADD KASHK to the cooking soup. I’ve had it served as only a topping so you can add as little or as much as you personally want.

This is a lovely warm weather soup! I substituted fennel for dill and skipped the chives. Put all the greens in the food processor with water; used flavorful water as stock. As there was no time for foraging, I used angel hair pasta and full-fat Greek yogurt. Definitely worth a shopping trip for more authentic ingredients!