Teşrîb: The Bread-and-Broth Dish at the Heart of the Yazidi Kurdish New Year

Jamal Latif
May 29
5 min read

Teşrîb: The Bread-and-Broth Dish at the Heart of the Yazidi Kurdish New Year

Teşrîb is torn flatbread soaked in a long-simmered broth of lamb, chickpeas, onions, and dried lime. The bread lines the bottom of the bowl; the broth is poured over until the bread softens and drinks it up. It is eaten with the hands, and as one Kurdish cook puts it, the flavour is in the liquid. For the Yazidis — an ancient Kurdish religious minority — teşrîb is the dish of Sere Sal, the Yazidi New Year. NPR documented one family’s tradition: a brother who “always knew which family in their northern Iraqi village was making tashrib for the Yazidi New Year,” and who would arrive at 11:30 a.m. knowing he would be urged to stay for lunch. “Tashrib is more about the liquid than the meat,” explains Nawaf Ashur Haskan. “It is cooked until much of the flavour has gone into the broth and is then piled onto torn pieces of flat bread and eaten with the hands. Then you lick your fingers. That’s where all the taste is.” The world files teşrîb under “Iraqi food” and notes that the name comes from the Arabic word for “to soak.” But for the Yazidi Kurds, it is served at the holiest holiday of the year, at weddings, and at funerals — the dish that marks every threshold of life. This is the eighty-first article in this series, and the first to document the Yazidi Kurdish table specifically: the food of a people who have survived attempts to erase not just their cuisine, but their existence.

Key Takeaways

• Torn flatbread soaked in long-simmered lamb-and-chickpea broth with dried lime — eaten with the hands

• The central dish of Sere Sal, the Yazidi Kurdish New Year — also served at weddings and funerals

• “More about the liquid than the meat” — the broth-soaked bread is the whole point

• Labelled “Iraqi” internationally — its role in Yazidi Kurdish ritual life goes undocumented

Quick Facts

Kurdish Name: Teşrîb (تشریب) — bread-soaked lamb broth

Ritual Role: Central dish of Sere Sal (Yazidi Kurdish New Year), weddings, and funerals

Ingredients: Lamb on the bone, chickpeas, onion, garlic, dried lime, flatbread

Eaten: With the hands, from a communal bowl of broth-soaked bread

Traditional Preparation

Lamb on the bone is browned, then simmered for hours with onions, garlic, dried lime, and chickpeas soaked overnight, until the meat is falling off the bone and the broth has turned deep and concentrated. Dried lime (limu) gives the broth its signature sourness and fragrance — the same souring instinct that runs through so much Kurdish cooking. Bone-in lamb is preferred because it gives the richest, most gelatinous broth, and the broth is everything: the dish is built around it. When it is ready, flatbread — torn naan or saji bread — is laid in the bottom of a wide communal bowl or tray. The hot broth is ladled over the bread until it soaks through and softens. The meat and chickpeas are piled on top. The whole thing is eaten by hand, everyone reaching into the shared vessel, tearing the soaked bread and scooping the meat. It is humble in its ingredients and generous in its serving — a dish designed to feed a crowd at a celebration, which is exactly where it appears.

Sere Sal: The Dish of the Yazidi New Year

The Yazidis are an ancient Kurdish-speaking religious minority whose New Year, Sere Sal — “head of the year” — falls in spring. Like other spring festivals it celebrates fertility and renewal: Yazidis colour eggs in honour of the colours that Tawus Melek, the Peacock Angel, is said to have spread across the new world. And the food of the day is teşrîb. Across the Yazidi diaspora — in Washington, Amsterdam, Lincoln, and Germany, where families scattered after persecution in their northern Iraqi homeland — the same dish is cooked, so that the holiday tastes like home even thousands of miles from it. The same broth-soaked bread also marks weddings and funerals: the food that accompanies a Yazidi Kurd through every major passage of life. To document teşrîb only as “a rustic Iraqi concept” that began as food of the poor is to miss what it actually is for the Yazidis: a sacred and celebratory dish, the centrepiece of a calendar of ritual, carried intact into exile by a people who have refused to let their traditions die.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is teşrîb?

Teşrîb is a dish of torn flatbread soaked in a long-simmered broth of lamb, chickpeas, onion, garlic, and dried lime. The bread lines the bowl and absorbs the broth; the meat and chickpeas are piled on top, and it is eaten with the hands from a shared vessel. The name comes from the word meaning “to soak.” It is rich, sour from the dried lime, and built around its broth.

Why is teşrîb important to the Yazidis?

Teşrîb is the central dish of Sere Sal, the Yazidi Kurdish New Year, and is also served at weddings and funerals. For the Yazidis — an ancient Kurdish religious minority — it marks every major passage of life. Across the diaspora, families cook teşrîb for the New Year so the holiday tastes like home, even far from their northern Iraqi villages. It is a sacred and celebratory food, not merely an everyday stew.

What gives teşrîb its distinctive flavour?

Dried lime (limu) is the signature — it gives the broth a deep, fragrant sourness. Bone-in lamb produces a rich, gelatinous broth, and slow simmering draws all the flavour into the liquid, which is the heart of the dish. Chickpeas add body. The sourness from the dried lime connects teşrîb to the wider Kurdish love of sour flavours, seen in dishes from çortu to dokliw to tirşik.

Conclusion

Teşrîb is the eighty-first article in this series, and the first to sit at the Yazidi Kurdish table. The world calls it Iraqi and translates its name as “to soak,” which is true and also incomplete. For the Yazidis it is the dish of Sere Sal, of weddings, of funerals — the food that has accompanied a persecuted Kurdish minority through the brightest and darkest days of the year, and carried, intact, into a diaspora scattered across continents. A brother who knew which village house was making teşrîb and showed up at 11:30 to be invited in. A family in Washington cooking the same broth their relatives cook in Amsterdam, in Lincoln, in Iraq, so that the New Year tastes the same in every kitchen. Eighty-one articles in, teşrîb is a reminder that Kurdish food is not one tradition but many — and that the Yazidis, who have been told their whole existence should disappear, answer by tearing bread, pouring broth, and eating together, exactly as they always have.