Tkemali is the number one Georgian sauce. It is believed that without it it is impossible to survive the endless Georgian feasts - the sour plums from which it is made help to cope with fatty foods. By the way, tkemali is also a kind of sour plum, which gave the name to the sauce. It is very difficult to find it in Russia, so an unripe sour quince, which is sold in the markets, can be a good substitute for it. But never sweet plums.

Sauce "Tkemali".

Ingredients 4 servings

Cilantro (coriander) to taste
Tkemali plums ½ cup
Dill to taste
Red chilli pepper 1 piece
Garlic 3 cloves
Ground coriander to taste
Sea salt to taste

Instruction

1. Put the plums in a saucepan, pour in water to cover the berries, and put on fire. Plums boil very quickly: ten minutes - and you're done.

2. Drain the water. We take out the seeds with our hands and crush the plums with a spoon, or rub them through a colander, or break them with a mixer - it turns out homogeneous mass similar to jam.

3. Finely chop the pepper and stir it into the plums. Salt. Crush greens of cilantro, dill and garlic in a mortar and also mix with plums. Add some coriander. In fact, it is believed that there is no tkemali without ombalo grass, which grows only in Georgia - you cannot find it here. But we get along just fine without the ombalo and don't feel much of a difference.

4. Well, that's all - tkemali is ready. He eats up very quickly. If you want to cook tkemali for the winter, then you just need to boil the plum, separate it from the seeds, salt it and roll it into jars. And only then, in winter, before putting tkemali into action, add cilantro, pepper and garlic to it. In the spring, when the plum has already grown, but has not yet ripened, it is customary in Georgia to invite guests to freshly brewed tkemali. Chicken, meat, fish and young potatoes are prepared for it. But the main thing is tkemali. After winter, this fresh young dish is especially delicious.

Tkemali is a special sour variety of plum. It is very difficult to find tkemali in Russia, only cherry plum is sold in the markets. You can also cook tkemali sauce from it, but it will not be quite the same. But if you are going to cook tkemali from cherry plum, then definitely from unripe. We do not recommend even trying to cook tkemali from sweet plums. Ombalo is a Georgian variety of mint. The leaves of this perennial wild herbaceous plant, both fresh and dried, are used as a seasoning, as well as in the preparation of some sauces and cheeses.

Tkemali sauce

Ingredients 4 servings

Garlic 1 head
Plums tkemali 1 kg
Cilantro (coriander) 2 tablespoons
Dill 2 tablespoons
Red pepper 1.5 teaspoons
Salt to taste

Instruction

1. Put the sorted and washed plums of tkemali or cherry plum into an enameled bowl, pour water to cover them, and, stirring often, cook over low heat until the peel comes off and the bones separate.

2. Then wipe the plums together with the broth through a sieve or colander.

3. To the resulting mass, similar in density to sour cream, add finely chopped cilantro and dill, crushed capsicum and garlic, salt, and a little sugar if desired.

4. Bring to a boil, cool.

At long-term storage pour the sauce into bottles, pour 1 tablespoon on top vegetable oil, seal tightly.

Tkemali green

Ingredients 12 servings

Cherry plum green 2 kg
Cilantro (coriander) 2 bunches
Young dill 2 bunches
Mint 1 bunch
Green peppers 2 pieces
Garlic 2 heads
Coriander seeds 1 tablespoon
Salt to taste

Instruction

1. Boil the cherry plum and separate from the seeds.

2. Finely chop the greens.

3. Squeeze the garlic through a garlic press, mash the coriander seeds. To mix everything.

4. Add salt to taste.

Sauce "Tkemali"

Ingredients 4 servings

Plums 500 g
Garlic to taste
Salt to taste
Ground black pepper to taste
Cilantro (coriander) to taste

Instruction

1. Boil the washed sour dried plums in water. Strain the broth and rub the plums (pitted) through a sieve, dilute with the broth until thick liquid sour cream, add crushed garlic, salt, ground pepper, finely chopped cilantro or dill, let it boil, then cool.

Served with chicken on a spit, as well as barbecue, fillet, etc.

Tkemali - delicious sauce from sunny Georgia

What is this sauce eaten with, you ask? Yes with everything! It will be a wonderful addition to meat, fish, vegetables, and simply with crispy bread or with homemade noodles, will be what you need - you will lick your fingers.

By the way, tkemali recipe is a very conditional name. Not a single Georgian measures garlic, cilantro or hot peppers per gram. Everything is done to taste. During the cooking process, try and add ingredients to your taste. And one more answer to the question "How to cook tkemali from cherry plum?". Cook it with love and good mood! That is why all Georgian dishes are so delicious!

Tkemali products

◾Plum yellow (sour plum) - 2 kg;
◾Cilantro - 1 large bunch;
◾Cilantro (coriander) dry ground - to taste;
◾ Garlic - one large head;
◾Ombolo is a special Georgian seasoning for this sauce. You can ask her around at the bazaar, where they sell spices from the Caucasus. In other words, this is wild mint, but it does not taste like our mint at all. If you don’t find it and don’t add it, it’s okay.
◾Salt;
◾ Hot red pepper - as much as you like.

This is a classic composition. Many recipes add dill, parsley, pour vinegar - do not do this so as not to spoil classic taste this wonderful dish.

How to cook tkemali?

1. We wash the cherry plum and let it dry.

We shift it into a bowl with a thick bottom (I cooked in a cauldron).

2. Pour 1/3 cup of water. Cover with a lid and cook until the cherry plum is boiled.

The first 30-40 minutes do not interfere! Cook until the cherry plum falls away from the bone and begins to spread on a spoon.
3. Let's cool down a little. We wipe through a sieve or a fine sieve so that the bone and skin come off. If the mass is too liquid, boil it down.

4. Grind the garlic, cilantro, ombolo, hot pepper as finely as possible. Grandfather Sandro grinds them in a mortar, and you can pass them through a meat grinder or grind them in a blender.

5. Add chopped seasoning to the mashed cherry plum and salt to taste. It is better not to add salt, then try again and add salt if necessary.

6. We put on fire and let it boil for 10-15 minutes with seasonings and salt.

Stir all the time so that the sauce does not burn.

7.Pour into glass bottles or jars, pour boiled vegetable oil on top and cover with a lid.

Pour Tkemali into a bottle hot 1 cm not to the top, and then slowly fill this free place with hot oil. I usually ignite a small amount of oil to make it easier to deal with a narrow neck.

You can roll up the jar with a lid. We store in the refrigerator or basement.

That's all. Our wonderful Georgian tkemali sauce is Georgian ready. Georgians are a very hospitable people who most of all love to treat their friends. I hope that cherry plum tkemali sauce is not the last Georgian dish that we will cook with you. Satsivi and kharcho soup, chakhokhbili and khachapuri - can you list them all! Treat your family and friends - you are guaranteed delight and admiration.

Tkemali sauce

Tkemali sauce has a bright taste and is therefore especially suitable for barbecues. It got its name from tkemali - sour red cherry plum, which gives the sauce a specific taste. But even if you make this sauce with frozen supermarket-bought plums, it still tastes wonderful.

To prepare tkemali sauce, you need the following ingredients:

Cherry plum or pitted plums - 1 kg
sugar - 50 g
salt - 20 g
garlic - 6 cloves
red freshly ground pepper - 1.5 g
fresh cilantro - 50 g
dill - 50 g
ground coriander - 0.5 tsp.

Tkemali sauce is prepared very simply:

1. Pass plums or plums through a meat grinder, add salt, sugar and boil for 5 minutes.
2. Very finely chop the garlic and herbs, add them to the boiling plum along with red pepper and coriander, bring to a boil, remove from heat and let cool.
3. Pour the sauce into clean jars and store in the refrigerator.

Tkemali sauce

Those who are familiar with Georgian cuisine know what tkemali sauce is. It is served with meat and fish dishes. Personally, I love him very much. True, now it is sold on store shelves, but its taste is not at all the same as that of a cooked home. So I want to write a recipe, maybe you will like it. Tkemali can be cooked like from green cherry plum. and from ripe.

Compound:

Cherry plum - 1 kilogram
Red hot pepper - 2-3 pieces
Fresh coriander - 1 large bunch
Fresh dill - 1 large bunch
Mint - a few leaves
Garlic - 1/2 head (more to taste)
Coriander half a teaspoon
Suneli hops - half a teaspoon
Sugar and salt to taste

My cherry plum, put in a saucepan and boil. We wipe through a colander to remove the bones and skin. Spices pass through a meat grinder. Rub the garlic with salt in a mortar. Put all this back into the pan, add a little water, so that the mass resembles store-bought sour cream. Salt to taste, if the tkemali is very sour, add sugar. Boil for twenty minutes and pour into sterile jars, roll up the lids. The sauce is ready.

Kharcho - famous dish Georgian cuisine. Today I present an option for preparing kharcho according to the recipe of Ilya Lazerson. He first tried such a kharcho in a cafe in the city of Sochi, in which a Georgian cook cooked. According to Lazerson, it was then that he realized that this was his dish.

Basically this traditional recipe kharcho, but with small additions. It will also show the process of making tkemali sauce, which is an integral part of kharcho.

From the indicated amount of plums, much more sauce is obtained than is needed to prepare the dish. But this sauce is wonderful and keeps quite a long time in the refrigerator, and you can use it later. The author also points out that he does not cook tkemali especially for this soup, but he always has homemade tkemali in the refrigerator. Accordingly, if you have ready-made tkemali, then you can use it.

Having prepared kharcho according to this recipe, you will also prepare homemade tkemali at the same time. Instead of plum, you can use cherry plum or a hybrid of plum and cherry plum. Kharcho turns out to be very tasty, despite its unsightly color.

To prepare tkemali, I will need, of course, plum, mint (in the classic Georgian recipe marsh mint is needed, it is called "ombalo" it has a richer smell, but any mint is quite suitable, the taste will not get worse from this, you can use it both dried and fresh), garlic, ground red pepper, fresh cilantro and coriander, i.e. dried cilantro seeds, as well as salt.
In principle, all plum seasonings go to taste, the main thing is the presence of these ingredients.
First of all, wash the plum, put it in a pot or tank, depending on the amount of plum, fill it with water, bring to a boil.
It is necessary to achieve such an effect that the plum becomes soft and the skin cracks a little.
Then we will salt part of the broth, and leave a small amount, about 1-2 cups, it can be useful to us later.
Let the plum pass through a colander, mash it. For tkemali, we need only the pulp from the plum, all that remains in the colander - the stone and the skin, does not go into tkemali.
Initially, I cooked 8 kg of plums, as a result I got about 3.5 liters of pulp for further preparation of tkemali.
Then we put this mashed pulp again on a small fire, it is necessary that it boils slightly, periodically stir it in the pan.
Now let's move on to spices and seasonings.
2-3 tbsp. spoons of dried mint (ombalo) add to the pan, mix.
Dried cilantro seeds 2 tbsp. l., that is, coriander, we pass through a blender and also add to the pan, but we must throw another 2 tablespoons into tkemali in an unground form.
Then we will take care of fresh cilantro (exactly the same as you see in the video, goes to tkemali), separate the twigs and inflorescences from the sticks. Sticks do not go into the sauce, only soft parts of cilantro.
Cilantro also needs to be chopped in a blender and also added to the pan with the future sauce.
Now garlic, 6-7 large cloves, it also needs to be brought to a mushy state in a blender and added to boiling water for small fire sauce.
At the end, it remains to add red hot ground pepper 0.5 tsp, and salt 3-3.5 tbsp. spoons., mix everything thoroughly again and leave on the gas for another 5 minutes. If it seems to us that the sauce turned out to be thick, this is where the decoction from the plums comes in handy to dilute the sauce with it to the consistency you need.
Then we turn off the gas - the tkemali is ready.
For further storage, it must be poured into small sterilized jars, because when opening and using the sauce, it cannot be stored for a long time, plum is a very picky product in this regard, and of course there are no preservatives ...
It is advisable to store jars in a cool place, in a cellar or in a refrigerator.
The sauce is consumed cold, mainly used with fish, meat, poultry, garnish of potatoes and pasta.
Bon Appetit!

Stunning Georgian cuisine has always been distinguished by delicious, juicy and fragrant dishes. We have already given earlier. Now let's talk about Kharcho soup. His recipe is completely uncomplicated, as is commonly believed about Georgian dishes. All products are familiar to us and are always available in grocery stores. You do not have to spend a large amount and a lot of time on cooking.

Kharcho beef soup is prepared quite quickly, especially if you follow the photo or video recipe. Also on the Internet you can find many variations: with other meat, tomatoes instead of cherry plum, without nuts, and others.

Description

The amazing Kharcho beef soup originally from Georgia stands out among other first courses for its ingredients. Beef meat is unlikely to surprise anyone: it is juicy and reminds us of May holidays. But you don't see nuts in soup every day.

And finally hallmark This dish can rightfully be called cherry plum puree - tkemali. Of course, every Georgian woman who is experienced in cooking makes her Kharcho soup unique thanks to various spices and proportions of ingredients.

Our hostesses adapted the classic recipe for different living conditions, for example, in the area where cherry plum does not grow, they replaced tkemali with tomato sauce. Others use pomegranate juice. And some don't even use nuts. Others completely turn beef Kharcho soup into a dish of pork, lamb or chicken. Onion and rice remain traditional ingredients.

For a piquant taste, Georgians add sprigs of parsley, fresh dill, various spices and, of course, the greens of which have been known for at least 500 years. Majority Georgian dishes not without a mixture of spices hops-suneli.

The cooking method is quite simple. To begin with, the meat is separated from the bones, the films are removed and cut into pieces. It is boiled in water for about two hours, then it is taken out for frying with onions in oil. And the broth is filtered. Then tomatoes or tkemali are added. Then all the ingredients, along with rice and nuts, are placed in the broth and boiled for 5 minutes. At the end, spices and herbs are added. The main thing is to let the soup brew.

Required products

Usually, the recipe for beef Kharcho soup involves the purchase of the following products:

• 300 g of beef;
• 100 g of rice;
• 2-3 pcs. onion;
• 150 g of tkemali sauce (you can replace satsebeli);
• 1 glass of walnuts;
• 2 cloves of garlic;
• 3 bay leaves;
• 3 peas of allspice;
• 1-2 teaspoons of suneli hops;
• 3 art. l. tomato paste;
• 1/2 tsp ground red pepper;
• Half of red capsicum;
• 4 sprigs of cilantro and parsley;
• 2 branches of dill;
• 1-1.5 tsp salt and vegetable oil.

Some also use plums, tomatoes and various meats for cooking.

Cooking technology

There is nothing complicated in the classic recipe for making Kharcho from beef, because all the ingredients are easy to buy and even tkemali sauce can be replaced with satsebeli sauce available to the average buyer. When all the ingredients are collected on the table, we begin to cook the broth. Beef brisket is poured with cold water and boiled for about two hours.

From time to time it is necessary to remove the foam, and in the meantime, chop the onion and chop the walnut. Cut greens and wash rice in cold water. We start cooking the frying: fry the onion, pour the tomato paste and after 5 minutes, suneli hops and chopped garlic, chopped or whole red pepper.

Let it cool down, by that time we take out the cooked beef from the broth and cut it into pieces. It can also be fried. Then, in turn, add rice, beef and allspice to the broth. After 10-15 minutes, pour the frying and walnut. Also add greens, sauce and bay leaf. Salt and after five minutes remove the fire. Before serving, you need to let the dish brew.

Step-by-step instruction

• To begin with, we place our ingredients on the table;
• We spread the meat in a large deep saucepan and pour 3 liters of cold water. For taste, you can also put peeled carrots and onions, Bay leaf and allspice, as for regular broth. Salt and cook for at least two hours until tender;
• Then we take out the meat with vegetables (if you put them) and filter the broth through a sieve into another pan;
• Now finely chop the garlic cloves and turn into gruel;
• We also coarsely rub the carrots and chop the onion;
• Fry these components in a pan along with tomato paste;
• So that the frying does not come out thick, add one ladle of broth;
• Now you can pour the roast to the boiling broth;
• Separate the meat from the bones and cut into pieces along the fiber line;
• Then add washed rice and boiled meat to the broth. Add chopped herbs and spices. Cook soup until rice is cooked. Before serving, let Kharcho brew.

Dishes from Georgian cuisine today can be seen on every table. What housewife doesn't know how to cook? This delicious treat can be prepared from ready-made puff pastry.

Georgian cuisine is unique, even from the seemingly plain meat chicken can be cooked gourmet dish. you can see the recipe on how to cook Georgian chicken Satsivi. A main secret Satsivi is that every housewife has a dish in her own way.

Photo-recipe Beef Kharcho

For clarity, we suggest looking at the detailed process of making soup. We hope that it will help you surprise your loved ones and friends.

Prepare the ingredients

Onion cut into half rings

Lamb pour cold water and cook the broth. Boil the broth over medium heat for 40 minutes.

Put the onion in a frying pan heated with vegetable oil

Add tomato paste fry

Take the meat out of the prepared broth.

Add onion fried with tomato paste to the broth. The broth should simmer over medium heat.

Add rice

Add tkemali and adjika

When the rice is almost done, return the meat to the soup.

Add spices

Salt and pepper

Add sugar to taste

Add diced tomatoes

Add herbs and finely chopped garlic

Bring soup to a boil and remove from heat.

Pour the soup into bowls or bowls. Finely grate walnut

Bon Appetit

Video to help hostesses

For those who want to get acquainted with the traditional Kharcho recipe, we provide a video in which all the cooking steps are described in great detail.

Ilya Lazerson in his program “Lazerson. Favorite ”will demonstrate a video recipe for cooking beef Kharcho.

The master is as always charming and magnificent! I never knew that itkho-suneli grass is needed in kharcho. I will definitely try to get the necessary spices and cook kharcho for my son, for whom this is his favorite soup. By the way, he knows how to cook it himself, but some difficulties have been added ... Ilya, thank you so much for the \"Principles \"! It was a sinful thing for me to think that after the "Celibacy Dinner" I would not see such programs anymore, but it turned out how it turned out ...

Dear Ilya! BIG thanks for the recipe! I have never seen such nuances on the Internet before. I always enjoy watching your shows. I accidentally stumbled upon ucho-suneli in the store right after the broadcast about kharcho! I will definitely prepare!

Wow how delicious. Health and longevity to the principle-giver

I like how you offer your recipes in a simple way.

Very tasty soup it turns out. I watched on television and read how to cook it properly. Thank you, Ilya, it's nice to listen to the explanations. It's delicious.

Thank you maestro! Last week I cooked your cream cheese soup, I liked it very much. Today I want kharcho :)

All cooks preparing broths don't even mention foam. Ilya mentioned, but did not show what and how he does it, and most importantly, why? Many on the net gently believe the type of prena is a folded protein, moreover, they claim that it is even useful. And all as one mention that they remove the foam only so that the broth is not cloudy. My opinion - foam is harmful. In our body, for a short life, for a long one, poisons and surrogates accumulate, radiation in the form of free radicals, etc. When heated and boiled, something naturally precipitates, and there are decay products. If the ancestors of smart people collected foam with a mini or micro slotted spoon, a spoon with holes no more than 3 mm and a long handle. Well, nowhere do they show how to remove the foam. It seems that this is an optional attribute when cooking vegetables, meat and fish.

My mother is Ukrainian, she studied at the Odessa Technical School of the Flour Industry in 1955. I still cringe, but you can’t point out to your mother her methods when she collects foam with a ladle, and even then once or twice. I stand and shoot until she stops appearing. That's what I noticed, but in fact I got distracted and the foam at the bottom, poured cold water and the foam floated again. And I thought that even water gives foam, although what they say, etc.

Obizatelno prigotovlu! Sama iz Tbilis, no vi tak pravilno i podrobno opisali process, chto posle prosmotra xochetsya bejat pokupat rebrishki govyajie i gotovit! Spasibo vam, za vashi video, ya ix obojau i vsegda naxoju chto to novoe i ineteresnoe dlya sebya!

Dear Ilya Isaakovich! You are the best! But! Try my recipe. This is not your classic kharcho, but deliciously unimaginable. The difference in my recipe is that, in addition to everything you indicated, finely chopped smoked prunes are added to the soup, very few finely chopped carrots and, most importantly, we take walnuts, pour them with tkemali and bring them to a state of thin paste without lumps. Then add the sauce to the soup. These ingredients are consistent with the traditions of Georgian cuisine and are in harmony with the classic ones. The soup turns out thick, not the same as the usual kharcho. Nuts dampen the spiciness a little and therefore more is desirable. hot pepper but this is my personal. In fact, the classic is not spicy at all, but fragrant. And the presence of nuts in the soup is still a Georgian tradition and it is not clear why you do not follow it. Regarding foam. We always boil meat at home. When the foam comes out, do not just remove it, but drain the water, wash the meat and then begin to cook in the second water. The broth is transparent as a tear, the main thing is that it does not boil with bubbles. Besides, why didn't you mention Imeretian saffron? Without it, kharcho is not kharcho. With deepest respect and hope for your answer Rumat.

Thank you I will definitely learn

Dear Ilya! BIG thanks for the recipe! I have never seen such nuances on the Internet before. I always enjoy watching your shows. I accidentally stumbled upon ucho-suneli in the store right after the broadcast about kharcho! I will definitely prepare! All cooks preparing broths don't even mention foam. Ilya mentioned, but did not show what and how he does it, and most importantly, why? Many on the net gently believe the type of prena is a folded protein, moreover, they claim that it is even useful. And all as one mention that they remove the foam only so that the broth is not cloudy. My opinion - foam is harmful. In our body, for a short life, for a long one, poisons and surrogates accumulate, radiation in the form of free radicals, etc. When heated and boiled, something naturally precipitates, and there are decay products. If the ancestors of smart people collected foam with a mini or micro slotted spoon, a spoon with holes no more than 3 mm and a long handle. Well, nowhere do they show how to remove the foam. It seems that this is an optional attribute when cooking vegetables, meat and fish. Dear Ilya Isaakovich! You are the best! But! Try my recipe. This is not your classic kharcho, but deliciously unimaginable. The difference in my recipe is that, in addition to everything you indicated, finely chopped smoked prunes, very little finely chopped carrots are added to the soup, and most importantly, we take walnuts, pour them with tkemali and bring them to the state of a thin paste without lumps on a blender. Then add the sauce to the soup. These ingredients are consistent with the traditions of Georgian cuisine and are in harmony with the classic ones. The soup turns out thick, not the same as the usual kharcho. Nuts dampen the spiciness a little and therefore more hot pepper is desirable, but this is my personal. In fact, the classic is not spicy at all, but fragrant. And the presence of nuts in the soup is still a Georgian tradition and it is not clear why you do not follow it. Regarding foam. We always boil meat at home. When the foam comes out, do not just remove it, but drain the water, wash the meat and then begin to cook in the second water. The broth is transparent as a tear, the main thing is that it does not boil with bubbles. Besides, why didn't you mention Imeretian saffron? Without it, kharcho is not kharcho. With deepest respect and hope for your answer, Maxim.

Everything is fine, but there is no fenugreek anywhere in our city, even in the market. At one time it was sold there under the name "Shambhala", but now it is not even there. Do not cook kharcho?

In one good book I read how to cook Kharcho - and now I cook Only this way !! All in principle - The same, but ... in Kharcho, crushed walnuts are necessarily added - about half a glass per 3-liter pan. Nuts are added somewhere 15-20 minutes before the end of cooking! Try it - and you will be surprised!

Ingredients

Instruction

Ingredients: beef pulp - 500 g;onion - 2 pcs.; rice- 1/2 cup; tomatoes - 2 pcs.; tomato paste - 1 tbsp. l.; garlic- 4 cloves; red tkemali sauce - 1 tbsp. l.; vegetable oil - 2 tsp.; adjika- 1 tsp.; hot pepper - taste; parsley - 1/4 bunch; cilantro- 1/2 bunch; celery greens - 1/8 bunch; ucho-suneli or hops-suneli -1 tsp

Beef cut into large cubes and cook the broth. cut tomatoes and on simmer, then wipe. Cut the onion into half rings and fry in oil until golden brown. Add mashed tomatoes, tomato paste to the pan and simmer with onions for 15 minutes, not allowing to burn. Put the tomato-onion mixture, washed rice into the broth with meat and cook for 10 minutes. Then add utskho-suneli, adjika, tkemali, hot pepper, on the chopped greens and crushed garlic. Turn off the heat, cover with a lid and let it brew for 15 minutes.

Step-by-step recipe for kharcho from Ilya Lazerson with photo.

• National cuisine: Georgian cuisine
• Dish type: First meal
• Recipe Difficulty: Complex recipe
• Cooking technology: Cooking

• Preparation time: 13 minutes
• Cooking time: 1 hour
• Servings: 1 portion
• Amount of calories: 61 kilocalories
• Occasion: Lunch

Kharcho is a famous Georgian dish. Today I present an option for preparing kharcho according to the recipe of Ilya Lazerson. He first tried such a kharcho in a cafe in the city of Sochi, in which a Georgian cook cooked. According to Lazerson, it was then that he realized that this was his dish.

In principle, this is a traditional kharcho recipe, but with a few additions. It will also show the process of making tkemali sauce, which is an integral part of kharcho.

From the indicated amount of plums, much more sauce is obtained than is needed to prepare the dish. But this sauce is wonderful and keeps quite a long time in the refrigerator, and you can use it later. The author also points out that he does not cook tkemali especially for this soup, but he always has homemade tkemali in the refrigerator. Accordingly, if you have ready-made tkemali, then you can use it.

Having prepared kharcho according to this recipe, you will also prepare homemade tkemali at the same time. Instead of plum, you can use cherry plum or a hybrid of plum and cherry plum. Kharcho turns out to be very tasty, despite its unsightly color.

Ingredients for 1 serving

• For roasting
• Refined sunflower oil 3 tbsp. l.
• For kharcho
• Fresh green basil 1 sprig
• Water 1500 ml
• Beef pulp 300 g
• Fresh cilantro 4 branches
• Onion 1 pc.
• Walnuts 3 tbsp. l.
• Chili pepper fresh 0.5 pcs.
• Fresh parsley 4 branches
• Round-grain rice 5 tbsp. l.
• Celery leaves fresh 2 sprigs
• A mixture of hops - suneli 0.5 tsp.
• Salt 1 pinch
• Garlic 3 cloves
• For tkemali
• Water 100 ml
• Fresh cilantro 1 bunch
• Cherry tomatoes 2 pcs.
• Plum 500 g
• A mixture of hops - suneli 1 tsp.
• Salt 1 pinch
• Utskho - suneli 0.5 tsp
• Garlic 3 cloves

step by step

1. To prepare kharcho, you need beef pulp, plums, cherry tomatoes, various herbs, Caucasian spices, sunflower oil, garlic, chili peppers, onions, peeled walnuts, rice.
2. Let's start with the preparation of tkemali. To do this, put the plum and tomatoes (I took 1 large cherry tomato) whole in a saucepan, add a little boiling water (100 grams), cover and cook over low heat until the plum becomes soft and can be easily kneaded.
3. While the plum is cooking, we begin to prepare the soup itself. The meat should be cut into pieces, like goulash (about the size of a walnut).
4. Fry the meat in vegetable oil for 7-10 minutes.
5. By now, the water should be boiling in the pot. We send the meat into the water. Remove the foam (it will be a little). We add some salt.
6. Cut the onion into quarters of rings, chop the garlic arbitrarily. Some of the garlic will go into the broth and some into the sauce.
7. By the time the meat is in the pot, the plum will already be soft. We take it off the fire. We wipe everything through a sieve. So we get a pureed mass without skin and seeds. If the sauce is watery, then you can boil a little more and evaporate the excess liquid. I got a great consistency right away. We put the sauce again on low heat, add salt, hops - suneli and uchi - suneli (if there is, you can do something 1). Add more randomly chopped cilantro and garlic. Remove from fire. And with a blender again punch everything together. We add salt to taste.
8. Tkemali sauce is ready. You can transfer it to a bowl or jar.
9. When the meat in the broth is ready, add well-washed rice.
10. Lightly sauté the onion in advance in vegetable oil and add to the broth immediately after the rice. And also add a little chili pepper, chopped randomly.
11. Then add about 5 tablespoons of tkemali. Taste the broth, it should be sour.
12. Grind the walnuts with a blender and put in the soup. By this time the rice will be ready.
13. Chop the greens, salt the garlic and chop it too. We add everything to the broth. And take it off the fire.
14. Kharcho is ready in Sochi style. Let's serve right away.

The legend about tkemali

Red-green meat accompaniment

Georgian cuisine in its structure is in fact extremely heterogeneous and varies greatly from locality to locality and from nationality to nationality - Western cuisine is not similar to Eastern, Svanian - to Mengrelian, Adjarian - to Imereti, Tushino - to Kakhetian and so on.

However, there is something that unites, first of all it refers to sauces. So, the Abkhaz adjika has long and firmly spread not only to the whole of Georgia, but also to the entire North Caucasus; pomegranate narsharabi came from Azerbaijan and firmly established itself here; satsivi and bage are loved everywhere; Satsebeli, depending on the area, can be walnut or tomato. But the most common, and far beyond the Caucasus, perhaps, can be considered tkemali.

What is what?

There is eternal confusion with tkemali, since this sauce comes in red and green. The more famous red tkemali is made from wild-growing blackthorn, and the green one is made from sour unripe plums, such as cherry plum, which is actually called tkemali. Since the rest of the ingredients are exactly the same, both sauces are referred to by one collective term - tkemali.

Red tkemali is often made from dry herbs and spices, and green, which begins to be cooked a couple of months earlier, with a predominance of fresh herbs. The composition itself varies from district to district and from house to house: in fact, only ombalo (field-grass or flea mint), garlic and hot peppers, both fresh and dried, are absolutely mandatory. Almost always crushed coriander seeds are placed in tkemali. Other components - at the personal discretion: fresh cilantro, basil, tarragon, mint - you can separately, or you can do it all together.

The origin of tkemali is lost in the mists of time, and it is impossible to date the emergence of this idea with any certainty. Both the blackthorn and the local plum do not require special care, they grow on their own, while bearing fruit annually and, as a rule, very abundantly. However, if cherry plum-tkemali is allowed to turn a little yellow and ripen, it picks up sweetness and becomes an easy prey for all kinds of worms and birds. Perhaps that is why the recipe was born using precisely unripe, green fruits. Turn is used mainly for cooking tkemali and tklapi - about the latter a little later.

What's with what?

Cooking tkemali is not easy, but very simple. It is better to start with green tkemali, since green cherry plum appears already in April-May and remains available almost until autumn. Blackthorn does not appear in the markets so often. Although the wild-growing blackthorn grows everywhere in the European part of Russia, you just won’t find it right away.

So, let's begin. The plum is washed, transferred to an enameled pan, poured with cold well or spring water, so that it only covers, and put on fire. Some people recommend cutting plums in half, but for example, I don’t see much technological sense in this, and besides, doing this with a green variety is not an easy task.

Despite the fact that the green plum is very hard, it boils very quickly, in 5-7 minutes. And utterly, which is what we need. After that, put a colander in another pan and drain the plum, keeping the decoction without fail! We punch the discarded plum through a colander, in which the skins and bones are safely retained, and the internal contents enter the first pan. Next, slightly dilute the broken plum with a part of the saved broth (only you don’t need to pour a lot), put it on low heat and cut the greens, garlic and pepper. Cut very finely, green adjika, it is not necessary, as the grass may become soft. Tkemali - the sauce is quite liquid, so there is no need to boil it down much. We mix chopped grass, garlic and pepper crushed with salt and boil everything together for a minute. As a matter of fact, everything.

It makes sense to correct the cooled tkemali for salt and spiciness. Sugar is added only if the plum is too sour. Additionally, after 2-3 days, when the taste is finally balanced, you can add more salt and finely ground red hot pepper. Ready tkemali is usually bottled, a spoonful of olive or other vegetable oil is poured into the neck from above, corked and stored in a cool place. In urban conditions, tkemali is safely stored in the refrigerator in ordinary jars with screw or vacuum lids.

What else?

If you remember, we still had plum broth. It can be used to prepare a by-product of the production of tkemali and tklapi - kvantsarahi sauce. The broth should be boiled two or three times, adding salt and hot pepper. Garlic is most often not put, but there are options with garlic. The boiled broth is filtered and bottled, it turns out very pleasant to the taste. sour sauce or a condiment that is very reminiscent of the now forgotten, but once extremely popular French verjus, which was prepared from green grapes, sorrel and various sour berries and fruits.

Well, and the last. From a plum punched through a sieve or a colander, you can not make tkemali, but make tklapi. To do this, the plum mass must be carefully boiled down, stirring constantly, slightly sugared and salted, smeared with a thin layer on a wet board or sheet of paper and put in the sun (for example, on the roof of a barn). The mass seized in the sun turns into thin plates, which are turned over from time to time, and then dried on ropes. Then it is rolled up into a tube or pound and stored indefinitely. Tklapi goes to kharcho, for making winter sauces, or simply fed to children. It is believed that tklapi helps a lot with a sore throat - children are allowed to suck dry pieces until the throat passes. Is it really the benefits of tklapi, or is it just swallowing exercises that work, but it helps! It is clear that in urban conditions you can not climb on the roof, but smear the rubbed plum over baking paper and dry at 70 °C in an oven with convection or fan. Everything is pretty fast. And it is very similar to the old Russian left-handers made of berries.

As for the turn, the process is practically the same, except that, as already mentioned, dry herbs and seeds predominate in the composition - ombalo, coriander, oregano, savory (kondari). In the absence of a turn, with a strong desire, it can be replaced with a small and as sour dark plum as possible, but it is also not common, and you will have to acidify the sauce with something. Alternatively, this can be done with red wine vinegar, a worse option with lemon, but a distinct sourness in the sauce must certainly be. I won’t say what exactly tkemali will turn out, but it will be delicious.

And the last thing. The best tkemali accompanies cold meat dishes without a bright own taste - roasted pig, baked or boiled meat or chicken, boiled fish etc.