Avar khinkal, although consonant in name with the Georgian dish khinkali, is prepared and the product looks different. Avar-style khinkal is a combined dish consisting of boiled meat, boiled fluffy flat cakes, strong rich broth and sauce.
Avar khinkal: how to cook
The classic Avar khinkal is prepared quite simply, although it takes a lot of time to prepare it. The fact is that the preparation of the food itself consists of several processes, namely:
- boiling meat (lamb, beef);
- kneading dough, forming cakes and boiling them in broth;
- cooking sauce (the sauce can be anything you want, depending on the taste preferences of the eaters, but the most suitable are tomato, creamy and cheese types).
If you follow all the processes of cooking this dish, you will end up with a fully formed dish of four components - meat, flat cakes, broth and sauce.
The dish is served hot immediately after cooking, and the meat and flat cakes are laid out on one large flat dish, broth and sauce - in separate cups according to the number of eaters.
How to make dough for Avar khinkal
Kneading the dough for khinkal is an important process in the preparation of a dish, and here it is necessary to strictly follow the recipe for preparing the product. The fact is, if you add more eggs to the dough or forget to put, for example, soda in it, then the cakes will turn out to be "plasticine", and not fluffy and airy.
To avoid this turn of events, the dough should be made with flour, soda, eggs, salt and yogurt. In the absence of the latter product, it can be replaced with another fermented milk drink, for example, kefir, fermented baked milk or low-fat sour cream.
How to cook Avar khinkal on kefir
Avar khinkal on kefir is an easy-to-prepare dish. There is nothing difficult in cooking meat - you put the product in cold water, added salt and spices and cook your own food for a strictly specified time. Some difficulties may arise only with the dough, and even then only for housewives who do not know how to work with this product at all. It is important to remember that in order for the cakes to be fluffy, the dough should be soft and not “hammered”. Below is the recipe for an Avar dish, the amount of ingredients is calculated for four servings.
Ingredients:
- 500 grams of flour;
- ½ teaspoon salt (for dough);
- salt for cooking meat - to taste;
- a teaspoon of baking soda;
- 700-800 grams of beef or lamb;
- a glass of kefir;
- 75 grams of butter;
- five cloves of garlic;
- three large tomatoes;
- one onion head;
- one egg;
- a bunch of cilantro.
Step-by-step cooking recipe:
Rinse the meat in cold water. Cut it into pieces of three by three centimeters, put in a saucepan, cover with cold water and put on high heat. Add one onion to the meat, after peeling it, and cilantro (adding this ingredient significantly affects the taste of the broth). As soon as the water in the pan boils, reduce the heat and continue simmering the product for 40-50 minutes. Place cooked meat in a serving dish and cover to keep it warm.
Pour the flour onto the work surface with a slide, make a hole in the center, pour kefir there (you should not pour more than the specified amount, strictly observe the proportions), add salt, egg and soda. Knead the dough (it should not stick to your hands), then leave for 15 minutes, covering the product with foil. After the specified time, roll out the dough into a cake a little less than one centimeter thick and cut it with a sharp knife into squares or diamonds of 2-3 centimeters each.
Place the tortillas in the boiling broth, one at a time. Boil them after re-boiling the contents of the pan for about five minutes. Remove the finished product from the broth and pierce each cake with a wooden skewer (if this is not done, the dough will settle).
Pour tomatoes over with boiling water or hold them for ten seconds in water at 80-90 degrees, remove the skin from them, chop the vegetables finely. Peel and chop the garlic. Place these ingredients in a thick-bottomed skillet and heat. After two to three minutes, add butter and salt to the products, simmer for 15 minutes under a closed lid. Add sugar to the sauce, if desired.
Serve hot immediately after cooking. Put the tortillas and meat in a wide dish. Pour the broth into cups in portions.
How to cook Avar khinkal with yeast
If kefir, yogurt or fermented baked milk is not available, then you can prepare khinkal based on milk, but using yeast. The recipe is not traditional for Caucasian cuisine, but it is highly demanded by housewives due to its simplicity of preparation. The dish turns out to be tasty and aromatic, and its calorie content does not exceed 200 kcal per 100 grams of product.
Ingredients:
- one kilogram of beef;
- one kilogram of flour;
- ½ tablespoon dry yeast;
- two tablespoons of vegetable oil;
- two glasses of milk;
- half a kilogram of potatoes;
- five cloves of garlic;
- ½ cup sour cream;
- two tablespoons of mayonnaise;
- salt and pepper to taste.
Step-by-step cooking recipe:
Boil the meat in salted water until cooked through (cooking time - two hours). 30-40 minutes before the end of cooking, put potatoes in the broth (naturally, peeled).
Sift flour into a bowl, add yeast and salt to it, mix, then pour warm milk and butter into the mixture. Knead to a homogeneous dough, cover it and leave warm for an hour.
While the dough is rising, prepare the sauce. Whip sour cream, mix it with mayonnaise (you can use "light", the fat content of which does not exceed 30%) and grated garlic, salt the mass. A more interesting flavor of the sauce can be obtained by adding your favorite aromatic herbs to it.
Sprinkle the working surface with flour, put the dough on it and roll it into a layer 3-5 mm thick. Cut the workpiece into 3-4 cm squares or rhombuses.
Strain the broth in which the meat and potatoes were cooked through cheesecloth, then put it on fire and bring to a boil. Boil the dough pieces in it (cooking time - 5-6 minutes). Remove the fluffy tortillas from the broth, pierce each with a fork or wooden skewer so that the food does not settle.
Place potatoes, meat (after cutting into pieces) and tortillas on a large flat dish. Serve hot khinkal with sour cream and garlic sauce.
The trick: you can cook khinkal according to this recipe in a slow cooker, while cooking potatoes and meat, as well as the tortillas themselves (steamed). As you might guess, the use of this kitchen appliance saves a lot of time in preparing this particular dish.
All you need is to knead the yeast dough, make small cakes from the product, and in the process of cooking meat and potatoes in a multicooker bowl, place a container with cakes on top and steam them for no more than five minutes. The disadvantage of the recipe is that the cakes need to be cooked in several approaches, because all the blanks cannot be placed in a steam container.
How long does it take to cook Avar khinkal
The cooking time for khinkal depends on the size and thickness of the pieces, but on average, the heat treatment lasts about five minutes. In order for the cakes to turn out fluffy, and during cooking they do not stick together into one large lump, they need to be cooked as follows: put the broth on the fire and wait until it boils, only then put the dough pieces into it one at a time. The countdown of the cooking time should be started from the moment the broth re-boils.
Before removing the cakes from the broth, you should first check their readiness. To do this, you need to get one khinkal with a slotted spoon and break it - there should not be any raw dough inside.
