When you want something unusual and special, you can diversify your lunch or dinner and surprise your friends with exotic food of the national cuisine of the southern republics, which are famous for their meat dishes. So, chanakhi is popular - a dish of Georgian cuisine, which is meat baked in clay pots with vegetables.
Traditionally, young lamb meat is used for cooking canakhi, but pork or beef can also be used - this is a matter of taste. For the amount of ingredients indicated in the recipe, five pots are enough for you, if you need more, increase the amount of products proportionally.
The beef canahi recipe is very simple. To prepare it, in addition to the pots, you will need:
- 600 grams of young beef;
- 500 grams of potatoes (better than young ones - they bake faster);
- 200 grams of carrots;
- 200 grams of onions;
- 500 grams of eggplants (eggplants can also be used frozen in winter);
- 1 bunch of dill;
- 5 cloves of garlic;
- 3 red fresh tomatoes of medium size;
- adjika of any pungency, maybe just a mixture for adjika (also choose pungency according to your taste);
- salt (to taste).
Young beef meat is cut into even small portions. Vegetables are first cleaned and washed thoroughly. Cut potatoes and carrots into cubes of approximately the same size, chop the garlic with a knife or grater, cut the eggplant into thin slices. The onion is finely chopped.
First of all, onions are sprinkled on the bottom of the pot. Then, on top of the onion, beef is laid out, which is poured with adjika to taste. For each pot, you can make your own version of the spiciness.
Chopped carrots, potatoes, garlic and eggplants are added next. To prevent tomatoes and dill from spoiling when baking, they will need to be added not along with all the vegetables, but a little later. Otherwise, the true taste of the dish will be spoiled.
To begin with, the dish must be salted to taste, pour two-thirds of boiled water, mix everything thoroughly and put the canakhi pots in the oven. It is necessary to simmer for forty to fifty minutes at a temperature of 180 ° C. Then the pots are taken out, chopped tomatoes and dill are added to them, the pots are again placed in the oven and baked for about twenty minutes more.
It is very important to maintain a constant baking temperature. The readiness of a canakhi is determined by a thin crust and ruddy tomatoes and potatoes.
A fragrant, beautiful meat dish canakhi can be served both in pots and by putting the contents on a plate. But in pots, chanakhi are much more aesthetically pleasing and seem tastier.
