Georgian cuisine is very diverse and original. Caucasian highlanders are famous for their hospitality, abundant food and love for all kinds of spices. Most of their national dishes are spicy and very satisfying. Poultry, lamb and beef dishes are very common. One of these dishes is kharcho soup, which has become a frequent guest on the tables of Russians.
There are as many recipes for Georgian kharcho soup as there are chefs. Like Ukrainian borscht, each hostess prepares Georgian soup in her own way. Someone uses the traditional tkemali sauce made from sour plums in the base of the soup, someone chooses pomegranate juice. The classic recipe uses tklapi, cherry plum marshmallow, which gives kharcho a characteristic sour taste. Another 1.5 kg of meat will require 200 g of rice, 150 g of tomato paste, walnuts, onions - at least 300 g, parsley root, garlic, herbs and spices. The soup is very thick, tasty and aromatic.
The naming of kharcho soup is hardly fair. The thick and rich dish may well be attributed to a type of stew, besides, the abundance of meat in the classic version allows it to be served as a second one.
Kharcho is traditionally made from beef. It is poured with cold water and boiled for about two hours. The meat is placed in a separate container. Then rice is cooked in beef broth, and a dressing of fried vegetables and tomato paste is added to it. Vegetables are pre-sautéed in a frying pan, after which salt, basil and tomato paste are added to them. By the way, the pasta can be replaced with fresh tomatoes. The next step is to add crushed nuts, chopped cilantro, chopped basil and garlic, passed through a garlic press to the soup. Sometimes hot pepper is added.
The finishing touch is a piece of tklapi and a pinch of hops-suneli. Instead of tklapi, you can use Tkemali sauce, which is much more common in stores and supermarkets. The soup is almost ready. After that, the kharcho is insisted for several minutes, then the beef, cut into small cubes, is put back into the saucepan with the soup. Georgian spicy soup is served hot so that you can taste the whole bouquet of taste.
Professional chefs call kharcho aintopf, i.e. thick chowder with an open list of ingredients. There are recipes that suggest the presence of nuts in it.
This is a classic kharcho recipe. Now it is prepared from any meat, many different herbs and spices are added. In addition to cilantro, thyme and mint are added, the nuts are ground with garlic and black pepper, and the parsley root is replaced with ordinary carrots. All this gives the classic kharcho a new flavoring accent. This unusual spicy Georgian soup has gathered many fans. It is cooked all over the world. There are kharcho recipes for every taste. During the fast, a special simplified version of the soup is prepared, and convinced vegetarians cook soy meat instead of beef.
Kharcho is considered one of the most ancient dishes, one cannot say that it is cooked, it is cooked.
The only drawback of kharcho is that it takes a very long time to cook. It only takes about two hours to prepare the ingredients, and then almost another hour - on the cooking process itself. Although, this is not even a minus, but one of the features of the national Georgian soup. This dish is solid and cannot be whipped up. When preparing kharcho, the hostess puts a piece of spiritual warmth into it. Perhaps that is why the soup turns out to be so aromatic and tasty that you would certainly want to share it with dear guests.
