A classic recipe for beef "Kharcho soup" with a photo. Kharcho - classic recipes for the famous Georgian soup

Delicious and special hearty soup Kharcho is one of the main national dishes of Georgia. It is spicy, spicy aromatic, with a delicate beef taste. It is prepared everywhere, the recipe is your own. And for every housewife, even an absolutely correctly prepared dish “differs like a candy from a cutlet.” And they willingly offer their recipe to everyone. The basic principle of cooking is the same everywhere, the difference will be only in the nuances.

What else is interesting - kharcho is very thick soup. And the principle of "half the volume is liquid" does not apply here.

Meat

Of course, it can be from any kind of meat, even vegetarian or fish. But the recipe for real kharcho recognizes only beef. After all, if you literally translate the name from Georgian, you get “beef soup”.

It is necessary to take fatty beef with a bone. Best suited brisket, ribs. Georgians do not take a leg and peritoneum for it - they are used for other dishes.

Required Components

The kharcho recipe consists of many components. In the highlands, Georgians even use a special Svan salt, which is also prepared from half a dozen herbs, and which has its own recipe, and each village has its own. That's why ready meal it turns out a little different in taste.

Fatty beef meat on the bones - 500 g.

Water - 1.5-2 liters.

Garlic - 1 head.

Onion - 2 heads.

Tomato puree - 50 ml.

Walnuts - half a glass.

Rice is a glass.

Bay leaf - 2 pcs.

Tkemali sauce - 50 ml or tklapi (plum lavash) - 150 g.

Red ground pepper- 1 teaspoon.

Salt - 1 teaspoon.

Seasoning hops-suneli "- 5 g.

Peppercorns - 5 g.

Dill, parsley, basil, cilantro - to taste.

Pods of hot red and green pepper - 2 pcs.

This recipe is for 4 servings.

The recipe for real kharcho is unthinkable without plums, which grow only in the highlands of the Caucasus. This is tklapi puree made from tkemali plums (cherry plum). Of course, if there is no such variety, it can be replaced with others, but it will not be so tasty.
Fresh plums will successfully replace canned puree and tkemali sauce.
You can add a small amount fresh berries dogwood pitted or cherry plum. If you have dried plum paste, which is called tklapi, then a piece of it, about the size of a palm, should be soaked in warm broth. Then it is added to the almost ready soup.
In our areas, housewives often ignore tkemali, replacing it with big amount tomato paste. But the real taste of kharcho cannot be achieved in this way.
Another very important ingredient is walnuts. By no means should they be ignored. Georgians are very fond of adding them to their dishes, they use them in many recipes. Especially in meat. So in a properly prepared kharcho they must certainly be.

Although the soup is very fatty, it is easily digestible due to a large number garlic and onions, which help break down difficult-to-digest proteins into simpler components. Strong sweet and sour taste also makes it easier to digest. It is very high in calories, and they can perfectly replenish energy reserves in the cold season. And rice not only absorbs excess fats, but also gently softens rich taste. Such a soup will be indispensable for athletes before responsible starts, but it cannot be called dietary. It is not suitable for children's or gerontological nutrition.

How to cook

Properly cooking kharcho is not just a long time. Cooks perform sacred duties over him. But in the end, he will repay you for your patience with his unsurpassed taste - sharp, with enveloping acid and great aroma. On average, it will take 2-2.5 hours to cook.

Pour the meat cold water so that she covers it by about two phalanxes of the little finger. Bring to a boil until foam appears. Drain this water, rinse the meat and again fill it with cold water. boiled water. Put on fire, bring to a boil and immediately reduce the gas to a minimum. It must be cooked without cutting, in a whole piece.
Put the onion and carrot into the broth. Salt, add Bay leaf.
Young meat should be cooked for about an hour, old - at least two. It is recommended to strain the finished broth so that small bones do not accidentally get into the soup. Remove the cooked meat from the broth and set aside for a while.
Finely chop the onion, crush the garlic and add to the soup.
Finely chop all the greens and also put in a saucepan with broth.
Add washed rice.
When the rice is half cooked, add the tkemali and crushed garlic.
At the very end, add chopped greens, suneli hops, red pepper, walnuts. Nuts must first be ground in a mortar until traces of oil appear.
Decorate the finished dish with sprigs of greens and pods of red and green peppers.

Before serving, the meat must be cut into pieces and put on each plate. The recipe of the dish will not suffer if you add ground black pepper.

Kharcho soup is the highlight of a number of first hot dishes even today, and not every housewife includes it in her family's diet. The recipe for this exotically attractive rich and spicy fragrant soup came from Georgia, but its preparation did not become a big secret. Enough to get to know the right the best recipes soup kharcho and try them in your personal culinary practice - and you can invite friends to family dinner- for kharcho soup!

As a rule, kharcho soup is boiled with beef, which is directly indicated by the translation of its name into Russian from Georgian: “beef soup”. According to all the strict rules of the "genre", it needs a special dressing - weave (dried plum puree), which is difficult to find at any time, and without it classic soup kharcho will not work. Approximately enough, you can use tkemali sauce, but that's just it is not on all the shelves of our stores. The last hope for pomegranate juice, although the loss of a special aroma is not ruled out.

In the recipe traditional soup kharcho must be rice, onion, garlic, suneli hops and spices. Some of our chefs also include tomatoes, but this is not for everyone. In Georgia hot soup kharcho served to the table is sprinkled with chopped cilantro (coriander).

Well, if in Georgia itself there are no strict rules for cooking this spicy soup kharcho, then we are given the opportunity to choose the kharcho soup recipe that is closer to your “stomach”.

What ingredients are needed to make kharcho soup?

You need to start with meat - optimally: fatty on the bone, possibly chicken, but not lamb, as many are mistaken. The beef should be separated from the bone, cleaned from the film and cut across the fibers into small, approximately equal pieces.

Rice is assumed to be of any shape, but rice chaff and parboiled rice grains are excluded.

1. Classic kharcho soup recipe

If you trust our recipe and, following it correctly, prepare this dish, then you should get an almost real Georgian kharcho soup. Its ingredient list includes beef, rice, onions, prunes and Georgian spices, capable of giving kharcho soup that special flavor that brought him such wide popularity.

Ingredients:

beef brisket - 300 grams;
rice - 100 grams;
onion - 2 onions;
fresh garlic - 3-4 cloves;
prunes - 3 pieces;
hot chili - 1 pod;
hops-suneli and tklali - 1 tablespoon each;
tomato puree - 50 grams;
vegetable oil - 1 tablespoon;
salt, fresh herbs- by preference;
drinking water - 7 glasses.

Cooking classic kharcho So:

Cut the beef brisket into small approximately equal pieces and put in a suitable saucepan, pour two glasses of water into it so that the meat is covered. cook on strong fire within 5 minutes.
fresh peeled onion, fresh garlic and finely chop the cilantro, mix with suneli hops, tomato paste, vegetable oil and simmer for two minutes with constant stirring over high heat in a separate bowl.
Add tkemali, prunes, salt, ground pepper and rice to the finished mixture - put all this into hot meat, pour in the remaining 5 glasses of water and continue to cook over high heat for no more than 10 minutes.
Soup kharcho is ready, removed from the fire - pour into deep portioned plates, sprinkle finely chopped dill and parsley on top - and it's nice to eat!

2. Kharcho soup recipe with tomatoes

The recipe for this version of kharcho soup does not contain hard-to-find Georgian sauce tkemali, but at the end you will get very tasty soup due to the aroma and sharpness that the use of tomatoes and well-chosen seasonings gives.

Ingredients:

beef on the bone - 500 grams;
fresh onion - 3 medium onions;
rice cereal - 4 tablespoons;
ripe fresh tomatoes - 4 pieces;
fresh garlic - 1 clove;
salt and pepper - to taste;
spices: basil, suneli hops, bay leaf - by preference.

Cooking kharcho with tomatoes:

In a small saucepan, cook the whole piece of beef on the bone for an hour and a half under a lid over moderate heat. Salt the broth to taste after an hour of cooking, after which the meat is removed and the broth is strained.
Fry until soft in a pan vegetable oil finely chopped onion, put the meat cut into equal pieces into it and continue frying for another 5 minutes. After lowering the heat under the pan, pour a few tablespoons of broth into it, mix everything and continue simmering for 15 minutes.
While the meat is stewing, prepare the tomatoes: wash, cut the skin crosswise, put in a suitable bowl and pour boiling water over it, drain the water after a few minutes, cool the tomatoes, remove the skin, randomly chop and put into the pan with meat and onions. Mix everything and continue to simmer for another 10 minutes.
Put the pot with the broth on the fire until it boils, after which put the meat stew with vegetables into it. After the next boil, start the rice, reduce the heat. After 5 minutes of boiling, add spices to the kharcho soup.
Finely chopped greens and crushed garlic put in the soup at the end of cooking. Kharcho soup is ready. Remove the pan from the heat and let it brew for a while under the lid. You can serve with.

3. Homemade chicken kharcho soup recipe

This kharcho soup recipe is for those who prefer broths. In addition, in Georgia, this version of kharcho soup is widely acceptable. It is important to prepare it best traditions and with love.

Ingredients:

chicken - 700-800 grams;
wheat flour - 40 grams;
peeled walnuts - 200 grams;
tomatoes - 3 fresh ripe tomatoes;
onion - 2 onions;
fresh garlic - 3 teeth;
hops-suneli - 1 teaspoon;
crushed coriander seeds - 1 teaspoon;
coriander greens - a few branches;
spices: capsicum, allspice, black ground, cloves, Imeretian saffron, bay leaf and salt - to taste.

Cooking chicken kharcho soup like this:

Boil chopped chicken meat until half cooked in broth - 2.5 liters. Fat during cooking can be removed in a separate bowl.
Put finely chopped onion into a deep frying pan with the removed chicken fat and simmer it until tender. Remove chicken pieces from the broth, transfer them to a pan with stewed onions and continue to simmer under the lid with stirring for 10-15 minutes. Pour flour while stirring and continue simmering for five minutes under the lid.
Transfer the contents of the pan to a saucepan with broth, after boiling, cook for up to 10 minutes. Add the grated tomatoes and plum puree to the boiling kharcho soup and cook with them for another 5 minutes, then add the walnuts crushed with garlic and all the spices that you have chosen from the list of ingredients, including salt to taste. The last period of cooking kharcho soup is 10 minutes. The soup is infused under the lid and is ready to be served.

When preparing kharcho soup, it is very important not to “overcook” with spices and keep the balance of spices and spices that will create the overall impeccable taste of this soup. interesting dish. Be especially careful with hot spices - pepper of any kind, which can drown out the rest of the bouquet of aromas of kharcho soup.

Coriander (cilantro) also requires special approach because of the pronounced aromatic data. If this is your first time including it in a dish. it’s better to leave the chopped cilantro on a separate plate and everyone can put this sharp spice on their plate at their own “fear and risk”. In the process of creating kharcho soup, it is important to follow the technology of the recipe and the list of ingredients, but this does not deprive you of copyright for personal creativity - experiments are permissible within reasonable risk. The most important thing is to cook with love!

Let me start with the polemic. I don't know with whom light hand on the Internet, a myth has been established about the most correct and real kharcho soup as cooked without fail with the participation of tklapi. This is wrong! Soup kharcho on tklapi - wonderful recipe, but there are many kharcho traditions in Georgia, and soup with plum pita bread is not the only and not even the most common one.

About losses and compensation

However, there are some grounds for myth-making. Much has been simplified and adapted to mass tastes. So, in the original kharcho, a classic recipe, it is prepared from beef brisket, while any soup is allowed meat broth. The next lost part is the sour base of kharcho, reduced exclusively to tomato paste, as well as garlic-nut dressing.

There were no acquisitions. Potatoes are satisfying, cheap, familiar. Meanwhile, there are no potatoes in the Georgian original. And carrots, by the way, too ... From vegetables, they put onions in kharcho (they sauté or boil them whole, and then throw them away), garlic, a lot of greens and tomatoes (not always).

Soul kharcho - sour base, spices

Ask any elderly hostess or her daughter, who diligently absorbed mom's recipes, preparing to pave the way to the heart of a man, which distinguishes kharcho from other soups, and they will answer you without hesitation - "a good spoonful of tomato paste." Oh, how is kharcho without pasta?

But don't fall for the confident tone of a Soviet hostess when it comes to Georgian cuisine. Christopher Columbus was not yet born, who opened the way to American nightshade, when barefoot Georgian girls gathered on the slopes of the mountains wild plums to prepare the basis for spicy soup.

Tklapi- this is what kharcho could not be imagined without before the appearance of tomatoes on Georgian soil. Without a piece of sun-dried cake made from the pulp of cherry plum, which was the sour base of the classic kharcho.

Can replace tklapi fresh cherry plum broth or tkemali sauce. However, if you get to Georgia and try kharcho with tomatoes in a restaurant, I don’t advise you to be indignant that you were fed an insufficiently authentic dish. Tomatoes, including tomato juice And tomato paste, in classic recipes, kharcho is widely used today.

Herbs and spices- the second most important component of the soup. And yet, not even the second, but one of the first. Just like plum sourness, kharcho should have a spicy aroma, which is created by a complex combination of garlic, nuts, spices and herbs. Just do not repeat the classic delusion of people familiar with Georgian cuisine by hearsay. Its peculiarity is spice, not sharpness, aroma - but not hotness.

In kharcho put cilantro, parsley, capsicum red pepper, basil and seasoning utskho-suneli (fenugreek). The popular mix of hops-suneli gives not quite the exact taste, but in the absence of ucho-suneli it will fit.

Garlic-nut dressing(the same is used in) maybe, or maybe only garlic, but nuts are very, very suitable for soup, you must definitely try it with nuts.

Kharcho soup, classic beef recipe

INGREDIENTS:

beef brisket - half a kilogram
rice - 1/3 cup
walnuts - 2/3 cup
onions - 2 large onions
parsley root - 2 pcs
garlic - 3-4 large cloves
cilantro and basil - a large bunch
sour base - lavash tklapi with a palm or its substitute to taste. You can focus on 4 tablespoons of tkemali sauce or a glass of grated tomatoes
hops or ucho-suneli - to taste
black pepper (freshly ground) - to taste
bay leaf, salt - to taste
vegetable oil
water - to yield three liters of ready-made soup

How to cook kharcho in Georgian

1. Chop the meat into medium pieces at the rate that each eater gets four things on a plate, dry it, put it in cold water bring the broth to a boil.
1. Lower the heat and carefully skim off the foam until it stops forming. After that, you can leave the broth to boil on its own over low heat for about two hours (depending on how quickly the meat is cooked). The broth should be rich and the meat soft, as the next steps will be short.
1. While the broth is cooking, saute vegetables in vegetable oil - finely chopped onion and parsley root.
1. Rinse the rice well.
1. IN ready broth put rice, and when it boils a little - vegetables, bay leaf, crushed coriander seeds, pepper, salt, a palm-sized piece of tklapi or its substitute (tkemali, cherry plum, pomegranate juice, grated tomatoes), suneli.
1. Let the soup simmer quietly for another 10-15 minutes, and send the crushed garlic (plus nuts, if you make with them) and greens (finely chopped cilantro and basil) into the already prepared one. And finally adjust the kharcho for salt-pepper-spices.
1. Leave the soup under the lid and serve hot.

How to cook tklapi

Tklapi is made from cherry plum, this is a kind of sour marshmallow from it. Cherry plum is poured with water, boiled for 15 minutes, and then the bones are removed and ground on a sieve to form a thick mass. The mass must be spread out on a flat wooden surface, slightly pressed, stretched, rolled out with a rolling pin into a sheet and dried in the sun. You can store it by rolling it with a handkerchief or a roll.

If there is no tklapi ...

The closest substitute for lavash tklapi is a decoction of cherry plum. Take it for this amount of soup two handfuls, remove the bones and boil well in a small amount of water. Pound it to make a thick gruel, or even better wipe it through a colander - this way the hard peel does not get into the soup.

But, again, fresh cherry plum happens in summer or early autumn, and hot spicy soup is most wanted in winter. In this case, stock up on a couple of grenades to get half a glass pomegranate juice. Another option is to buy it at any major supermarket. And finally fresh tomatoes, peeled and grated.

And finally, fresh tomatoes, peeled and grated.

Beef kharcho - a classic recipe with tomatoes

Megrelian kharcho soup

In western Georgia, there is the area of Samegrelo, which is inhabited by Mingrelians. This peculiar "tribe" has created its own language (Georgians from other parts of the country do not understand Megrelian) and their own unique traditions in literally every area of life, including culinary. Megrelians have a particularly spicy cuisine, brought to perfection, honed to perfection, verified to the grain of spice. There are many Megrelian varieties of kharcho soup, here is one of them - with adjika - for the collection. This soup is both spicy and spicy.

INGREDIENTS FOR MEGRELIAN HARCHHO:

beef or calf meat - 1 kg
walnuts (crushed) - half a glass;
onions - 3 onions;
adjika megrelian
cilantro - 2 bunches
Imeretian saffron - 1 tbsp. l.
ucho-suneli - to taste
ground coriander - a little
white dry wine– 100 g
butter - 2 tbsp. l.
ground black pepper
handful of rice (optional)
tomatoes - 2-3 pcs. (optional)

As you collect the ingredients for the soup, please note that Imeretian saffron is a powder from dried flowers of garden marigolds (the so-called "yellow flower"), and not ordinary saffron.

Megrelian adjika - special, very sharp look sauce, the recipe of which I will give below.

Megrelian kharcho with adjika

Wash fatty meat, dry, cut into cubes one and a half to two centimeters thick and fry in butter or vegetable (refined) oil. Put in a saucepan, add finely chopped onion to it, pour wine with a little water and leave to simmer for half an hour over low heat. If fatty meat no, put an extra piece in the pan butter.

Grind the peeled nuts with a meat grinder, add them to the pan with stew, and with them - herbs and spices. Stir.

If you have a mortar and enough culinary passion, do not use a meat grinder or blender to grind nuts. In the mortar they give fragrant oil which significantly improves the taste of the soup. Crush the nuts with herbs and spices along with coarse salt.

If using rice, lightly crush it as well.

Try, if necessary, add salt, pepper, put adjika and tomatoes scrolled in a meat grinder (without peel), rice.

Simmer the soup for another 15-20 minutes.

Megrelian adjika recipe

dry pods hot pepper- 500 g (adjika is prepared for the future, if you need only one soup, you can proportionally reduce the mass of the ingredients).
garlic - 200 g
ground coriander seeds - 100 g
ucho-suneli - 50 g
coarse table salt

Remove seeds and tails from pepper pods, grind the pods in a meat grinder. Grind the garlic, mix with pepper, add seasonings and salt. They put a lot of salt in this adjika - “how much it takes”. Add gradually until it ceases to dissolve in the mass.

Soup kharcho a la international catering

Despite the slight irony caused by attempts to use the recipe for a national dish that is difficult to prepare for the menu of public canteens, it must be admitted that the simplified kharcho soup also has interesting taste and is good option everyday hot.
Therefore, for the sake of completeness, we will not limit ourselves to the original Georgian recipes kharcho, and here is an evolved recipe that has taken root in the expanses of the post-Soviet space.

There are a lot of recipes for such a soup with slight variations in composition and technology. We will present a typical one.

INGREDIENTS:

beef, lamb or any other meat on the bone - 300-400 g
potatoes - 2 medium potatoes
rice - 2 tbsp
onion - 1 pc.
garlic - 2 cloves
tomato paste - 2 tbsp.
salt and red pepper (ground)

In a liter of water over low heat, cook the usual broth. We take out the meat, remove it from the bones and return it to the pan.

Cook the diced potatoes in the broth until half cooked, add the washed rice and cook for 10 minutes.

In the meantime, put the diced onion into a preheated pan and pour over the top fatty layer of the broth. We boil it in this way for several minutes, transfer it to the soup, and put the tomato paste or peeled tomato cubes into the pan and also boil with the broth.

Add tomato dressing to the soup, salt, pepper, put crushed garlic.
The classic "Soviet" kharcho soup is ready!

How to apply

TO Georgian kharcho it is best to serve lavash. Not because this is a stereotype, but because they really fit together and literally become related to each other.

If the kharcho soup is thick (and the correct authentic kharcho is thick), and if it is hot and spicy (for example, Megrelian), in Georgia it is served with fresh corn porridge gomi (porridge like hominy or.

In bowls, soup can be additionally decorated with herbs and garlic served with it.

If you are expecting guests, a bottle of good wine will be useful.

Here he is, kharcho - a guest who came from the Caucasus mountains to please the children of the steppes and woodlands with the hot taste of a broad Georgian soul!

Kharcho is a stunningly delicious thick soup that belongs to Georgian cuisine. The technology of its preparation is relatively simple. This dressing soup, characterized by both acute and spicy taste. The main ingredients of the dish are meat, vegetables, herbs and spices. The cook determines the composition of other components independently.

Kharcho is translated from Georgian as beef soup. This is the meat prescribed. original recipe. It is better to take veal or young beef. They are softer.

As an alternative, housewives take fresh lamb or poultry meat (chicken or duck), as well as fish.

To get fat, ribs or a good bone are taken for the broth.

Groats

Soup can be cooked without adding cereals. However classic version kharcho is cooked with rice. It is washed in running water or rinsed in a saucepan, changing the water several times until after the next change it remains transparent. So starch is removed from the surface of the grains, which will make the broth slimy and cloudy. Before laying in the soup, rice is kept in cool water for at least 2 hours.

Professional chefs prefer to work with long-grain polished and parboiled rice. It won't fall apart and will keep its shape. Sometimes, instead of rice, millet or barley is put in kharcho.

Vegetables

In kharcho, there is always fried on sunflower oil before golden brown onion. The peeled onion is cut into half rings. Carrots, cut into strips or passed through a coarse grater, are added to it in a couple.

For beauty and light aroma, you can put a tomato. It is doused with boiling water so that the skin is easier to move away from the pulp. The tomato is cut into cubes and laid together with tomato paste.

Adds spice to the dish bell pepper. It is cleaned and cut into thin strips. For sharpness lay hot pepper.

For satiety, potatoes are used, cut into cubes. It is more often used in the Russian version of the dish.

Nut butter

Add to soup nut butter. Peeled walnut kernels are lightly fried in a pan. Readiness is indicated by a characteristic aroma

Roasted nuts are ground and ground into a paste. Then garlic, passed through a press, is mixed into it.

To give kharcho a more delicate taste, butter is rubbed into the pasta.

Greenery

These ingredients are certainly present in kharcho. The classic kharcho is cilantro, but not everyone likes its specific taste. The Russian version is parsley and dill. Or a mixture of these herbs.

For freshness, mint dressing is allowed, you only need a few leaves.

Spices

Spices for kharcho, like the soul of a person, can be different, but must be mandatory. Suneli hops are a must in this soup. A mixture of spices and a little hot spices gives that characteristic aroma of kharcho. It contains Imeretian saffron, red pepper, mint, bay leaf and other fragrant spices.

In addition to suneli hops, black peppercorns and bay leaf are added to kharcho.

When choosing spices and sauces, in order to avoid satiety, one should carefully study their composition: suneli hops and adjika can be used as analogues, and hot pepper may already be superfluous.

Sauce

In the original, dogwood and tkemali are added. The national alternative is tklapi, thin leaves of dried pulp of dogwood and cherry plum.

In the Russian version, tomato paste is used. As an alternative - take adjika.

Before serving, it is allowed to add pomegranate juice to the soup, wine vinegar or lemon wedges. They will give a slight sourness.

Proportions

For 12 servings, the ingredients are taken in the following proportions:

meat - 1 kg;

water - 4 l;

carrots - 2 pcs.;

onion - 2 pcs.;

sunflower oil - 2 tbsp. l.;

butter - 30 g;

walnuts - 100-200 g;

garlic - 1 head;

tomato paste - 5 tbsp. l.;

greens - 2 bunches;

cereals - 100 g;

spices and salt.

The time required to cook kharcho is 2 hours.

Recipe

The soup is prepared as follows:

The meat is cut (cleaned and cut into pieces) and lowered into the pan. The dishes are placed on a strong fire.
When the broth is covered with foam, it must be removed, and then reduce the heat and keep it until done.
Onions and carrots are peeled, cut and stewed in a pan greased with oil.
When the onion becomes golden and the carrots soften, the frying is sent to the pan.
Rice is added 30 minutes before the broth is ready.
Walnut paste is prepared from nuts, butter and garlic.
Cut greens.
15 minutes after rice, they begin to gradually (every 2-3 minutes) add nut paste, herbs, sauce and spices.
Upon reaching the rice fully prepared the fire is turned off.

10. Adding everything necessary ingredients After keeping the dish for half an hour after turning off the fire, kharcho can be served with sour cream and lavash.

In contact with

Kharcho is perhaps the most famous National dish Georgia. Soup kharcho in Georgian business card any Georgian restaurant. There are a lot of kharcho soup recipes. All of them are united by one thing - it is cooked only on beef broth. An obligatory ingredient of any Georgian kharcho is rice, walnuts and tklapi - thickened plum pulp (plum marshmallow).

In Georgian, kharcho soup sounds “dzrokhizs horstsi kharshot”, which can be translated as “beef meat in broth”. Few people know, but the dish in its original form is beef in a sauce made from walnuts. There are always arguments about the recipe for soup: how to cook it, what kind of meat, how to cook the real one, what kind of Georgian rice should be, etc.

There are no reliable sources indicating the period of history when the Georgian cuisine was replenished with a new dish. As well as there is no data on the classic Georgian kharcho soup recipe. Most likely, the first recipes appeared at about the same time when the Caucasian peoples mastered the breeding of livestock and agricultural crops. In the 2-3 century AD. rice appeared in the Caucasus. wild plums grew on the territory of modern Georgia in ancient times.

Due to all the features of the development of animal husbandry and agriculture in Transcaucasia, it is generally accepted that real kharcho made only from beef, rice and plum marshmallow. In the summer months, when cooking it, tklapi can be replaced with fresh plums, cherry plums or tkemali sauce.

The soup combines a pleasant, delicate and delicate taste of beef broth with an almost imperceptible taste of rice, sourness of tkemali, aromas of fresh herbs and spicy walnuts. The special taste and smell of hot kharcho soup causes a burning appetite and pushes all other things into the background.

soup ingredients

Ingredients;
400 grams of beef on the bone;
4 tablespoons of rice;
3 tablespoons of tkemali (or a piece of tklapi ¼ sheet A4);
½ cup walnuts;
1 head of garlic;
1 bunch of parsley;
1 bunch of cilantro;
1 teaspoon hops-suneli.

How to choose products for kharcho soup

Start cooking kharcho soup with a choice of products. Beef for broth for real kharcho should be taken only the freshest and highest quality. Very fatty beef, as is usually written in recipes, is not worth taking, this is not entirely healthy and excess fat will not allow the flavor to fully open up.

The broth for the cook can be compared to the canvas for the artist. The perfect portrait will look ugly if the canvas is poorly primed. The task of the broth is to convey to the guest the range of emotions that the chef has invested in his culinary masterpiece.

For rich soup kharcho is better to choose beef on the bone. The meat should be dense and elastic, and not have foreign odors. In natural light, beef is light red in color without a grayish or greenish tinge. The broth made from the meat of an old animal is more aromatic, but the meat itself is tougher.

Broth Recipe

There are two completely opposite views on the same product - the first broth for kharcho. All culinary specialists are divided into two camps: those who believe that during the first cooking the meat releases all the most harmful substances into the water, and those who believe that the first one is richer in taste and contains the most useful amino acids and trace elements. Each camper chooses for himself. Only one recipe can be considered universal, if you are not 100% sure of the quality of beef, then it is better to drain the first one.

rice recipe

Any rice can be used, but round-grain rice is best suited for kharcho. The grains of such rice, round and thick, boil well. Due to the peculiarities of processing, the grains undergo mechanical grinding, after which fine rice dust remains on the grains. The layer of dust from the grains must be washed off by rinsing the rice well in water 5-6 times or soaking it for 20 minutes.

Now it is almost impossible to taste Georgian kharcho soup cooked with real tklapi. An excellent substitute for tklapi is tkemali sauce. It is easy to prepare at home, but you can also use ready-made. Vinegar or lemon acid- the simplest, but not the most delicious and healthy, products that can add sourness, which is obligatory for Georgian kharcho soup.

greens recipe

Greens for everyone Georgian dishes required. When choosing parsley, cilantro, dill, note that the leaves and stems should be bright green and resilient. In fresh greens, the roots are white and without severe damage. The taste and smell of fresh parsley or cilantro is strong and fragrant. To strengthen it, before adding to the kharcho, the greens should be washed in cold water.

And if it is served on the table on a separate plate with vegetables, then it is better to rinse in warm and slightly acidified water. But not hot, because high temperatures most of beneficial vitamins collapses: kharcho will be tasty, but not healthy. It is better to store bunches of greens in a glass of water in the refrigerator or frozen in the freezer.

There are two requirements for garlic for Georgian kharcho soup. Garlic should be firm and dry. Smaller heads have a more subtle flavor and delicate taste. In ripe garlic, the cloves are well palpable. Sprouted heads should not be taken, they have practically no useful substances left.

Kharcho soup recipe, classic

Rinse the beef well under cold water. Put the meat in a large saucepan and pour 2 liters of water. It's better to cook beef alone large piece. Finely chopped meat loses a lot during cooking useful material and becomes dry. If the broth boils strongly, then its taste improves, but the quality of the meat drops very much, and vice versa, barely boiling, it allows you to save the taste of the meat. Cook beef according to the recipe on low heat for about 2 hours, removing the foam. If there are difficulties with the foam and the broth is cloudy, then it is better to strain it.

When the meat is cooked, it is taken out of the broth, separated from the bone and cut into large pieces. portioned pieces. Cooked meat separates well from the bone while hot. Put the cut pieces back into the boiling broth. A little more and kharcho is ready.

Then add washed rice, a few sprigs of cilantro and parsley. Experienced chefs It is recommended that at the first laying of greenery, tie it into small bundles and remove it before serving. Bouillon cook for about 10-15 minutes. The rice should be slightly soft but not overcooked. Long-grain rice boils at the ends during prolonged heat treatment, which immediately evokes an association with a dish from a factory canteen, so its use for cooking kharcho is not desirable.

At the end of cooking, add crushed fried Walnut. To roast nuts, you can use both a frying pan and a microwave, only in both cases the nuts must be mixed well so that they do not burn. The degree of roasting is easy to determine by smell. Crushing a walnut is best in a mortar or wooden crusher in a wide cup, avoiding nutshell and partitions.

Then add crushed garlic, finely chopped parsley and cilantro (2/3 of the bunch), salt, tklapi or tkemali to the slowly boiling broth. In kharcho soup, sourness should be felt. For cutting greens, you can use scissors - very quickly and conveniently. The classic kharcho soup recipe does not include carrots, onions and tomatoes.

And last, according to the recipe, spices are put in kharcho soup. Suneli hops as a high-tech product, everyone knows the name, but no one knows exactly how it is made. So it's better to take ready-made version. The main ingredients of suneli hops are dill, basil, coriander, hot red pepper, marjoram, saffron.

Cover the finished kharcho soup with a lid and let it brew for at least 15 minutes. Before serving kharcho, finely chop the remaining 1/3 of the greens and add in portions to each plate.

Non-classical kharcho soup recipes

Carrots, onions and tomatoes are often added to the dish. This gives taste and is more familiar to European gourmets. Carrots are cut large pieces, and onion straws and add to the laying of rice. If you add tomatoes to the kharcho, then it is better to take whole sweet cherry tomatoes. They give very unusual taste and extravagant appearance of kharcho.

There are many more kharcho soup recipes than we have described here, it is difficult to make it at first, but then it is not difficult. It's all about patience and skill, as usual. For those who want to immediately try the real Georgian kharcho soup, we strongly recommend visiting Georgian restaurant in Moscow, fortunately, in the city they are represented in sufficient quantities. Here you will always find a warm welcome and tasty food. Bon appetit!