Classic Georgian kharcho soup recipe with photo

What comes to mind when we hear the word “Georgia”? First, of course, wine, cognac and chacha. And after such an aperitif, our imagination will surely draw a delicious kharcho – beef soup, hearty, spicy, with generous pieces of meat floating in it, nuts and a whole bitter pepper.

Is it possible to make real Georgian kharcho at home? Of course you can! I would advise those who are just getting acquainted with Georgian cuisine to cook it: this dish is quite simple, very tasty and truly Georgian!

Without what it is impossible to cook Georgian kharcho?

Let’s start with a brief description of the essential ingredients for Kharcho.

1. For starters, meat.

This, of course, is beef and nothing more! Even Wikipedia will tell you that kharcho (in Georgian – “dzrohis hortsi kharshot”) means just “beef soup”. Brisket is best suited for this dish – it has bones, and fat, and cartilage – what you need for an excellent, strong broth. Also, the soup is excellent from the ribs.

2. The second irreplaceable ingredient is tklapi.

This is the name of dried marshmallow made from yellow cherry plum of the tkemali variety. I’ll tell you honestly, I couldn’t get such a thing – they either don’t sell it in our city, or I just don’t know where to buy it. How to cook kharcho soup without tklapi? Very simple! It (she?, he?) is already being replaced by tkemali sauce, which includes the same cherry plum + seasonings (garlic, pepper, coriander, salt), which are also part of kharcho.

Watch the ingredients of the sauce carefully! The first ingredient in it must be cherry plum – do not let yourself be deceived by Georgian inscriptions and a beautiful jar!

This time I used homemade tkemali made by my friend from sour plums, not cherry plums. The color, of course, is not quite the same, but there is almost no difference in taste, so I recognized the experiment as successful.

3. The third is a mixture of hops-suneli spices.

Translated by the way, simply “dried herbs.” A store bag will do, but it’s better to buy from Georgians in the market.

4. And the fourth is nuts. In the Caucasus, they are put in almost all dishes, not only in sweets.

That, perhaps, is all. If you have these ingredients, you can get kharcho. Without them, you can cook any soup, even very tasty, but it will have nothing to do with kharcho.

The composition is more Georgian

To prepare the first of the first Georgian dishes, you will need:

For the broth (for a 5 liter pot):

• beef brisket – 1 kg;
• onion;
• carrot;
• a small parsnip, horseradish, a piece of celery (optional);
• a couple of leaves of lavrushka, 3-4 cloves, allspice and peppercorns, a couple of boxes of cardamom.
• water! It is very important to take good, filtered water.

For soup:

• tkemali sauce – 3-4 tbsp. l.;
• walnuts – 2 cups of nucleoli;
• rice – 200 g;
• 3-4 bulbs;
• garlic head;
• greens: cilantro – 2 bunches, dill, parsley – a bunch, green basil – 5-7 leaves;
• hops-suneli – a third of a glass;
• Imeretian saffron – a tablespoon, (or just saffron, on the edge – a mixture of paprika powder and turmeric, this seasoning is used mainly for color).
• whole bitter pepper;
• salt, lemon, sugar.

Kharcho beef soup. Step by step recipe with photos.

Step 1. Broth.

We take the meat, wash it, dry it and cut it into large pieces, about the size of a matchbox (as in the photo). Bones can not be cut, if there is nothing. We boil some water in a saucepan (to cover the beef), throw meat into it, wait until it boils and pour it to hell. We do not need the first broth – it contains a lot of turbidity and harmful extractive substances. But boiling water will seal the pores of the meat, retain the juice in it and allow it to remain tasty, and besides, you will hardly have to remove the foam.

We wash the pieces (and the pan can be washed), pour it with good, cold water, throw parsnips, celery, horseradish, carrots, onions into the pan – everything is peeled, but whole. We are waiting for it to boil. We remove the foam (if any), put spices (lavrushka, cardamom, etc.) in our brew, salt, put on a small fire (so that it gurgles).

Everything, now you are completely free for 1.5-2 hours! We proceed to further processes as soon as the meat becomes soft and will easily fall behind the bone.

Step 2. Preparing products.

When the broth is ready, take out all the vegetables from it, catch the spices with a slotted spoon. You need in advance: cut the onion into quarters or even eight rings, peel the nuts, carefully separating the grains from the chaff (if you used whole ones).

Nuts need to be crushed in a mortar. We use a blender only as a last resort – the pieces should be of different sizes. Small ones will give a good fat and aroma, and medium ones will be felt in the finished dish, but will become quite soft.

Rice for kharcho is washed until the turbidity disappears – it contains excess starch. To do this, you can use a colander or simply pour the grain into a saucepan and put it under a small stream of cold water – the excess with turbidity will flow over the edge, and the rice itself will remain in the container.

Saffron (if you use it) must be steamed. To do this, pour boiling broth into a cup with red “stigmas”, cover with a saucer and leave for 5-10 minutes. If you still found tklapi, you also need to steam it well in the same way.

Step 3. Main stage

Now everything needs to be done quickly and in the correct sequence.

1. Pour the washed strained rice into the soup, put a whole pod of hot pepper there (God forbid it is boiled, the dish will become critically spicy), let it boil and reduce the fire.

2. Pass the onion. Do not burn it, otherwise the taste will be spoiled. If the onion is burnt, it is better to make another, normal batch. Throw the fried onion into the broth.

3. Pour chopped nuts into a dry frying pan and also lightly fry so that they give flavor.

4. Put tkemali sauce in the soup. You don’t need to swing the spoon much, otherwise the kharcho will become too sour. Tkemali can be added later.

5. Pour the steamed saffron into the pan, season the suneli hops from the heart.

6. Grind in a mortar, blender or just finely chop the garlic (a whole head, or even more!), Grind the greens (it is easiest to grind with salt and garlic).

Now you need to wait until the rice is ready – on average, it is cooked for up to 20 minutes after it has been thrown into boiling water. It’s also useless to boil it.

7. We send greens with garlic to the soup.

Just a minute – and your beef kharcho soup will be completely ready!

Final stage. Bringing the taste to perfection.

Do not forget that the Georgian kharcho recipe, like, in general, almost any recipe for a folk dish, is not a mandatory guide, but only recommendations. I cooked kharcho, God forbid, for the fourth time, and all four times the dishes differed slightly, but different: different meat, different temperatures, products of not the same quality (for example, winter and summer onions or garlic – this is heaven and earth!), different moods… But this is exactly the point – each dish has its own character, its own personality! After all, the inhabitants of Tbilisi and a remote mountain village cannot cook the same kharcho, it is like borscht, which all housewives have their own.

In general, stop philosophizing. In any case, the taste of the soup can and should be brought to the ideal that you imagine. To do this, we need nothing at all: salt, lemon and sugar.

With salt, everything is clear – put to taste. With lemon and sugar – a little more complicated. Georgian cuisine is sour-sweet-spicy. The balance of these flavors must be perfect!

Was the tkemali too sour or did you add too much? Sugar will correct the situation (just don’t overdo it, start with half a tablespoon and try it!). On the contrary, the sauce did not live up to expectations? Half a lemon squeezed directly into the soup will help acidify the pill!

Try, try your dish all the time and it will definitely become the way you see it!

Now you know how to cook kharcho soup at home! After the soup is ready, it should stand under the closed lid for 15-20 minutes, “walk”. At this time, you can knock over a glass of young red wine – as for me, it is ideal for this dish!

The soup is best served with a glass of homemade chacha and pieces of Georgian lavash fried in a dry frying pan.

Bon appetit, or, as Georgians and Google translator say in such cases:

Enjoy your meal!