Kharcho soup with peppercorns. Video

Real kharcho soup is made from beef. By the way, translated from Georgian, its name sounds like this – “beef soup”. Although many chefs now use other types of meats, for example, pork options are popular. Other main ingredients in kharcho are rice, tkemali for sourness, tomatoes and walnuts.

If you want to cook a classic kharcho soup, pay special attention to the choice of beef, it must be of high quality and fresh. Experienced chefs say that it is best to use a piece of beef with marrow for the richness and fat content of the soup.

In addition, the taste of real kharcho largely depends on the spices added to it: coriander, saffron, hot pepper, bay leaf. In restaurants, to add a special aroma, they often add a mixture of spices – khmeli-suneli to this spicy soup. You can buy this mixture or make it yourself, at least in a simplified version. To do this, combine mint, basil, dill, savory, marjoram and hot red pepper.

For 2 liters of kharcho soup, you can add 2 tablespoons. with a heap of tkemali puree or 100 g of fresh pitted cherry plum

Bring 1,5 liters of water to a boil in a large saucepan. Boil the whole piece of beef over low heat for two hours. The broth for kharcho soup should be rich. When the beef is cooked, remove it from the broth, remove all bones, cut the meat into pieces. Put the latter back in the boiling broth. Add tkemali to the broth. If you don’t have tkemali, add tomato paste. The broth should taste rather sour. If it isn’t, you can adjust its acidity by adding pomegranate juice.

After peeling the onions and carrots, chop them. Five minutes after the soup has boiled, add the chopped carrots and cook for ten minutes. Add the chopped onion, bring the broth with vegetables to a boil and cook under a lid for about thirty minutes on low heat. Peel and rub the garlic. Add rice to soup and cook for ten minutes. In the meantime, prepare a nut sauce for the soup. Sort out the walnut kernels and fry them lightly in a dry skillet. Then thoroughly grind the nuts in a mortar. Add the garlic-nut dressing to the kharcho. Cook the soup for another fifteen minutes, then add the spices and cook for another five minutes. Next, chop the herbs, put them in the soup and cook for another two minutes. The kharcho soup is ready.

To make lamb kharcho soup, you will need: – 0,5 kg of lamb; – 1 glass of rice; – 2 onions; – 5 small garlic cloves; – tomato paste, black pepper and salt to taste.

Cook lamb broth. Cut the onion into half rings, and then fry it until translucent. Chop the garlic. Add half of the amount, tomato paste, a little water to the onion, and simmer over low heat for about ten minutes. Remove the meat from the finished broth and cut it into pieces. Pour the rice into the broth. Five minutes before it is ready, add the onion with tomato paste, chopped pieces of lamb, spices, salt, the rest of the garlic, cover and let the soup steep. Kharcho should be thick.

To make kharcho soup with chicken, you will need: – 1 chicken breast; – 1/2 cup rice; – 3-5 tbsp. tkemali sauce; – 2-3 cloves of garlic; – 3 tbsp. tomato sauce; – green onions, suneli hops, bay leaves, pepper, salt to taste.

Pour 3 liters of water into a saucepan, salt, put chicken breast in it to boil. Rinse the rice, finely chop the green onions and add them to the broth half an hour before the end of cooking. Chop the garlic. After another twenty minutes (that is, ten minutes before the end of cooking) put garlic, tomato sauce or chopped tomatoes, hops-suneli, tkemali sauce, bay leaf, pepper, salt in the soup. When the chicken kharcho soup is almost ready, add the chopped herbs.

Real Georgian kharcho soup is cooked on sour tklapi, beef specially prepared for it. However, there are recipes for this first course without meat. Of course, they cannot be compared with the classic version, but this kharcho soup is perfect for a vegetarian and lean menu. It prepares quickly enough, in just 20 minutes.

In order to cook kharcho soup without meat, you will need: – 100 g of rice; – 3 large tomatoes; – 50 g of walnuts; – 1 large onion; – 2 cloves of garlic; – 30 g butter; – hot peppers, spices, salt, herbs to taste.

Put water in a kettle to boil. Peel the onions and chop them finely. Melt the butter in a saucepan and simmer the onions in it. Then finely chop the peeled hot peppers, garlic and cilantro. Please note: the more pepper you add, the more spicy the taste of kharcho will turn out. If you don’t know how much to put in, you can add 1/3 of the pepper (starting from the tip).

Finely chop or grind the walnuts. Add them to the mass with cilantro, garlic and pepper, stir and pour into a saucepan with stewed onions. Pour boiling water from a kettle over these ingredients. Rinse the rice and add it to the pot. Season with salt, cover and leave for a while.

If you don’t like tomato skins, peel them off before chopping the tomatoes. Alternatively, you can sieve ready-made stewed tomatoes.