Pilaf is a traditional dish of Central Asian cuisine, which is prepared according to all its canons only from mutton and always over charcoal. But this does not mean that this dish can not be cooked differently.
With the specific aroma and taste of lamb, you can always replace pork, a large tank with a smaller cauldron, and a bonfire with a home stove. Pork pilaf cooked at home is in no way inferior to the traditional dish, if you strictly follow all the rules of cooking and the recommended proportions of not only water to rice, but also food.
Once having prepared a pilaf with pork according to a step-by-step recipe, described in detail below, even an inexperienced cook can proudly say that he has learned how to cook pilaf properly.
General recommendations and technological principles of cooking tasty crumb pilaf with pork using a step-by-step recipe
• For cooking pilaf, metal (not enameled) thick-walled dishes will be required. Outdoors, pilaf is cooked in a large cauldron; at home, a less dimensional copy is used. If there is no small cauldron, it may well be replaced by a duck-plate or even a cast-iron pan, the main thing is that its walls be high enough.
• Properly selected dishes are not everything. Not any kind of rice is suitable for pilaf. It is very common to buy weight rice grown in Central Asia from sellers of spices on the market. Devzira is considered to be the best for pilaf from Central Asian varieties of rice. He has large grains with a light pinkish tint. Unlike factory, packaged in packs of rice, it is sold not washed, so before use it must be thoroughly rinsed to wash the powder off the seeds. Also on the market can be found and subspecies of this variety of rice. “Dastsar-Sartyk” is most often encountered, less often “Kenzhov” and “Arpa-shaly” can be found. These are exactly the varieties that are grown in Central Asia. As for the rice varieties we are used to. To get a crumbly pilaf, take Jasmine or Basmati. Round grain rice for such a dish is not recommended. Their increased starchiness will not allow to prepare crumbly dishes, even if you strictly follow the recommendations of cooking plov pilaf in a step-by-step recipe. • Rice variety selected according to recommendations - this is not all. Pay attention to the surface of the grain. It should not be smooth, light ribbing should be visible on the shell. Try to figure out the picture, if you make it easy and the grain immediately crumbled, refrain from buying. From such cereal get meat porridge, and not pilaf. Packed rice purchase only in transparent packs, in which you can well look at the cereal. Its grains should not be crushed, and the presence of litter indicates poor-quality processing.
• Before use, be sure to smell the cereal, it should not have a sharp, repulsive odor.
• This Central Asian pilaf is cooked from lamb. But if you replace such meat with pork and observe all the rules described in the step-by-step recipe of pilaf with pork and choose the right meat, then the dish will turn out to be equally tasty and quite corresponding to Central Asian canons.
• For pilaf, it is better to take pork ribs, or pieces of fatter flesh - neck is the most suitable part of the carcass. Rib ribbons cut along the bone, large ribs chop. The flesh is cut into large or small pieces of square shape. It is preferable that the size of the pieces does not exceed four centimeters.
• The whole process of cooking real pilaf consists of several stages: warming up the oil, cooking meat and vegetables from zirvaka, laying rice with topping up water and bringing the pilaf to readiness. The technology of each of the stages is described in the below recipe of pilaf with pork step by step.
Pork pilaf: a step-by-step recipe for a Central Asian dish at home
Ingredients:
• pork ribs or neck - 600 gr .;
• two large carrots;
• 400 gr. long grain rice;
• three onions;
• refined sunflower oil;
• two small heads of garlic;
• set of spices “For pilaf”.
Preparation:
1. To rice in the pilaf steamed evenly, it must first be soaked in salted water. First of all, go through the cereal. We select from it all extraneous impurities, we remove damaged and crushed crushed rice. Then wash the rice with cool water until it goes clean, and shift the cereal into a bowl. Separately, in one liter of filtered water dissolve a teaspoon of salt. Pour the solution to the rice and leave. After two hours, re-wash the cereal and leave on a sieve or in a colander. 2. Wash the meat in cool water. If you took a strip of ribs, cut into the flesh between the bones. Cut the large ribs. Calculate so that the pieces are no longer than 7 cm in length. The flesh is cut into square pieces no larger than 4 cm, it can be a little smaller. Prepared meat should be dried. Otherwise, hot fat will be sprayed on contact - wipe the pieces with a paper towel.
3. Prepare the vegetables. Peel the onions and carrots. With garlic, we remove only the upper layers of the husk; we do not remove the dense shell covering the teeth and do not disassemble the garlic in slices; the heads must remain solid.
4. Cut the carrot into thin strips. Many people prefer to rub it on a large grater - so faster. But for pilaf all the same, it is preferable to cut the carrot. Adding a grated vegetable changes not only the type of dish, but also the taste. Onion shred half rings or rings, 2 mm thick.
5. Put the cauldron on the stove, turn on the moderate heating - slightly below average. Warming up the tank for about a minute, pour vegetable oil into it in a layer of one and a half centimeters. Slightly reduce the heat, slowly heat the fat - the oil should not boil. We warm up until a whitish haze appears above its surface. The degree of calcination of the oil can be determined by salt, if you throw a few large crystals into it, they should crackle strongly and bounce off its surface.
6. When the oil is hot enough, increase the heat to the maximum and carefully, so as not to burn yourself, drop the meat in the cauldron. Intensely stirring, bring the pieces to browning. Meat should not be stewed, otherwise it will become dry and not tasty. It is the rapidly forming ruddy crust that we seal all the juice in pieces, which does not leave them in the future.
7. The meat was covered with a blush, add onions and slightly reduce the fire. Cooking stirring, not allowing to redden. We fall asleep carrots to the onion that has reached transparency. We cook everything together, without changing the heating, and we also systematically mix it so that the cream does not burn and does not stick to the walls and bottom of the cauldron. When the carrot is soft, lower the heat a little more and continue cooking until it gets a richer color. 8. In the finished zirvak, about half an hour after laying the meat lay the peeled heads of garlic, add spices. They are put in the amount of one and a half teaspoons per pound of dry rice. Therefore, we need to put a little less - a teaspoon and about a third more. Having added spices, we salt zirvak and we add to it 100 ml of hot water. Simmer on low heat for about a minute.
9. Level the prepared zirvak so that it completely covers the bottom of the cauldron. We spread on it dried, swollen in water rice. It is also leveled, after which we lightly tamp. We do this carefully, the cereal should in no case be mixed with zirvac. The rice must lie on it in a thick uniform layer and not touch the bottom of the cauldron, otherwise it will stick to it.
10. Add hot water. Pour it onto the surface of the rice layer carefully so that it does not break it, we add some salt. The amount of fluid should be equal to the weight of the swollen rice. For one kilogram of dry cereal, take 2–100 ml of water, taking into account the amount added to zirvac. For the swollen water soaked in rice, you need to take 30% less liquid, in this case you will need about 600 ml of boiling water. To make pilaf crumbly, the rice layer must be covered with water for one and a half centimeters.
11. After that, for the flavor in the pilaf, you can put a little anise or barberry, if they are not in the previously added spices. You can also add a little washed dried apricots. For a given amount of rice, five dried apricots will suffice.
12. After laying the rice and adding water, on an intense fire bring pilaf to a boil. Then we reduce the fire so that the water only boils slightly, close the cauldron with a lid very tightly and continue to cook. Before boiling, you can add a little bit of turmeric into the water, it will give the rice a nice golden-lemon shade.
13. When all the water has evaporated, we collect rice in the form of a slide, pierce its surface in several places, preferably with a wooden stick. Again tightly close and bring to readiness on the very minimum fire for 20 minutes.
14. Finished pilaf, after shutdown, should be allowed to stop. Mix the pilaf well, wrap the cauldron in a blanket for half an hour.
Cooking tricks and helpful tips for step-by-step recipe of pilaf with pork
• Be sure to sort out rice. In addition to litter and damaged grains, select defective, crushed rice. Their presence will negatively affect the appearance of the dish, it will more resemble crumbly porridge than pilaf.
• It is not necessary to soak the cereal in water. But It is worth noting that when using dry rice, the pilaf will cook longer and if the grits are not washed well, a crumbly dish will not work. When soaking, rice not only swells, it leaves an extra starch.
• Never mix different rice varieties; they will not stew evenly. It is also not recommended to mix cereals and one variety, but bought at different times, not from the same batch.
• When pouring water in order not to disturb the rice layer, use a wide skimmer, the jet of water directed at it will splash in different directions, and not pour in one place.
• If the lid is loose on the cauldron, wrap the towel with a cord and place it in a circle, completely closing the gap. From above, for reliability, you can put a kettle filled with water, it will press the lid closer to the cauldron.
• When cooking plov with pork according to a step-by-step recipe, strictly adhere to the technologies of each stage, follow the recommended heating of the stove, be sure to wrap the prepared pilaf for a while and then the dish cooked at home will not yield to the traditional one.
