Tkemali - the best recipes. How to properly and tasty cook Tkemali.

Tkemali sauce - general principles and methods of cooking

Tkemali is a Georgian plum tkemali sauce, garlic and herbs, traditionally served with fish, meat, poultry and various side dishes. Today there are modifications of tkemali sauce, in which it is prepared from other sour fruits, such as gooseberries, red currants, etc., however, a real tkemali sauce can only be made from sour plums. Another feature of the classic tkemali sauce is the use of ombalo (Georgian marsh mint) spice. It is her real tkemali sauce that owes its memorable savory taste. In addition, ombalo has remarkable preservative properties that help the sauce not to deteriorate for a long time. Of course, in our conditions it is almost impossible to find this weed, therefore resourceful housewives replace it with ordinary mint, considering that if the dish is cooked with love and diligence, the result will not suffer much from replacing one of the components.

The principle of preparation of the tkemali sauce is not complicated: the plum is poured with water and boiled for about half an hour, then, wiping them with a sieve with broth, the peel is separated with stones. Then, after mashing the puree to a thickness of sour cream, mix it with pounded garlic, coriander, red pepper, salt, bring to a boil and remove from the heat.

Tkemali sauce - food preparation

The main component of the sauce tokemali are plums of the same name. Plum tkemali cultivated mainly in Georgia and Bulgaria. However, many tkemali sauce fans successfully replace this plum variety with cherry plum. Before preparing the plum sauce should be carefully picked and rinsed.

The remaining components of the sauce - garlic, herbs, pepper should be chopped with a knife or in a blender.

Tkemali sauce - the best recipes

Recipe 1: Tkemali sauce with dill

According to this recipe, tkemali sauce is prepared in Western Georgia. It has a sour taste and moderate spiciness, therefore it is an ideal seasoning for meat dishes.

Ingredients:

3 kg of plums;

2 glasses of water;

250 gr. dill (inflorescences and stems with umbrellas);

300 gr. fresh cilantro;

250 gr. fresh mint;

4 cloves of garlic;

2 dried red bitter peppers;

1 tbsp. l sugar (optional);

to taste the salt. Cooking Method:

1. Having washed and having gone over plum, we fill in it with water and we set on fire. When the berry melts, we grind the resulting mass through a colander and release it from the peel and bones.

2. We tie the inflorescences and stalks of dill into bunches and put them into the resulting plum mass together with hot pepper and salt. Cook mashed potatoes for about half an hour on low heat. Important: of our seasonings, only hot peppers should be dry, the rest of the greens we should use fresh.

3. While the sauce is boiling, chop the fresh herbs with garlic in a blender. Then, taking dill from the sauce, add chopped greens there and boil for about 15 minutes.

4. Fill the prepared sauce in prepared sterilized jars with a small capacity, then, adding some sunflower oil there, spin them with sterile caps.

Recipe 2: Tkemali Sauce

Spicy food lovers will love this recipe. The sauce turns out very fragrant, so it can make any dish, even the simplest one, unique.

Ingredients:

1 kg of tkemali (cherry plum);

50 gr. water;

garlic head;

40 gr. dill (dry);

3 tsp. coriander;

2 tsp. mint (dry);

red ground pepper.

Cooking Method:

1. Cut the plums in half, put them in an enamel pan, pour water and boil on low heat, so that the skin and bones are separated from them, from which the resulting plum mass should be freed.

2. Drain the resulting clear juice, rub the mass in mashed potatoes (or wipe it through a sieve) and boil it to make it look like sour cream in thickness. In this case, we continuously stir the sauce and gradually add the juice, which was poured earlier. Then, grind everything into powder, add them to the hot mass, salt to taste and heat the sauce for about 5 minutes. Ready sauce use cold. If desired, you can prepare it for future use, pouring hot in sterilized jars and closing with sterile caps.

Sample dishes with Tkemali sauce

Recipe 1: Lamb with Tkemali Sauce

It is impossible to describe the aroma and taste of this dish - you can only try it! You can garnish such meat with fresh vegetables, lettuce and greens.

Ingredients:

1.5 kg of lamb;

2 tomatoes;

50 gr. vegetable oil;

1 onion;

25 ml. vinegar;

20 gr. dried barberries; 20 gr. parsley;

bunch of green onions;

50 gr. tkemali sauce;

1 lemon;

to taste salt and pepper.

Cooking Method:

1. Cut the well-washed meat into large chunks, sprinkle with vinegar, salt and pepper and leave to marinate in a cold place for a few hours. Then we grease the grill with vegetable oil, place meat on it and fry it over the coals (electric grill can be used for this).

2. When serving meat, we use onions, tomato slices, lemon slices, chopped green onions and parsley as a garnish. Separately serve tkemali sauce and dried barberry (ground).

Recipe 2: Vegetable stew in tkemali sauce

Very tasty and fragrant dish, which is made from lamb, vegetables and tkemali sauce. Thanks to its beautiful taste and appearance, it can become a real decoration of your dinner table.

Ingredients:

500 gr. beef pulp;

200 gr. tkemali sauce;

4 cloves of garlic;

300 gr. meat broth;

3 bell peppers;

4 carrots;

2 tsp. hops suneli;

drain oil for roasting;

to taste the salt.

Cooking Method:

1. Grind the garlic, fry it in butter, add carrots cut into slices about 5 mm thick, and fry them together.

2. After drying the meat with a paper towel and quickly roasting it in a separate pan, spread it to carrots and garlic. Dilute half the tkemali sauce with half the broth, pour this mixture into the pan and, after salting, simmer under the lid for about an hour and a half. If in the process of quenching the liquid will remain low, add the broth.

3. After one and a half hours, cover the meat with Bulgarian pepper, cut along, and pour all the remaining tkemali sauce, diluted with broth. After adding the hops-suneli, again simmer on low heat for about half an hour so that the meat becomes very soft.