Pomegranates are famous for their high content of healthy substances, therefore they are often used for cooking various dishes. For example, pomegranate grains are added to salads, they stew meat and chickens with them. It is with meat that pomegranate goes best. At the same time, it not only improves the taste of meat dishes, but also helps the body to assimilate them better. In the Caucasus, pomegranates are especially respected, and it was here that the famous pomegranate sauce for meat appeared, which today is happy to cook and serve people from different countries.
Cooking Features
Traditional Azerbaijani pomegranate sauce for meat is prepared using sophisticated technology and is a condensed pomegranate juice. Recently, simplified recipes of pomegranate sauces have gained popularity, which also turn out tasty and healthy, perfectly shading the taste of meat dishes. No matter what recipe you got into your hands, it doesn’t hurt to know some of the features of making pomegranate sauce and choosing the ingredients for it.
- If you decide to make a sauce from a juice store bought from a store, the result may disappoint you. The fact is that often it is not natural pomegranate juice that can be found on the market, but a concentrate made on the basis of a concentrate, the content of which is small. Therefore, when choosing a product, it is necessary to pay attention to the composition. Better yet, squeeze the juice from the pomegranate seeds on their own. Then you can be confident in the quality of the main ingredient.
- Try to choose a ripe and sweet pomegranate for the sauce. Do not be seduced by the bright color of his skin: the most delicious pomegranates have an unsightly pink-colored peel, often even covered with brown spots.
- If you decide to make pomegranate juice for the sauce yourself, you need to know how to properly separate the pomegranate grains from the rind and films. Otherwise, you remember them and splash the whole room with juice. After washing the garnet, cut off a small circle of peel from the side where the tail is located. Snip the peel along the white films. Turn the fruit over the plate and pull the edges at the incisions, as if dividing it into slices. Knock the spoon on the peel, knocking out pomegranate seeds.
- If you don’t want the pomegranate sauce from healthy to become harmful, do not use aluminum cookware to make it. It oxidizes, and harmful compounds enter the food.
Pomegranate sauce can be served hot or cold to meat. For beauty, before serving, you can add a few whole pomegranate grains.
Classic pomegranate sauce recipe
Composition:
- grenades - 1 kg;
- spices - to taste.
Method of preparation:
- Wash the grenades. Remove the grain from them. Carefully check if there are any films left on them: if they get into the sauce, it will have a bitter taste.
- Place the pomegranate grains in a thick-bottomed container. Gently crush them with a wooden spoon.
- Put on a low flame and continue to press and stir. When the grains turn white, remove the container from the fire.
- Rub the pomegranate puree through a sieve to separate the juice from the seed.
- Put the juice on a weak fire and cook, stirring until its volume is halved. By this time it will thicken, turning into a sauce, the consistency of ryazhenku.
- Add spices to the sauce, mix.
You can immediately pour the sauce on the meat or poultry, or you can pour it into a clean glass container and put it in the refrigerator. If the jar is sterilized before that and then sealed, the sauce can be stored in the refrigerator for a long time. However, if you plan to prepare it for future use, it will not hurt to add some sugar to it when preparing the sauce.
Pomegranate juice sauce
Composition:
- pomegranate juice - 1 l;
- sugar (brown is better) - 100 g;
- butter - 100 g;
- potato starch - 20 g;
- water - 50 ml;
- ground coriander - 5 g;
- salt - 5 g.
Method of preparation:
- Pour freshly squeezed pomegranate juice into the pan. You can use the store product, but only if you are confident in its quality.
- Place the pan on the fire and bring the juice to a boil. Reduce the intensity of the flame.
- Pour sugar into juice. Brown sugar will give the sauce a caramel flavor. If you have white sugar, reduce its amount by 20%. If you are cooking sauce from purchased juice, which already contains sugar, reduce the amount of sugar added to the sauce by half.
- While stirring, boil the juice for 5 minutes. Sugar during this time should be dissolved.
- Cut the butter into thin slices and send it to a container of juice. While stirring, wait until the butter has melted.
- Add salt and coriander. Continue cooking for 2-3 minutes.
- Dissolve starch in cool water, pour it in a thin stream into a container with pomegranate juice.
- Cook the sauce until it begins to thicken. Keep in mind that when cooled, it will become thicker.
The pomegranate sauce made from the juice according to the above recipe, of course, differs from the traditional Azerbaijani one, but it is not always necessary to achieve identity. This version of the sauce is as good as the original, and fits best to meat. In this case, the cooking process will be much less lengthy and tedious.
A quick recipe for pomegranate sauce
Composition:
- pomegranate juice - 0, 2 l;
- adjika Caucasian (acute) - 10 ml;
- garlic - 1 clove;
- a mixture of herbs, salt, sugar - to taste.
Method of preparation:
- Crush the garlic clove with a special press, mix it with two teaspoons of adzhika. If necessary, add salt, although the real Caucasian adjika is most often very salty.
- Add herbs. If you use freshly squeezed pomegranate juice, you can add a teaspoon of sugar. When using purchased juice, you should refrain from adding sugar.
- Pour the mixture with pomegranate juice and blend with a blender.
If desired, the sauce can be heated and thickened with starch.
Pomegranate sauce is one of the most refined and useful additions to meat. If you have patience, it can be done at home: this process, though long, is simple.
