How to cook beef kharcho soup. Beef kharcho - delicious Georgian soup prepared according to classic and new recipes

How to make beef kharcho soup at home

To prepare kharcho soup we will need:

• about 1 kg of beef;
• 3 large potatoes;
• half a glass of rice;
• 2 medium onions;
• 1 tablespoon tomato paste;
• vegetable oil;
• Bay leaf;
• salt and spices;
• garlic.

Kharcho soup - homemade recipe

Kharcho soup belongs to Georgian cuisine. It is very tasty, rich, satisfying. At the same time, preparing it is not so difficult! Let's get started...

Delicious beef kharcho soup according to a classic recipe

1. Cook our kharcho soup in the second broth, like all other soups. First the meat, then drain the first broth, wash the pan, place the meat in it and fill it with water again, put the pan on the stove.

2. When the meat is cooked, take it out, cool it, separate it from the bone and divide it into pieces.

3. At this time, peel, wash and cut the potatoes into cubes, lower them into our broth.

4. When the potatoes boil, rinse half a glass of rice with cold water and add it to the potatoes. Let it boil and turn the heat down.

5. Pour the chopped meat into the broth.

6. While the potatoes and rice are cooking, thinly slice the onion into half rings.

7. Pour vegetable oil into a frying pan and place it on the stove. Add the onion and begin sautéing it over low heat. Here we also add allspice, a spoonful of tomato paste and a couple of spoons of soup broth from our pan (where the potatoes and rice are cooked). There should be a lot of onions in the kharcho.

8. Add our onions to the soup pan and add salt. Put in a bay leaf.

9. Boil everything again.

10. Use a garlic press to squeeze 5 cloves of garlic into our kharcho soup. Mix everything and remove from heat.

11. If you have fresh herbs, cut them and add them to the soup. Let the kharcho brew for 10 minutes.

Serve to the table and enjoy the pleasant aroma and taste of this wonderful soup - kharcho.

Bon appetit!

Kharcho soup is a dish that came to us from Georgia. When exactly this recipe was invented, history is silent, but, nevertheless, this did not prevent this dish from becoming quite popular both in Georgia and far beyond its borders.

Such excessive fame became the reason that the original recipe began to be slowly forgotten and now many are trying to prepare this soup in ways that are not indicated in the classic recipe. The soup should be made from a beef-based broth, not lamb. Also, many people think that it should be spicy, but it is not.

First of all, the main difference between Georgian cuisine is that the dishes there must be spicy. Spicy, not just hot. The recipe includes suneli hops, walnuts, and prunes. Many people simply add a lot of hot pepper and call the resulting dish kharcho soup, but in fact this is not entirely true.

Taste Info Hot soups

Ingredients

• Tomato paste - 4 tbsp. l.
• Short grain rice - 1 tbsp.
• Beef - 1 kg
• Potatoes – 500 g
• Tomatoes - 5 pcs.
• Onions - 2 pcs.
• Lemon juice - 3 tbsp. l.
• Garlic - 2 teeth
• Khmeli-suneli – 2 tsp.
• Bay leaf- 3 pcs.
• Butter – 50 g
• Parsley or cilantro

How to cook beef kharcho soup with rice

First you need to prepare everything necessary ingredients. Pour water into a suitable saucepan, place the meat in it, bring to a boil, reduce the heat, and cook for 2 hours. Remove foam from time to time. After cooking, remove the finished meat and set aside to cool.

Melt a piece of butter in a heated frying pan and fry the finely diced onion in it.

After the onion is lightly fried, add tomato paste to it and also fry for 6 minutes until the contents of the pan acquire a uniform consistency.

While the frying is being prepared, you need to add diced potatoes to the beef broth. You don't have to put potatoes in original recipe It's not there, but it will make the soup more filling.

Immediately after the potatoes, add washed rice to the pan.

Take a deep bowl and prepare the seasonings. Cilantro or parsley should be washed under water and finely chopped with a knife. Crush the garlic with a garlic press, or chop it finely. Mix greens with garlic, add lemon juice and spices.

Place the tomatoes in boiling water for a while, remove them, peel them and cut them into small cubes.

Add chopped tomatoes to a bowl with herbs and garlic.

Cut the cooled beef into pieces and place in a pan with broth a few minutes before the rice and potatoes are ready.

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After this, add the previously fried onions and tomato paste to the soup. Let it boil again. The fire should not be set too high. The lower the soup simmers, the more transparent it will turn out in the end.

After the contents of the pan boil, add chopped tomatoes.

After the contents boil again, you need to reduce the heat and cook the kharcho for 10 minutes, then cover with a lid and let it brew.

Pour kharcho with beef and rice into portioned plates and serve.

Georgian beef kharcho soup

In Georgian cuisine it is customary to use all types of meat: pork, lamb, chicken, beef. Therefore, a specific type of meat is used for a certain dish, depending on what exactly, in the opinion of local chefs, will make the dish truly tasty and memorable.

If you follow the original recipe for kharcho soup, then it must include an acidic base. Usually tkemali plums are used for these purposes. If it is not possible to purchase these plums, then you can often find ready-made tkemali sauce in stores.

Some add pomegranate juice, tomato paste, or tomatoes for sourness. However, this will no longer be the original recipe, but as close as possible to it.

How to prepare beef kharcho soup in Georgian will be written below.

Ingredients

• Lean beef on the bone – 0.5 kg.
• Short grain rice - 3 tbsp. l.
• Tkemali – 3 tbsp. l.
• Walnut – 0.5 cups.
• Garlic – 1 head
• Khmeli-suneli – 1 tsp.
• Cilantro or parsley - 1 bunch.
• Salt, black pepper, ground - to taste

Before we start cooking, let's figure out the choice of products for Georgian kharcho soup

Meat for kharcho soup. Beef on the bone should be the freshest. Some recipes say that it should be fatty, but this is not entirely true. Very fatty beef will not be very healthy, and also a large number of fat will not allow the flavor to fully develop.

Bouillon. There is constant debate about the broth. Cooks preparing broths are divided into 2 camps. Some say that after the first cooking, the broth should be drained, since it contains all the harmful substances that are found in meat. The latter, on the contrary, insist that the very first water contains a large amount of trace elements and amino acids.

In any case, if you are not very confident in beef, then it is better not to use the first water as a broth.

Rice for kharcho. You can use any type of rice in the kharcho soup recipe, but if possible, it is better to use short-grain rice. So rice is better suited for soup, but due to the processing it goes through, it needs to be rinsed well in water and left to soak for 20-30 minutes.

Tkemali. For kharcho, the original recipe uses tklapi. But it is really quite difficult to find, so tkemali sauce can perfectly replace it. It is sold in most stores and supermarkets, so purchasing it should not be difficult.

Greens and garlic. Garlic should be dry and hard. Sprouted garlic will not work. The greens should be fresh and well washed.

Cooking steps

1. The beef must first be boiled. To do this, place it in water, bring to a boil, and periodically remove the foam. After an hour and a half, the beef will be ready.
2. After this, remove the meat, separate from the bone and cut into small pieces.
3. Add washed rice to the pan, as well as a couple of sprigs of cilantro or parsley. Cook until the rice begins to become soft. This will happen in about 20 minutes.
4. At the end of cooking, add walnuts crushed in a mortar. Before doing this, you need to lightly fry it in a frying pan.
5. Add tkemali sauce, crushed garlic and herbs to the broth.
6. At the very end, add salt and spices. Cover the finished dish with a lid and leave for 15-20 minutes for the soup to steep. Pour into serving bowls and add a little chopped greens to each of them.

If you have ever been to Georgia, you will forever remember cordiality inhabitants of this country, its excellent wine and traditional Hot soup kharcho, so different from Russian cuisine, but nevertheless beloved in Russia. To feel the characteristic again burning taste, you don’t have to go to a Georgian restaurant: we will tell you how to prepare beef kharcho soup, and a step-by-step recipe with photos will help you not to confuse the sequence of culinary manipulations, because the dish is quite complex. Real kharcho is prepared exclusively from beef, but more on that later...

Unique treat

Kharcho enjoys wide success throughout the post-Soviet territory, and therefore it is not surprising that each region offers its own version of the spicy soup, replacing or removing ingredients. In Georgia kharcho recipe sometimes too correct, but the presence of three products remains unchanged:

• Beef. Why her? Many will remember that in Caucasian restaurants, spicy soup is often cooked using lamb. This approach is fundamentally wrong, because the very name kharcho (kharshot - cargo) means “beef soup”, leaving no room for imagination about meat.
• Walnuts, crushed into powder, give kharcho a special taste and additional thickness: properly prepared kharcho is much thicker than all the soups we are used to. It is believed that nuts serve as a source of strength, endurance, and give men unprecedented reproductive health.
• Another unique component - tklapi, a soup base made from dried tkemali plums, which are found almost everywhere in the homeland of kharcho and are better known as cherry plum. Small yellow plums, very sour in taste, are dried and pressed into flat cakes similar to pita bread. Pieces are broken off from this crust and added to kharcho and other dishes. In Russia, getting tkemali is problematic, and therefore today we will make do with a more affordable analogue - tomato paste. It is also possible to replace it with pomegranate juice and fresh tomatoes.

As for history, establish the time of the appearance of the soup kharcho impossible, but one thing is certain - Georgians prepare it has been passed on since time immemorial recipe from grandfathers to grandchildren as an important, particularly significant tradition. Scientists name only the estimated period of occurrence dishes– 2nd century AD, when in the Caucasus rice first appeared.

Selection of products for kharcho

Compound The soup includes a large amount of herbs and seasonings: thanks to them, the shades of kharcho are revealed one after another during the meal, leaving spicy unique aftertaste. Us will be needed:

• Beef. We choose a piece that is bone-in and fattier, because Georgian cuisine does not recognize lean soups; a thick broth is required. Veal ribs are ideal, but tenderloin or part of the ham will also work.
• Ripe juicy tomatoes. It is better to choose fruits with dark pink skin, the Astrakhan variety: they are very meaty, ideal for frying in soup.
• Onion. A light husk is considered a sign of the onion’s pungency and pungency, so for kharcho we choose the palest onion.
• Rice. Both round and oval are suitable, but not too long and not steamed: the rice should be well boiled in the soup and become very soft.
• Red hot pepper. According to the recipe, it must be piping hot, otherwise the kharcho will lack piquancy.
• Celery root. When choosing a root in the store, you should pay attention to small-sized options that have a richer taste and delicate pulp. If the plant is sold as a whole, we also take into account the color of the leaves: young celery has bright salad green tops.
• Tomato paste. Choose thick and sweet pasta.
• Khmeli-suneli. The herbs present in the seasoning are mixed in the ideal proportion for kharcho.
• Garlic.
• Parsley. Take a bunch of parsley with lush green foliage;
• Common seasonings: ground black pepper, salt, bay leaf.

One of the defining characteristics when choosing products for kharcho is smell: except for rice and beef, all fresh ingredients are very fragrant, which provides unique spicy soup aroma.

Cooking kharcho correctly

To prepare spicy Georgian soup, it is not enough just to throw all the listed ingredients into the pan: the recipe dictates strict sequence of actions.

Step-by-step recipes for preparing classic Georgian beef kharcho soup with nuts, simplified versions with barley, prunes, sour plums, pomegranate juice

2018-01-05 Marina Danko

Grade
recipe

2045

Time
(min)

Portions
(persons)

In 100 grams ready-made dish

4 gr.

3 gr.

Carbohydrates

3 gr.

55 kcal.

Option 1: Classic recipe for beef kharcho soup

Kharcho is already a classic. A fragrant, spicy and satisfying soup, the national pride of Georgians, along with wines and luxurious barbecue. At any national cuisine there is a similar treasure, and even somewhat similar recipes are on the menus of other nations, but the taste of kharcho is unique in its own way.

Ingredients:

• veal brisket - 600 grams;
• two large white onions;
• four small fleshy tomatoes;
• half a glass of chopped nuts - 100 g;
• a spoonful of hops-suneli and two of tomato paste;
• 70 grams of rice;
• garlic;
• two bunches of greens (cilantro, half with parsley);
• hot peppers- small pod;
• two bay leaves.

Step by step recipe classic soup beef kharcho

After washing, cut the beef into four-centimeter pieces, maybe a little smaller. Set the broth to boil in a three-liter saucepan, filling the meat to the top with water. Slowly bring to a boil, carefully remove all foam. Then, lowering the heat, cook the meat under the lid for about an hour, until soft. To improve the aroma, it is good to add parsley root to the pan after boiling.

Having scattered the rice on the table, we select all the rubbish and damaged grain. After pouring into a bowl, thoroughly rinse the cereal, fill it with cool water, and leave it in it.

Lightly dry the nuts in a dry frying pan. After cooling, place it in a tight bag and go over it with a rolling pin several times. It is advisable to obtain pieces no larger than 4 mm in size, but it is also possible to grind it into crumbs.

Finely chop the peeled onions.

Pour boiling water over the washed tomatoes for a minute. After cooling with cold water, carefully remove the skin and cut the pulp into small pieces.

Cut the pod lengthwise hot pepper. Remove all the seeds from the pulp with a knife and cut it into thin strips.

Place the frying pan over low heat and immediately pour oil into it. After warming up a little, add the onion and fry until the slices lose their dullness. After adding the tomatoes to the onions, simmer over low heat for another five minutes, add hot pepper, followed by tomato paste. After adding salt, mix everything thoroughly and leave to cook for another five minutes. Temporarily turn off the heating.

Using a slotted spoon, remove the meat from the finished broth. After cooling slightly, separate the bones, place the pieces of meat in the fryer and turn on the heat again. Let the roast simmer a little with the meat.

Decant the water from the bowl of rice. Pour the cereal into the slowly boiling broth and stir immediately. With a slight boil, let the rice cook for a quarter of an hour.

Wash the greens, shake off the remaining water, and chop finely. Putting the greens in a mortar, add, crushing with special tongs, about a spoonful of garlic, grind into a paste. If you don’t have a mortar and pestle, you can grind the greens and garlic in a regular plate, using the back of a rolling pin.

Pour two tablespoons of suneli hops into a saucepan with cooked rice and add bay leaves. Lay out the roasted tomatoes, add tkemali, add nut crumbs and herbs mashed with garlic. After simmering on low heat for about ten minutes, turn it off and let it brew.

Option 2: Beef kharcho soup with potatoes: quick recipe

Regardless of what piece of beef you use, preparing the broth will take an hour or more. We offer a simpler recipe for kharcho, which does not require separately cooking the broth. Pieces of pulp are fried together with vegetables, water and other components are added one by one. Everything will take about an hour, and the kharcho will turn out no worse than the classic one.

Ingredients:

• half a kilo of beef (pulp);
• 50 gr. smoked lard;
• five small potatoes;
• one carrot and two white onions;
• medium-sized fruit bell pepper;
• garlic;
• a spoonful of ready-made “Tkemali” and hops-suneli and three of tomato paste;
• greens - to taste, any fresh.

How to quickly cook beef kharcho soup

Wash the pulp and cut into pieces square shape. Cut the lard into smaller cubes.

We clean and rinse vegetables and herbs with water. Cut the bell pepper pulp and onion into small slices, potatoes into small slices or cubes. Roughly chop three carrots and chop the garlic on the fine side of a grater. Finely chop the greens.

Warm up a double bottom pan a little. If you don’t have such a vessel, a cauldron is perfect. Pour a spoonful of vegetable oil into the container and immediately add lard. After rendering the fat, remove the cracklings from it.

Having increased the heat to maximum, wait for half a minute and lower the meat. Stirring, fry the pieces until lightly browned.

Add onion to the meat and sauté lightly. Add carrots and sweet peppers and fry for a couple more minutes. It is important to bring the vegetables to softness, and not to fry them.

Dilute the tomato with half a glass of water and pour it into sauté. Simmer over low heat for four minutes.

After filling the contents of the pan with three liters of boiling water, immediately lower the potatoes into it. Bring to a boil, leave over medium heat until the potatoes are ready.

When the potatoes become soft, add washed rice to the soup and add salt. After boiling the rice until the rice is ready, season the kharcho with pepper and aromatic hops-suneli. Add the garlic and herbs, bring to a boil and immediately turn off.

Option 3: Beef kharcho soup with plums

Plums are an almost equivalent substitute for Tkemali sauce. So that a beginner can see the difference, some professional chefs explain it this way: “borscht with tomato paste is also borscht, but it tastes better with tomatoes.” A small note: for this recipe, the carrots in the soup are of the unsweetened variety.

Ingredients:

• brisket from a young calf - 400 g;
• large tomato;
• onion head;
• small unsweetened carrot;
• three sour plums;
• one sweet pepper;
• five spoons of rice;
• 90 gr. tomato paste;
• a bunch of fresh parsley and a couple of sprigs of cilantro;
• garlic;
• red hot pepper;
• a spoonful of khmeli-suneli;
• a quarter teaspoon of black pepper (ground).

How to cook

Take the pan from small reserve In terms of volume, three liters of water will be required, but the rest of the products should also fit. Having brought to a boil, put the prepared meat into the water. Periodically skim off the foam and cook for two hours or longer if necessary.

Set the finished broth aside from the heat and remove the beef. After letting it cool for comfortable cutting, we disassemble it, removing the meat from the bone. Cut the pieces of fat together with the pulp or set aside for sautéing.

Peel the carrots, sweet peppers, garlic and onions and rinse with running water. Cut the carrots into strips and chop the onion in the same way. Cut the pepper into small cubes. We scald the plums, cut them, rub them through a sieve, carefully remove the pulp from the seeds - it is especially sour, and this is important for kharcho.

Heat the frying pan with oil and reduce the heat to moderate. Lay out the chopped vegetables, add plum puree and slightly diluted tomato. Simmer under the lid for up to half an hour, stirring occasionally, not allowing the sauté to burn.

Wash the rice until it completely drips from the colander. clear water. Shake off the remaining liquid to the last drop and, together with the sauté, add it to the broth. Grind the garlic, suneli hops and hot pepper cut into rings in a mortar. Season and add black pepper.

Cut the tomatoes into slices; for the beauty of the dish, do not remove the skin. Add to the soup and cook for no more than five minutes. Add any greens of your choice, add salt and turn off the heat.

Option 4: Beef kharcho soup with prunes

Nuts for this recipe are only walnuts, it is better not to add almonds, hazelnuts and peanuts at all. Use regular prunes; smoked ones give a unique flavor. To try, you can replace one dried berry with a smoked one, the taste of the soup will change, but it will still be more tender.

Ingredients:

• beef brisket or other part - 600 grams of pulp and 250 bones;
• 120 grams of rice;
• 150 grams of prunes and walnuts;
• six tomatoes and one large sweet pepper:
• medium sized white onion:
• half a head of garlic, a spoonful of peppercorns and a small hot peppercorn;
• suneli hops and mild spices - to taste.

Step by step recipe

Clean the meat, rinse and, after drying, cut into large pieces. Skim off the fat, lightly melt it with a teaspoon of butter in a cauldron, add the meat and brown it until moderate temperature. Remove from heat, let cool, add the seeds and pour in three liters of boiling water. Add peppercorns and bay leaves. Set the cauldron to high heat, after boiling, remove the foam with a slotted spoon, without removing the fat, and simmer for two and a half hours.

Finely chop the peeled onions, sweet and, separately, hot peppers, prunes, and tomatoes into different containers. Grind the nuts in a mortar or grind with a blender.

Quickly fry the onion, adding just a little oil, add both types of peppers, then the tomatoes. After cooling, it is also advisable to grind the sauteed mixture in a blender, or when preparing the products, try to grind them more strongly.

Cook the rice until slightly cooked; the grains should remain elastic; rinse thoroughly. Return the casserole with the finished broth to the stove, put the prunes in it and boil for a quarter of an hour, then, stirring slowly, add all the other products except cilantro and garlic, heat for another three minutes.

For more flavor, let the soup simmer for up to half an hour, covering the pot with a thick towel over the lid. Add grated garlic, cilantro, and other herbs if desired. It’s good if you let the soup brew for another hour, then serve, season with rich sour cream, you can serve pickled hot peppers separately.

Option 5: Beef kharcho soup with barley

The presence of cereals in kharcho causes a lot of controversy, but it makes the soup much more satisfying. Common types: oatmeal, rice and pearl barley. Giving preference to one of them is a matter of taste; we only note that the classic dish of Soviet times was prepared with pearl barley.

Ingredients:

• three beef ribs with pulp - about 800 grams;
• two onions, one tomato and one hot pepper;
• a slightly incomplete glass of pearl barley;
• chopped garlic and tomato paste - a tablespoon;
• a handful of chopped greens - cilantro and parsley;
• two spoons of Tkemali and one - a mixture of ground coriander, black pepper and dry adjika.

How to cook

Cook the beef by filling it with water to the top in a four-liter saucepan. The duration depends on the “age” of the meat and ranges from two hours or longer. Add the onion to the beef, washing it but not peeling it, just cut it with a cross to the middle.

Peel the second onion and cut it into quarter rings, brown it in butter and add the chopped tomato. For a colorful appearance of the finished dish, cut the tomato with the skin; if you don’t like this addition to the soup, remove it in any convenient way, you can also remove the seeds by rubbing on a sieve. Add tomato paste to the sauté, add an incomplete ladle of broth, simmer for up to a quarter of an hour.

Having taken out the onion, add the washed barley to the broth, cook for another hour and check the readiness of the cereal. If it is still damp, take out the meat, which should be completely boiled by this time, and continue to cook the barley over low heat.

Add sauteed sauce, sourish Tkemali sauce, salt and taste. Finely chop the hot pepper, garlic and herbs and place in a saucepan. After boiling for ten minutes, add spices to taste, heat for the same amount and turn off. It is recommended to insist on kharcho for no longer than an hour.

Option 6: Beef kharcho soup with pomegranate juice

Pomegranate juice adds a subtle aroma, barely noticeable tartness and slight sourness to the soup. As a rule, in addition to juice, neither plum puree nor Tkemali are added to kharcho. Regardless of whether you use canned or fresh juice, try to eat it fresh.

Ingredients:

• 400 grams of veal with bone;
• two tablespoons of raw “bellied” rice;
• one onion and one parsley root;
• a teaspoon of chopped garlic;
• a third of a glass of chopped nuts and a little less of pomegranate juice;
• large tomato;
• two tablespoons of aromatic oil;
• a mixture of red and black pepper, basil and ground coriander - a spoon without a slide;
• a quarter cup of a mixture of chopped parsley, fresh cilantro and dill;
• salt, a little suneli hop and bay leaf.

Step by step recipe

From the washed beef we cook a strong broth in one liter of purified water. Duration - one and a half to two hours, heating is moderate. It is advisable to add some salt to the broth and add an onion (not listed in the list of products).

Remove the cooked meat from the bone and cut into three pieces per serving, return back to the pan. Add repeatedly washed rice, reduce heat after boiling.

Peel the onion with the white root and finely chop it, sauté until deep brown, stirring. Rub the tomato, cut into slices, through a colander, remove large pieces of skin, and place the pulp in a sauté pan. After three minutes, add pomegranate juice, increase the heat and immediately turn off after boiling.

Grind the nuts in a mortar or grind them in a blender. Mix the nut mass with sauté and transfer to the soup. Cook until the rice softens and add spices and salt. We time it for five minutes and just before turning it off, add chopped herbs and garlic.

Option 7: Beef kharcho soup without frying

Soups without sautéing are recommended for people with digestive difficulties. It would seem that spicy dishes are already undesirable for them, but in fact, for most, it’s not the spices that bother them; you can add less of them, but the presence of fried vegetables. We offer you kharcho without these shortcomings.

Ingredients:

• beef ribs - 750 grams;
• two onions;
• six spoons of rice;
• one hundred grams of nuts;
• a head of garlic, small, and a hot pepper;
• a bunch of parsley and cilantro, in a ratio of 1:1;
• a spoonful of peppercorns and the same amount of ground paprika;
• three spoons of Tkemali and one of tomato paste;
• a spoonful of suneli hops, two bay leaves and coarse salt.

How to cook

We wash the chopped ribs, put them in a three-liter saucepan and fill it with water to the very top. Cook, skimming off the foam and covering loosely with a lid, for two hours. It is advisable to put a small onion and a small parsley root into the broth.

Dissolve the onion into thin slices, strain the cooked broth thoroughly and quickly heat to a boil. Cut the meat, removed from the bones, and put it in the broth along with the onions, set aside for 45 minutes. Meanwhile, rinse and lightly soak the rice, mix Tkemali, tomato and chopped hot pepper. Sort out the nuts and grind them in a mortar, gradually adding garlic and paprika to them.

Add rice to the broth, counting 10 minutes, season with spicy and nut mixtures. Stir, add salt, cook for another five minutes, then add the remaining spices - bay leaf and suneli hops. After another five minutes, season with chopped garlic and herbs, after a minute remove from heat and leave for half to one and a half hours.

Option 8: Beef kharcho soup in a slow cooker

If you ask people of the older generation which quick soup they remember better than others, the vast majority will undoubtedly remember concentrated kharcho. In just half an hour, a bag of food turned into a fragrant meat soup. We will cook from fresh ingredients, so it will take a little more time, but we hope the soup will be tastier.

Ingredients:

• young beef tenderloin - half a kilo;
• two red onions;
• 2/3 multi-cup rice cereal;
• one and a half tablespoons of tomato, a bunch of cilantro and half a head of garlic;
• salt and a mixture of aromatic peppers.

Step by step recipe

Wash the pulp, dry it, chop it into small pieces; Rinse the rice thoroughly and soak briefly; Peel the onion and garlic and rinse with water. Finely chop the vegetables, chop the garlic additionally with a knife, leaving one clove.

Quickly sauté the tomato on a spoon of oil in frying mode. Remove and cool the bowl, put all the ingredients and spices into it, mix gently, add water to the 2.2 liter mark. Close the lid, select one hour on the timer panel, and turn on soup cooking in the mode menu.

After the program is completed, squeeze out a clove of garlic, sprinkle with chopped herbs, serve sour cream, young onions, hot sauce or adjika with a portion of hot kharcho.

The historical homeland of Kharcho with rice and beef is considered to be sunny Georgia. It was there, among the mountain slopes of the Greater Caucasus, that this rich soup was born. Over time, the classic recipe for the favorite dish of the inhabitants of Transcaucasia spread throughout the world. Very often the recipe was modified, adapting to the traditions of local cuisine, and sometimes the composition of the transformed soup only vaguely resembled real Kharcho. It contained products uncharacteristic for Georgia, such as:

• carrot;
• potato;
• tomatoes.

But walnuts, tkemali plums and cilantro, on the contrary, disappeared.

The attitude towards the meat used also became more loyal; traditional beef at home began to be replaced with lamb, pork, poultry, and sometimes even fish.

In most cases, this was due to the lack of the necessary ingredients in the public market. Today, when the shortage of food has sunk into oblivion, everyone has the opportunity to prepare beef kharcho soup according to the traditional Georgian recipe.

Cooking kharcho is absolutely not difficult. To properly cook this southern dish, you only need to follow the culinary recommendations exactly. And to make your task easier, you can always use step by step recipe with photo.

Tkemali or tomato

Tkemali is a classic Georgian sauce, with an unusual piquant taste and spicy aroma, which is an essential ingredient in many national dishes. Real tkemali is prepared in Caucasian style from:

• sour cherry plum;
• cilantro;
• ombalo (mint growing near swamps);
• oregano;
• garlic;
• hot pepper.

The color of the finished sauce depends on the type of cherry plum used, and includes all shades of green, red and yellow.

Looking at the list of products used to prepare tkemali, it becomes clear that taste qualities it doesn't even remotely resemble tomato paste. That is why Georgian beef kharcho with tkemali and kharcho with tomatoes are 2 absolutely different dishes. What to give preference to and how best to make it depends only on the culinary preferences of the eaters. Everything is relative. Cooking does not tolerate restrictions and prohibitions and requires regular experiments.

Required Products

This recipe uses tomato paste as the main ingredient, and tkemali is simply a toning composite that makes it easy to enhance the taste of the finished dish.

Ingredients:

• beef – 0.5 kg;
• rice – 1 glass;
• tkemali – 2 tbsp. l.;
• granulated sugar – 1 tbsp. l.;
• hot pepper – ½ pod;
• salt - to taste;
• bay leaf – 1 pc.;
• tomato – 70 g;
• onion – 200 g;
• garlic – 4 cloves;
• walnut kernels – 100 g;
• khmeli-suneli – 1 s. l.;
• cilantro, parsley - a bunch;
• black peppercorns – 5 pcs.;
• water – 2.5 l.;
• carrots – 100 g;
• parsley root – 50 g;

Cooking method

Instructions with step-by-step photos.

The taste of kharcho soup largely depends on how well the broth is prepared. Therefore, this seemingly insignificant step should not be neglected.

When cooking meat, you need to remember one simple rule. If the goal is to prepare a rich, aromatic broth, then the meat is placed in cold water. And vice versa, if it is necessary to cook a piece of meat, preserving all the taste, then immerse it in liquid only after boiling.

1. 1. Step 1

Wash the meat, place it in a saucepan, fill it with water and put it on the fire. Usually the cooking process takes 1.5 -2 hours, during which time some of the liquid has time to boil away. So that at the end you don’t have to adjust the amount of broth by pouring out excess or, conversely, adding water, fill a 3-liter pan to about 2/3 of its volume.

Despite the fact that the basis classic recipe Kharcho soup does not include carrots; at home, when cooking the broth, add onion, carrots, parsley root and celery. If any ingredients are unacceptable to you, skip them. To ensure that the finished broth has a pleasant golden hue and the aroma of root vegetables is clearly visible in it, before putting the vegetables in the pan, bake them in a frying pan without oil, or directly on an electric burner to form a crispy crust. Don't forget the salt and peppercorns.

Try not to miss the moment when the broth boils. Too intense bubbling leads to its “washing out”; the liquid very quickly acquires an unpleasant cloudy hue with floating flakes and this is quite difficult to deal with. As soon as the liquid begins to boil, turn the heat to minimum; the boiling should be slow, almost invisible. Be sure to skim off any foam that forms while the beef is cooking.

1. 1. Step 2

Remove the boiled meat with a slotted spoon and cut into portions. Strain the broth through several layers of gauze to get rid of boiled vegetables, herbs and spices. Place everything back into the pan and bring to a boil again.

1. 1. Step 3

While the broth is boiling, peel the onion and cut it into thin half rings. Heat vegetable oil in a frying pan and fry the onion until transparent.

Add tomato paste and granulated sugar. Out of habit, it may seem that sugar is an absolutely unnecessary ingredient in the soup. There is no need to rush to conclusions; in this case, it does not play the role of a sweetener, but serves as a kind of flavor enhancer. 1 spoon of granulated sugar will not add any sweetness, but it will help the taste of tomato paste to fully reveal itself. Saute, stirring constantly for 1 - 2 minutes.

Add 100 ml of broth and leave to simmer for another 5 - 8 minutes. The longer the sauté is cooked, the more sour it will become.

1. 1. Step 4

Rinse the rice and immerse in boiling broth.

To prepare kharcho soup, choose round-grained varieties of rice that soften well during the cooking process. Krasnodar rice, or rice intended for risotto, is ideal for this purpose. But you will have to refuse long-grained, steamed ones. You should not give preference to rice for pilaf. In these cases, it will not be possible to give the soup the necessary thickness, even doubling the filling rate, because they do not contain a sufficient amount of starch.

1. 1. Step 5

After 10 minutes, add sauté to the cooking rice, turn the heat down and continue cooking.

1. 1. Step 6

Peel the walnuts and remove the partitions. You should have approximately 100 grams of kernels. Fry them in a frying pan without oil or in the oven for a few minutes.

Crush the cooled nuts in a stone mortar until a homogeneous, oily mixture is formed. Don't despair if in your arsenal kitchen utensils a much-needed item such as a mortar is missing. Nuts can be ground in a meat grinder or chopped in a blender. As a last resort, you can use the simplest method - grate it on a fine grater.

1. 1. Step 7

Peel the garlic. Finely chop and send to walnuts to thoroughly grind in a mortar.

Remove the seeds from the hot pepper and chop finely, then add it to the nut-garlic mixture.

1. 1. Step 8

7 - 10 minutes before the end of cooking, add the nut-garlic mixture, tkemali sauce, paprika and suneli hops to the soup. Fans of spicy food can supplement the list of necessary spices with ground red pepper. Continue cooking for another 10 minutes.

1. 1. Step 9

Finely chop the greens.

The most beloved greens in Georgia are cilantro and parsley. Both of these seasonings have a lot of beneficial properties, but perhaps the most important of them is the activation of the digestive process during digestion meat products. The basis of Caucasian cuisine is predominantly spicy meat dishes, each of which is certainly served with delicious cilantro. And the mountaineers know a lot about proper nutrition, it’s not for nothing that there are so many long-livers among them. Cilantro is not very popular among admirers of European and Slavic cuisines. The specific aroma requires gradual getting used to. Therefore, if you do not like its smell, feel free to replace it with dill, basil, parsley or green onions.

2-3 minutes before readiness, add chopped greens to the kharcho soup.

1. Step 10

After finishing cooking, cover tasty soup kharcho with a lid and let it brew for at least 20 minutes.

Serve to the table, sprinkled thickly with herbs.

Bon appetit.

Instead of an afterword

For those who do not accept soups without potatoes and carrots, I suggest not denying yourself the pleasure and supplementing the beef kharcho soup recipe with your favorite ingredients. This will only enhance the taste of the finished dish, although it will lose some of its Georgian flavor.

If you decide to cook kharcho with potatoes, place them before the rice. By the time you add the tomato sauté, the potatoes should be completely cooked. Otherwise it will remain damp. It is almost impossible to bring vegetables to readiness in an acidic environment, which is what tomatoes and tkemali are.