Georgian cuisine is famous for many delicious dishes: shashlik, chanakhi, khinkali, and, of course, kharcho soup. And today we will share simple recipes for its preparation.

But first, let us recall that kharcho is a national Georgian soup made from beef with rice and walnuts on a special acidic base - dried plum-tkemali or tklapi. The soup is very spicy, spicy, with an abundance of garlic and herbs, and is much thicker than other soups, to which the rule "the soup should be half the liquid" applies.

However, in everyday cuisine, it is allowed to replace tklapi (a piece of which is broken off from its huge crust - lavash, soaked and added to kharcho, or other dishes; in kharcho recipes you can often find - "tklapi, a piece like a palm") with fresh cherry plum, tkemali sauce , pomegranate juice or tomatoes and tomato paste. Also now kharcho soup is made from various meats: pork, lamb, veal, and even poultry.

So, let's start cooking!

Real kharcho soup

To make real kharcho soup, you will need such Ingredients:

hops-suneli - 2 tsp

garlic - 3-4 teeth.

onions - 1-2 pcs.

sauce (tkemali or satsibeli) - 150 gr.

walnuts - 100 gr.

rice (long grain) - 200 gr.

beef - 500 gr.

hot red pepper - to taste

salt to taste

greens to taste

Cooking method:

Cut the meat into small pieces, add water and cook for 1 hour.

Rinse the rice and put in the prepared broth for 10 minutes.

Fry the onions until golden brown and add to the soup.

Grind the nuts in a blender and add to the soup too.

Add sauce (tkemali).

Add hop-suneli seasoning, salt, pepper, to taste. Add the garlic squeezed through the garlic. Cook for 5-7 minutes. The soup is ready!

Megrelian kharcho with walnuts

To prepare Megrelian kharcho with walnuts, you will need such Ingredients:

beef (not very fatty, but not entirely lean) - 1 kg

onions (medium size) - 2-3 pcs.

tomato - 400 gr.

walnuts - 350 gr.

spices (hops and utskho suneli, ground coriander) - 1 dess. l.

saffron (Imeretian, in the absence of you can skip) - 1 tsp.

garlic - 4-5 teeth.

corn flour (can be replaced with half a tablespoon of wheat flour) - 1 tbsp. l.

butter - 50 gr.

hot red pepper - to taste

salt to taste

Cooking method:

Cut the meat into small pieces. Dice the onion. Tomatoes, if used fresh, pour over with boiling water, peel, cut into small pieces, can be broken in a blender. You can use canned chunks in your own juice.

Put the meat in a saucepan, add a little (so as not to cover the pieces) water and simmer until half cooked. When the water has evaporated, add oil and onions, fry together until almost completely cooked, if it is very dry, you can add a few tablespoons of water.

In the meantime, you can cook spices and nuts. Put everything together in a blender, add a little salt and beat.

Put the resulting fragrant oily mass in a bowl, add 1 tbsp. corn flour (to add thickness, corn flour can be replaced with a smaller amount of wheat flour, but corn flour is suitable for nuts in its structure, so it is better to put it all the same). Mix well and set aside for a while.

Add tomatoes to the meat fried with onions, add about a glass of water, salt and continue cooking until the meat is completely cooked. This will take no more than 7 minutes.

Crush the garlic in a press or grind in a mortar. Nearby is the pepper that is used in this kharcho.

Dilute the nut mass with water, make sure that there are no lumps, the density should be like liquid sour cream, and pour it into the finished meat. While stirring, bring to a boil, add garlic and pepper. The amount of pepper is regulated by taste (it should be remembered that real Megrelian kharcho should be sharp, like a razor blade, but this is individual), let it boil again and turn it off. Kharcho is ready!

Beef kharcho

To make beef kharcho, you will need such Ingredients:

beef (lean brisket) - 1 kg

rice - 1/2 stack.

tomato - 3 pcs.

onions - 3 pcs.

lemon juice - 2 tbsp. l.

garlic - 2 teeth.

black pepper - to taste

bay leaf - 1 pc.

parsley - 1 bunch

tomato paste - 2 tbsp l.

hops-suneli - to taste

salt to taste

butter - for frying

Cooking method:

Rinse the brisket, cut into pieces, pour 4 liters of water. Boil until tender with a low boil, removing the resulting foam and fat.

Chop the onion and fry in butter. Add tomato paste to the onion, sauté.

Add washed rice to the broth 20 minutes before the meat is ready. Pour the tomatoes over with boiling water and remove the skin, then finely chop into cubes. Combine the tomatoes with finely chopped herbs, squeezed garlic, salt, pepper, suneli hops and squeezed lemon juice.

Add the sautéed onion and bay leaf to the broth, bring to a boil. After boiling, put the seasoned tomatoes into the soup. Bring to a boil again, turn off the gas and insist under the lid for 20 minutes.

Kharcho soup with chicken

To make kharcho soup with chicken, you will need such Ingredients(products are indicated for 3 liters of water):

chicken breast - 1 pc.

rice - 1/2 stack.

garlic - 2-3 teeth.

tkemali sauce - 3-5 tbsp l.

onion (medium) - 1 pc.

ketchup (tomatoes can be used) - 3 tbsp. l.

hops-suneli - to taste

parsley to taste

Cooking method:

Put the chicken breast to cook, salt. After 15 minutes (30 minutes before the end) put the washed rice, finely chopped onion.

After another 20 minutes (10 minutes before the end of cooking) add chopped garlic, tomato sauce (or tomatoes), tkemali sauce (green or red), suneli hops, bay leaf. Pepper (it turns out sharper with ground black pepper than with peppercorns). Taste, add salt or pepper if necessary. Add chopped parsley at the very end.

Kharcho soup in Ukrainian style

To make kharcho soup in Ukrainian, you will need such Ingredients(products are indicated for 5 liters of water):

meat (beef, pork, chicken) - 2 kg

pork ribs (smoked) - 200-300 gr.

onion - 1 pc.

carrots - 1 pc.

potatoes - 2-3 pcs.

rice - 0.5 cups

walnuts - 1 glass

garlic - 2 teeth.

tomato paste - 2 tbsp l.

greens to taste

salt to taste

Cooking method:

Cook the broth in a saucepan - two types of meat are required (beef, pork or chicken), as well as smoked ribs.

Remove the boiled meat, remove it from the bones, cut it, lightly fry it and throw it back into the broth.

Cut the onion there and add 0.5 mill of rice.

Boil 2-3 medium potatoes, then mash them in mashed potatoes.

Salt, pepper (not everyone can eat spicy, so red pepper is added individually to everyone's plate).

While the rice is being cooked, frying is done - onions, carrots, tomato paste.

Put frying in the finished soup, then a glass of walnuts, ground in a blender, 2-3 cloves of garlic and herbs to taste. Let it boil for 5 minutes. Kharcho is ready!

The recipe for real Georgian kharcho soup

Georgian cuisine is very diverse and original. Caucasian highlanders are famous for their hospitality, abundant food and love for all kinds of spices. Most of their national dishes are spicy and very satisfying. Poultry, lamb and beef dishes are very common. One of these dishes is kharcho soup, which has become a frequent guest on the tables of Russians.

Classic kharcho, the pride of Georgian cuisine, must necessarily include tklapi (dried plum puree), beef and rice, onions, garlic, spices and spice khmeli-suneli. Georgian dressing tklapi is a must for real Georgian kharcho, however you can replace it with tkemali sauce, pomegranate juice, tomato paste, tomatoes or fresh cherry plum. At the moment, housewives rarely use nuts, because they taste very specifically with a spicy soup. In everyday cuisine, it is quite possible to replace beef with pork, lamb or poultry.

Classic Georgian kharcho recipe

Ingredients:
400 g beef (tenderloin)
100 g rice
80 g walnuts (kernels)
onions - 1 pc.
garlic - 2 cloves
120-150 ml tkemali sauce
2 tsp adjika
dill - 1 bunch
cilantro - 1 bunch
1.5 teaspoons of salt
1 tbsp. spoon hops-suneli
ground black pepper (to taste)
vegetable oil (for frying)

How to cook classic kharcho:

Rinse the beef tenderloin, pat dry on a paper towel and cut into small pieces. Pour about 4 liters of water into a large saucepan, add the pieces of meat and cook for 1 hour.

In the meantime, prepare all the other ingredients for the soup. Wash onions, peel, cut into half rings and fry in a pan in vegetable oil until golden brown. Grind the walnut kernels in a mortar. Rinse the rice in cold water. Rinse the dill and cilantro and chop finely. Peel and crush the garlic cloves with a garlic press.

Prepare Georgian tkemali sauce. If you do not have this sauce, then you can easily replace it with 4 tbsp. l. tomato paste.

Put the rice in a boiling broth and boil for 5 minutes, then add walnuts, onions, tkemali sauce, mix all the ingredients well and cook for 5 minutes. Now you can add salt, adjika and suneli hops.

At the very end of the preparation of the soup, add finely chopped herbs and garlic to it, then stir, turn off the heat and let the soup brew under a closed lid for about 10 minutes. Ready spicy Georgian kharcho soup can be served at the table.

Spicy kharcho in Megrelian style

In consistency, it resembles not a soup, but a sauce in which you can dip bread.

Ingredients:
1 kg beef (brisket)
onion - 1 pc.
garlic - 2 cloves
80 g walnuts (kernels)
2 tbsp. tablespoons of cornmeal
1 tbsp. a spoonful of red wine vinegar
bay leaf - 1 pc.
red hot pepper - 12 pcs.
1 teaspoon ground saffron
1 teaspoon ground coriander seeds
1 teaspoon of utskho suneli seasoning
salt (to taste)

How to cook Megrelian kharcho:

Rinse the brisket, dry, chop into small pieces, then put in a saucepan, cover completely with water and put on fire. Peel and finely chop the onions. Once the water in the saucepan is boiling, add the onion and bay leaf. Reduce the fire to a minimum and simmer the meat in a saucepan without a lid until the liquid has completely boiled away.


Pour 500 ml of water into a saucepan, bring to a boil. At this point, the meat will begin to separate from the bones.

Mix finely ground corn flour with chopped walnuts, crushed garlic, spices, finely chopped pepper, then salt.

Separate ½ part of the broth from the pan, cool and dilute the nut mixture with it. The result is a sauce that needs to be mixed well.

Add the cooked sauce to the finished meat, cook for about 5 more minutes, and then remove from heat. Megrelian kharcho soup is usually served with gomi (corn porridge), which can neutralize the very spicy taste of kharcho.

Not soup-kharcho, but kharcho!
(The process of making kharcho in the illustrations)

. Prepared kharcho, photographed and described the process - Alex

So, we are preparing Kharcho. Not soup-Kharcho, but simply - Kharcho. Just like Borsch or Shchi, not soup-Borscht or soup-Shchi ... Kharcho is a soup that tastes a bit like pickle, but there are a lot of spices, and the taste turns out to be very exotic (for those who do not eat it everyday). I warn you, if you cook exactly according to the recipe, it will turn out delicious. And vice versa - if you want tasty - then cook according to the recipe.

Ingredients for 4 liters of cold clean water: 1.5 kg. beef brisket. 4 large onions, 3-4 cloves of garlic, half a cup of raw rice, a glass of peeled walnuts, corn flour - 1 tbsp. spoon. If there is no corn corn, in extreme cases, you will get by with the usual one. Fresh herbs: cilantro, parsley, basil, dill - one small bunch each. 2nd bunch of dill - for decorating a ready-made dish. Seasonings: hops-suneli (1 teaspoon), hot and sweet red pepper (dried, ground) - a little less than a teaspoon of each, bay leaf - 2-3 leaves, 10-12 black peppercorns, turmeric (half a teaspoon), cinnamon (half a teaspoon). And if there is a parsley root - great. No - so no. Two tablespoons of tkemal sauce (if thick), if thin - a little less than half a glass. If there is no tkemali, then exactly half a glass of pomegranate juice (either freshly squeezed, or, at worst, a good store-bought one).

Money breakdown(Irkutsk prices January 2008) for about 15-20 servings.

Meat 1.6 kg - 200 rub.
seasonings - all together about 70-80 rubles.
tkemali - a bottle of about 200 grams - 40 r. (or pomegranate juice - 70 rubles for 0.5 l)
onions - 1kg - 40 r.
rice - half a glass - about 5 p.
a pack of butter - 40 r.
all greens - 70 r.
walnut, glass - 35 r.

Total, approximately: 500 - 540 p.

Process:

Pour 4-4.5 liters of cold water into a large saucepan and put the chopped brisket in large (or not so) pieces. Begins to boil - put on a small fire and remove the foam that appears. We shoot with high quality. We mark the time from the moment of boiling. While everything is cooking, sauté the onion (of course, chop it finely - 4 large onions). Saute the onion strictly in butter with corn flour (100-150 grams of butter and 1 tablespoon of flour). After two hours, we take out the pieces of meat and put raw and already, of course, washed rice into a saucepan, and salt - 1 tbsp. a spoonful of salt. We turn on the fire, let it boil. Separate the meat from unnecessary veins, fat, etc., cut into small pieces. We save meat, but fat, veins, bones, etc. - a dog. Now the race starts: 10 minutes after adding rice (half a glass) you need to pour nuts into the pan (1 glass of peeled halves), fried onions, crushed (crushed) peas (black, of course) - about 10 peas. And parsley root (whole 1 root), if any.

5 minutes after falling asleep the nuts, pour out the tkemal sauce (two tablespoons) or pomegranate juice - half a glass - in a saucepan, pour a teaspoon of hops-suneli, a little less than a teaspoon of red hot pepper, the same amount of sweet pepper, half a teaspoon of cinnamon and half a teaspoon of turmeric. Fill in finely chopped parsley (greens). And pour out the cut pieces of meat. After another five minutes, turn off the stove, pour out the rest of the finely chopped greens (dill, basil and cilantro), garlic squeezed through a garlic press (or very finely chopped). We taste the broth, add salt, if necessary, and cover with a lid for 15-20 minutes. Ready. When the kharcho is poured into a plate, decorate it with a sprig of dill.

Do you want to properly cook the classic and also very tasty kharcho soup at home. Then this very simple way will help you to realize the conceived idea.

Cooking time - 15 minutes.

The preparation time for the ingredients is 40 minutes.

After cooking, you will receive - 12 servings of 250 gr.

Nutritional value per 100 grams:

Ingredients

• Beef - 500 grams.
• Tomatoes - 300 grams.
• Carrots - 170 grams.
• Onions - 120 grams.
• Round grain rice - 100 gr.
• Garlic - 2 cloves.
• Tomato paste - ½ tablespoon.
• Vegetable oil - 2 tablespoons.
• Hops-suneli seasoning - 1 heaped teaspoon.
• Salt - 1 tbsp l.
• Bay leaf - 2 pieces.
• Allspice - 3 peas.
• Ground black pepper - to taste.
• Filtered water - 2 liters.
• Fresh dill - one small bunch.

Recipe

1. Preparing meat for a rich broth.

   

   The secret of delicious kharcho is fresh and young beef. It is best to buy it on the market where it is sold chilled from the seller, be sure to ask the quality certificate.

2. We wash the meat from excess blood, then cut into large pieces so that the beef is quickly cooked. Put it in a saucepan, pour in filtered water, cover with a lid and set to cook.

   When the water begins to boil in the pan, foam appears, which will need to be removed immediately until it boils completely.

   Having done the above steps, we reduce the power of the burner by one, salt, add bay leaf and allspice. Cover with a lid and cook until cooked for 40 minutes.

   

3. We wash the carrots, remove the peel with the housekeeper, rinse again, cut into small cubes, look at the step-by-step photo.

   

4. Peel the onions, cut them into small cubes.

   

5. Pour vegetable oil into the pan, add onions and carrots. Fry vegetables on a high power burner with constant stirring until golden brown.

   

6. We wash the tomatoes, then put them in a deep container, fill them with boiling water and set them aside for 2 minutes. We do this procedure in order to remove the peel from the tomato.

   

7. Easily remove the peel and cut into cubes.

   

8. On the remaining spicy oil from fried vegetables, add tomatoes with tomato paste.

   

9. Rinse round grain rice several times until the liquid brightens.

   

10. Remove the husk from the garlic and cut it into thin rings.

    

11. We take out the meat from the broth, cool it and cut it into a medium cube. We also catch bay leaves, sweet peas, since the broth has already absorbed the spicy aroma of spices, and finally we filter it through a fine sieve.

    

12. Put the fried vegetables, beef in a saucepan with broth, bring to a boil, add rice and hop-suneli seasoning. Cook the soup until tender for 15 minutes.

    

13. Five minutes before the end of cooking kharcho, add chopped garlic, sautéed tomatoes and sprinkle with black pepper.

    

If desired, you can include walnuts in the composition. They must first be fried in order to get rid of the bitterness and add at the end of cooking the soup.

We serve real spicy kharcho soup for lunch or dinner, sprinkled with fresh herbs.

Many have heard of such a dish as kharcho soup. Many have tried it and know that this soup is very spicy and thicker than ordinary soups. He comes from Georgia and is cooked from beef. While the recipe for the soup may vary slightly depending on where it comes from, the essence remains the same. Now I will tell you the recipe for kharcho soup, real, such as is cooked in Georgia, from ancient times.

Lots of spices, herbs and garlic, rice, walnuts and tkemali are essential components of real kharcho. Of course, now you can find recipes for this soup from any meat. Not only lamb or pork is involved, but even poultry.

But the very name of the soup when translated contains a clear indication - beef soup. Therefore, kharcho made according to a traditional recipe will certainly be with a large fatty piece of beef.

Tkemali is such a sour cherry plum that sets the tone for the whole soup. Of course, you can take tomato paste instead. But this will already be a deviation from the traditional recipe.

Another option is tklapi, large dried pieces of mashed dogwood pulp or the same tkemali. They are also called lavash, although this is not bread at all. They have a sour taste and may well be used to make kharcho.

As for walnuts, in the Caucasian countries they are used in most dishes, so why should kharcho be an exception?

Soup-kharcho is brewed for a long time and does not tolerate haste. If you want to cook a good kharcho, take enough time for it or don't take it at all.

SOUP KHARCHO.

For cooking you will need:

Vegetables - onions, garlic and carrots
herbs (parsley, dill, cilantro, mint),
tkemali or other acidic base,
spices,
rice,
walnuts,
a piece of beef.

Cooking process:

Traditionally, fatty meat and brisket are used for kharcho. But you can take a piece on the bone, it will also give enough fat and a good broth. And it should be just beef, not veal, old meat is better than young meat. The meat should be cooked straight with a whole piece, for this you will have to take a large saucepan and at least 1.5 liters of water. The cooking time for meat is no less than 2 hours. It is important to make a broth with a good broth, strong and thick.

The finished meat must be taken out onto a dish without turning off the pan, remove the bones and cut the meat into pieces. You can, of course, and into small, but it is better to cut into large pieces, such that just for a portion. The pieces are returned to the broth on the fire.

Next comes the turn of vegetables. In fact, in the Caucasus, they cook kharcho without carrots, but you can take it at will, it's not scary. So, peel and chop the carrots and onions. Carrots - in cubes, and onions - in strips, thinly and preferably not across the fibers, but along. Then, during the cooking process, the onion will not boil down into a mass.

The next step is perhaps the most important part of the whole preparation. An acidic base is added to the broth (which is still boiling over the fire), that is, fresh tkemali or in the form of mashed potatoes. In a proportion of 2 liters of kharcho, you need 2 tablespoons of mashed potatoes or at least 100 grams of pitted plums.

Well, if you add sour lavash tklapi, then we take a piece of about 10 × 10 cm. You need to soak it first. Well, and if there are no plums, no mashed potatoes, no lavash, you will have to limit yourself to tomato paste. The main thing is to make the broth taste rather sour.

Now you should let the soup boil again, wait 5 minutes and add the carrot cubes. After boiling it for 10 minutes, add the onion and after boiling, cook for another 30 minutes, covering with a lid and reducing the heat to a low boil.

During this time, you can have time to prepare a dressing of nuts. Half a glass of kernels, carefully sorted out, peeled from partitions and shells, is enough. For the best taste, it is advisable to fry them a little in a dry frying pan. After that, the walnuts are ground until a little nut butter appears, and the nuts themselves turn into a homogeneous mass. You can also add and grind peeled garlic there. But you can also grate it separately on a grater or with a garlic crusher.

After half an hour after adding the onion and boiling, put long-grain rice in the soup, since it boils better and does not stick together. The rice will cook for 10 minutes. Then the garlic and walnut dressing is added. We haven't forgotten about spices, we just need to add them at the last moment. 15 minutes after adding the garlic-nut mass, proceed to the spices.

Traditionally, large quantities of coriander are added to kharcho soup. Peas must first be chopped, but coarsely. It costs less than a teaspoon to take them. Then saffron, hot peppers, bay leaves, dry herbs (dill, basil).

Hot pepper is added to taste. It is worth boiling the kharcho for about 5 more minutes, let everything be saturated with spice. But here you already need to carefully look so that the soup does not burn, because it is already very thick. Therefore, we make a low heat and stir from time to time.

Add fresh finely chopped greens, preferably more than less. The usual set is dill, cilantro, parsley, mint can be used. Cook for a couple of minutes and turn it off. Now let the kharcho infuse, at least 5 minutes, but it would be better for a longer time. After that, the kharcho is ready.

The ingredients are indicated conditionally, since it all depends on how much soup you will cook, the most important thing is to remember the kharcho soup should be thick.