Not a single meat or fish dish in the Caucasus is complete without the famous tkemali sauce, which has become famous in this country and throughout the world, it is called the "national sauce of Georgia". Popular recipes from cherry plum for creating this seasoning for almost all dishes of Georgian cuisine will be described below.

How to cook cherry plum tkemali

This sauce is used, as a rule, to add special piquancy to meat. The cherry plum tkemali recipe is very simple, all the proportions of the ingredients can be changed according to personal taste: more, less pepper, garlic, add or remove some herbs. The beauty of cooking is that you can start making cherry plum sauce when the berries are still quite green. From this, the seasoning will become more piquant with a sour taste and color corresponding to the fruit.

Preparing cans

Making any sauce for closure requires sterilizing the cans. The easiest way to do this is using a microwave oven, especially if you will cover 2-3 pieces. To do this, you need to do the following:

1. Rinse the container well without detergents (you can use soda), dry it.
2. Pour 15 mm of water into the pan.
3. Put in the microwave. Set the power to 700-800 watts.
4. Run the oven for 3 minutes. Part of the water will evaporate and the cans are treated with steam, and additional sterilization will be carried out by microwave waves.

What you need for cooking

For the preparation of the sauce, the same set of ingredients is always used, but their quantity can be changed according to your personal preferences. The berry can be yellow, red or green for your choice. The recipe for making tkemali for 10 servings includes the following ingredients:

• cherry plum - 2.5 kg;
• salt, sugar - 1 tbsp. l .;
• water - 200 ml;
• garlic - 20 cloves;
• greens (mint, dill, basil, cilantro, adjika) - 150 grams;
• coriander (seeds) - 2 tsp

Tkemali sauce recipe at home

The tkemali recipe for the winter is slightly different from the classic version. You can cook this seasoning at home not only directly for eating, but also for canning (preparation). Some housewives close it in jars and use it when cooking red meat, fish, chicken. Recipe for tkemali cherry plum sauce for the winter:

Ingredients:

• yellow, red cherry plum (optional) - 1 kilogram;
• garlic - 5 cloves;
• hops-suneli - 1 tablespoon;
• fresh cilantro - 1 bunch;
• sugar - 1 tbsp. l .;
• salt - 2 tbsp. l .;
• ground red pepper - the taste.

Preparation:

1. Remove the seeds from the berries, and put the pulp with the skin in a deep saucepan.
2. Set on low heat, wait for the juice to come out.
3. Chop the garlic finely.
4. Add sugar, salt to the berries, throw in ground pepper, suneli hops, garlic.
5. Stir everything and simmer the sauce over low heat for 20 minutes.
6. Chop the cilantro, add to the dish, cook over the fire for another 30 minutes.
7. Pour into jars, roll up lids.

How to make tkemali from cherry plum in Georgian

The famous Georgian recipe tkemali is prepared on the basis of cherry plum. The color of the sauce will depend on the berry you are tying (green, red, yellow). Delicious, tart, aromatic seasoning emphasizes the taste of meat dishes. Sometimes, instead of cherry plum, you can use sour plum, and for a piquant taste - lemon balm or ombalo (wild mint with a lemon flavor). The cooking process is as follows:

Ingredients:

• garlic - ½ head;
• cherry plum fruits - 1 kg;
• spices (utskho-suneli, ground coriander) - 1 tbsp. l. everyone;
• salt - 1 tsp
• sugar - 2 tsp;
• hot chili pepper - 1 pc;
• herbs (cilantro, dill, ombalo) - 30 g each.

Preparation:

1. Pour half a glass of water into a saucepan, place the washed berries here, close the lid.
2. Turn on a low heat, cook for 20 minutes, the fruits should soften.
3. Place in a colander with small holes. Use a wooden spatula to rub the fruit well over a bowl. Only bones and peel should remain in the sieve. Throw away the waste.
4. Return the resulting puree back to the fire, it must be brought to a boil.
5. Turn off the burner and add coriander, sugar, salt, utsho-suneli.
6. Finely chop the greens, peel the seeds from the pepper, chop. Pass the peeled garlic through a press.
7. Add all prepared ingredients to the sauce, mix well.

Above, the classic Georgian version of the tkemal sauce was described, but you can prepare it from more familiar products. For this recipe you will need:

Ingredients:

• thyme - 1 bunch;
• cherry plum - 2 kg;
• garlic - 1 head;
• greens - 100 g;
• pepper, sugar, salt - to taste.

Preparation:

1. Put the berries in a saucepan, pour 100-200 ml of water into it, and immediately throw in the thyme.
2. Cook the contents for 15 minutes.
3. Let the fruits cool, rub them through a sieve to obtain a mushy composition, separation of the skin and seeds.
4. Cook the resulting mass over low heat for 60 minutes, skim off the foam regularly.
5. At the same time, wash, dry the herbs, peel the garlic. Chop them or grind them with a blender.
6. Add salt, pepper, sugar, herbs, garlic to the berry puree.

Red cherry plum tkemali recipe

The tkemali recipe can contain berries of different colors. Below there will be an option with red fruits, which will give a burgundy hue to the sauce. The procedure is as follows:

Ingredients:

• red berries - 2 kg;
• fresh water - 1 glass;
• tomatoes - 500 g;
• salt - 2 tbsp. l .;
• garlic - 6 cloves;
• hot pepper - 1 pc.;
• fresh mint - 4 branches;
• flower honey - 1 tbsp. l .;
• coriander - 30 g;
• sugar - 6 tbsp. l .;
• apple cider vinegar - 2 tsp;

Preparation:

1. Wash the berries well, remove the seeds, put the peeled fruits in a saucepan.
2. Add water to them, put on low heat, for 10 minutes. cook.
3. Grind the fruits into a saucepan through a colander to make a gruel and simmer again on a low boil.
4. Pass peeled garlic, red pepper, ripe tomatoes, herbs through a meat grinder.
5. Add the resulting mixture to a saucepan along with honey.
6. Add some vinegar, add salt, sugar, boil for 5-7 minutes.
7. Stir constantly to prevent the seasoning from burning.

Yellow cherry plum tkemali recipe

The color of the berries is not the most important condition in the recipe, but it significantly affects the final appearance of the seasoning. Below is the recipe for the yellow fruit sauce:

Ingredients:

• yellow berry - 3 kg;
• fresh water - 2 glasses;
• mint (fresh), dill - 250 g;
• cilantro - 300 g;
• vegetable oil;
• garlic - 4 cloves;
• spices;
• bitter red pepper - 2 pcs.;
• sugar - 1 tablespoon.

Preparation:

1. Wash and sort out the fruits, put in a saucepan, add filtered water. Simmer for 20 minutes.
2. Using a sieve or colander, grind the fruits until they are mushy to separate the seeds and rind.
3. Tie the dill in bunches, put together with salt and pepper in the berry mass.
4. Cook over low heat for 30 minutes.
5. Chop greens, garlic with a blender.
6. Take out the dill (carefully so as not to burn yourself), put the prepared herbs.
7. Simmer for 15 minutes.

Green cherry plum

You can start cooking tkemali already when the berries have just appeared. The immaturity of the fruit will give the sauce a sour taste. The recipe for green cherry plum tkemali is as follows:

Ingredients:

• salt, sugar - 1 tbsp. l .;
• green cherry plum - 2.5 kg;
• water - half a glass;
• garlic - 15 cloves;
• fresh greens - 100 g;
• bitter red pepper - 1 pc.;
• coriander (seeds) - 2 tsp

Preparation:

1. Wash the berries thoroughly, cover with water, cook for 20 minutes.
2. Pour the broth into a separate container, grind the berries through a sieve or colander with small holes.
3. Grind fine salt with coriander seeds with a blender, add herbs, peeled garlic there. You should get a homogeneous mass.
4. Transfer the resulting mass to the berry puree.
5. Throw in pepper, simmer for 3 minutes.
6. Taste, add spices, salt, if not enough.

Video: how to make cherry plum tkemali sauce

Any national cuisine is famous for its dishes. Each country has a different approach to food preparation. Chefs take these features into account, therefore, there are dishes that are the hallmark of a particular state. These include tkemali sauce. In Georgia, almost no meat dish is complete without it. It is served with chicken, kebabs, meat on a spit, fillets cooked in different ways. This sauce complements many pasta and potato dishes.

In the classic version, tkemali sauce is made from sour plums. In addition to them, garlic, pepper and a lot of greens are added to the sauce. Most often these are dill and cilantro.

A prerequisite is the addition of marshmint to the sauce. It is believed that without her, the preparation of the sauce cannot be completely completed. Swamp mint prevents plums from fermenting during the cooking process.

But there are rules and exceptions. Therefore, chefs often take the liberty of substituting some ingredients for others. For example, instead of plums, many take cherry plum - its sour relative. But this does not make the tkemali sauce worse, and it has many admirers all over the world.

Cherry plum tkemali sauce: the subtleties of cooking

• For the sauce, you can use cherry plum of any color: yellow, red, green. Since the cherry plum for the sauce is boiled and during the heat treatment it becomes four times less, you need to take care of its sufficient amount.
• Herbs and spices are added to the sauce, depending on the cherry plum variety. Yellow goes well with fresh herbs. Red sauce is best flavored with dried spices and herbs. Green cherry plum goes well with both fresh herbs and dry spices.
• If the hostess cannot get a swamp mint, then do not worry. The sauce can be prepared without it.
• Due to the large amount of citric acid in cherry plum, tkemali is well stored in a cold place. If there are no suitable storage conditions, then immediately after cooking, the sauce is poured hot into sterile dry jars and hermetically sealed.
• It is best to pack tkemali in small jars, so that by opening the jar in winter, the sauce can be quickly used.
• In addition to the natural preservative - citric acid, a large amount of garlic, pepper and salt is added to the sauce. All ingredients for it undergo thorough heat treatment in the form of cooking, so the sauce does not need to be sterilized. If all the rules of preparation are followed, and the finished product is packaged in sterile dry jars, then it is perfectly stored.

Tkemali sauce from yellow cherry plum for the winter

Ingredients:

• yellow cherry plum - 1 kg;
• garlic - 125 g;
• red pepper - 5 g;
• cilantro and dill greens - 150 g;
• salt - 50 g.

Cooking method

• Prepare half-liter jars in advance. To do this, first wash them with soda, and then sterilize them, not forgetting to process the lids.
• Sort the cherry plum fruits, remove the spoiled ones. Tear off the stalks. Wash thoroughly in plenty of cold water.
• Cut the cherry plum from one side and remove the seeds.
• Put the fruits in a saucepan, cover them with salt and leave for a while for the cherry plum to give juice.
• Put the pan on the fire and simmer the cherry plum with a low boil until softened. This may take you 30 minutes.
• Put the soft cherry plum in a sieve along with the broth. Wipe it into a saucepan. All the pulp will be in the bowl, and the skin will remain on the sieve.
• Boil cherry plum puree over low heat until sour cream is thick. The time spent on this will depend on the variety of cherry plum and its juiciness.
• While the cherry plum is cooking, chop the herbs and garlic.
• Add spices and pepper to the cherry plum at the very end of cooking. Mix well. Cook for 4-5 minutes.
• Remove from stove. Dispense immediately into warmed dry sterile jars and seal hermetically with sterile lids. It is advisable to cool it upside down, wrapped in a blanket.

Tkemali sauce from yellow or green cherry plum for the winter

Ingredients:

• green or yellow cherry plum - 5 kg;
• fresh cilantro - 2 bunches;
• cilantro seeds - 3 tsp;
• fresh fennel - 1 bunch;
• fresh mint - 2 bunches;
• dill greens - 2 bunches;
• garlic in heads - 5 pcs.;
• hot red pepper (ground) - to taste;
• salt - 2 tbsp. l .;
• sugar to taste;
• water - 1 tbsp.

Cooking method

• Sort out the cherry plum, remove the twigs and spoiled fruits. Also, there should be no wormy cherry plum. Wash the fruits thoroughly in plenty of cold water.
• Put cherry plums in a saucepan, pour water. Put on moderate heat and simmer until the fruit is soft.
• Transfer the boiled cherry plum to a colander, which is placed on a saucepan. Leave it in it to cool down a little. Now start rubbing it through a colander. The process is long, but it is worth it to suffer a little.
• After a while, only bones with a small amount of skin will remain in the colander, and in the pan there will be an excellent cherry plum puree.
• Then prepare herbs and spices. Chop the dill, fennel, mint, cilantro. Divide the garlic into cloves, peel, wash.
• Grind the cilantro seeds. You can use ground coriander instead (which is the same thing).
• Combine the garlic and herbs in a blender. Convert them into a homogeneous mass.
• Put the saucepan with cherry plum on low heat and bring to a boil. Add chopped herbs with garlic, as well as pepper, salt and sugar (if the cherry plum is very sour). Add some boiled hot water if needed. Cook over low heat for 30-40 minutes.
• At the end of cooking, scoop up a little sauce, cool, try to see if there is enough salt and pepper. If you add spices, then cook for another 10-15 minutes.
• While the sauce is cooking, you should prepare sterilized jars with lids. At the time of pouring the sauce into them, they must be hot, otherwise they may burst from the temperature drop.
• In a boiling state, pack the sauce into jars and immediately roll up tightly. Cool upside down under the covers.

Red cherry plum tkemali sauce for the winter

Ingredients:

• red cherry plum - 2 kg;
• garlic - 10 cloves;
• fresh cilantro - 1 bunch;
• hops-suneli - 2 tbsp. l .;
• sugar - 1-2 tbsp. l. (optional);
• salt - 2-3 tbsp. l .;
• ground red pepper to taste.

Cooking method

• Sort out cherry plums, remove fruits damaged by insects and rot. Wash thoroughly in cold water.
• Remove the seeds from the cherry plum.
• Put the prepared cherry plum in a saucepan, salt, and leave until the juice is released.
• Put the saucepan on low heat and cook the cherry plum until soft.
• Put the slightly cooled mass in a blender and chop until puree.
• Transfer it to a saucepan again and bring to a boil over moderate heat.
• Peel the garlic cloves, wash. Pass through a cooking press. Chop the greens. Combine with cherry plum. Put pepper, suneli hops, sugar here. Stir. Cook everything together for 15 minutes.
• Fill hot in sterile dry jars. Seal with sterile caps. Turn upside down, wrap with a blanket and cool.

Note to the hostess

Dry spices can be used instead of fresh herbs. In this case, they are ground into powder and added 15-20 minutes before the end of cooking.

Tkemali sauce can be stored without sealing. Hot sauce is poured into jars and cooled. Close with normal lids and store in the refrigerator. In this case, there must be enough salt in the sauce so that it does not turn sour.

Georgian tkemali sauce - real, correct - is prepared from yellow cherry plum. Of course, they also cook from green, and even from plums it turns out well, but still the classic of the genre is yellow cherry plum, and it is rather sour, more sour than green. However, the sour taste of the tkemali base is not at all a hindrance.

Depending on the additives (fresh herbs and dry spices), the flavor of the cherry plum sauce will also differ. Georgians add ombalo - weed that is difficult to find here. But we have cilantro. It is difficult to imagine Georgian tkemali without cilantro, garlic and hot pepper - use them without fail. The rest is up to you and for those who like to experiment with the tastes of classic dishes.

Ingredients

• cherry plum small 700 gr
• red basil 1 bunch
• cilantro to taste
• parsley
• hot pepper 1 pc.
• garlic 2-3 cloves
• salt 0.5 tbsp. l.
• sugar 4-5 tbsp. l.
• cumin 1 tsp
• hops suneli 1 tsp

How to cook yellow cherry plum tkemali

The first thing to do is to thoroughly wash all the ingredients, which is important in preservation. Put cherry plum in a saucepan, pour half a glass of water. Turn on medium heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes to soften the plum. Then remove the saucepan from the stove, cover with a lid, let it stand for 10 minutes.

Use a metal sieve to wipe down the entire drain. Pour the liquid in which the cherry plum was cooked into mashed potatoes.
(And the cake will not disappear. Pour boiling water over it, add sugar and get a compote.)

Since cherry plum is a rather sour variety of plums, add sugar to it, stir and put it on the stove again to cook. Violent boiling should not be, it is better to immediately put on a small fire.

Meanwhile, finely chop the purple basil, cilantro and parsley, chop the garlic and hot peppers.

The aroma and taste of the sauce will be imparted not only by herbs, but also by dry spices. A lot depends on flavorings: try others and you get a completely different taste of tkemali.

Cook, stirring constantly, for another 5-10 minutes, put herbs and spices in the sauce. Fall asleep in portions and be sure to taste to determine the correct concentration of aromas for yourself. Add salt and sugar if necessary.

The consistency of cherry plum turns out to be non-liquid, plus, when it cools well, it thickens a little more. If you want to get even thicker, try boiling the tkemali by keeping it on the stove for an additional 10-15 minutes.

Pour the finished cherry plum tkemali sauce into small, pre-sterilized jars. It is good to use jars with screw caps.

Tightly twist and turn the cans, wrap them with a towel until they cool completely.

You can store yellow cherry plum tkemali sauce in a cool pantry and refrigerator. It can be kept at room temperature for a short time, provided that the sauce is quickly used up.

I would like to offer a recipe for Georgian sauce made from yellow cherry plum, which has been proven and immediately loved in our family. Thanks to the natural acid of stone fruits, the sauce is safely preserved without additional preservatives - no vinegar, citric acid, or sterilization are needed. In a sealed form, the workpiece does not lose its taste at room temperature, and a standard city pantry is quite suitable for stocks. In this way, we prepare tkemali with the participation of sweet plums, from red cherry plum, as a result, the shade and concentration of sourness change.

To prepare the Georgian tkemali sauce from yellow cherry plum for the winter, we will take the products from the list.

We wash the cherry plum in cold water, put it in a cooking container: a saucepan or a basin. Knead slightly so that the juice appears faster, put on an overhead fire.

Cook for the first 20 minutes.

Squeeze through a colander and separate the skin with seeds.

We return the homogeneous puree to the fire, boil for the next 10 minutes without additives. Then add sugar, salt, hot pepper, suneli hops, taste - adjust to taste.

Add chopped garlic and cook for the last 5-10 minutes.

Fill sterile jars with sauce, seal, cool without wrapping.

We store the Georgian yellow cherry plum tkemali sauce in the pantry, buffet. Opening - we leave on the shelf of the refrigerator, serve with poultry, meat, bread cakes - bon appetit!

Cherry plum tkemali sauce - recipe for the winter:

And here is our main "heroine" - a small yellow-red cherry plum. Gardeners sometimes call it “typical” or “wild” cherry plum, as it is rarely used for the preparation of dessert dishes - it is too small, and it will not be possible to separate the bone just like that. Of course, in the Caucasus, a special plum of the same name grows for this sauce, but it is not found in our latitudes, so we successfully replace it with a more affordable variety. We sort out the cherry plum, wash it under running water, remove, if necessary, leaves, stalks, and other debris. We put the cherry plum in a saucepan, at the bottom of which we pour a little water (no more than half a glass).

We put on the stove under the lid on minimum heat. The water at the bottom of your saucepan will boil, from hot boiling water and steam, the fruits will begin to heat up, the thin tender peel will burst, the pulp will boil and juice will stand out. This is what we need!

When you see that the skins on the cherry plum have practically all separated from the fruits themselves, and the pulp turns into a mushy mixture, you can discard the hot mass from the cherry plum into a colander and rub through the holes. We leave the bones and skins in a colander, which gave our sauce a beautiful ruby ​​hue. If you use yellow cherry plum, you will end up with mustard or brown sauce.

From our amount of cherry plum, quite a lot of juice with pulp turned out - now we put it on fire and boil it. The cooking time for cherry plum for making tkemali sauce depends on how juicy the plum was and on the desired thickness of the sauce. Do not leave the saucepan with cherry plum, stir all the time, especially in the last stages of boiling, when the usual "gurgling" turns into the "puffing" stage.

We boil down the mass by exactly half the volume, or, if desired, even more. The ideal consistency of the sauce is like thick sour cream.

We begin to season the cherry plum tkemali sauce without stopping the boiling process. Add salt, sugar and hot / hot red pepper. You can also adjust the portion of sugar to your liking, as your plum may be sweeter or sour. Dissolve all crystalline ingredients, mix.

Finely grind the bay leaf, coriander, cumin into powder in a coffee grinder and add the aroma set to the sauce, stir, cook for 5 minutes.

At the last stage, squeeze the garlic cloves into the sauce, cook for another 5 minutes.

Since we are preparing cherry plum tkemali sauce for the winter, prepare sterilized small jars and lay out hot tkemali in portions, close. You don't need to add any vinegar, the plum contains enough natural acid to help it preserve on its own.

Our homemade cherry plum tkemali sauce is ready for the winter!

And in winter, you just have to chop fresh cilantro, as the most suitable fresh greens for tkemali, or dill with parsley, mix with our plum preparation and serve a wonderful sauce on the table.