Lecho with tomato paste: recipe. Ingredients for lecho

2024 Author: Isabella Gilson | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 03:14

Classic lecho is the most famous dish in Hungarian cuisine. But many people liked this unpretentious vegetable mixture so much that now it is prepared by housewives of any country in the world. There are hundreds of different recipes for its preparation, but all of them are united by the presence of three main components: sweet peppers, tomatoes and onions. However, you can try to make lecho with tomato paste.

The easiest way

Looks like this lecho is not quite usual. After all, only 2 kilograms of sweet pepper and a sauce made from the following products are used for its preparation: 0.5 kilograms of tomato paste, water, 35 grams of s alt, 10 peas of allspice, 125 grams of sugar, a couple of bay leaves, 0.5 cups of any vegetable oil and 30 grams of 9% table vinegar.

The scheme for cooking lecho with tomato paste is as follows:

1. Make sauce. To do this, in a spacious container, dilute the paste with plain water so that the total volume of liquid is 1.5 liters. Add sugar, butter, spices, s alt, put on high heat and boil.
2. Rinse the pepper well, peel completely from the seeds and cut randomly into large pieces. Throw them into the sauce and cook, stirring constantly, for 15 minutes.
3. Pour vinegar, boil everything together for another 5 minutes.
4. Pour the finished product into jars, roll up, wrap tightly and leave in this position until the final cooling.

The mixture is tender, soft and very appetizing.

Variations of Russian housewives

Russian housewives have always tried to add a twist to any standard recipe. In this case, they came up with the idea of making lecho with tomato paste and carrots.

In this regard, the set of initial components has changed somewhat: 3 kilograms of pepper requires 1 kilogram of carrots, a liter jar of tomato paste, 250 grams of sugar, 35 grams of s alt and 1 glass of vegetable oil and 9% vinegar.

Preparing a new mixture as follows:

1. Mix all ingredients except vegetables in a separate saucepan and bring to a boil over medium heat.
2. Washed and de-seeded pepper cut into medium-sized strips. Peel and chop carrots. For this, it is better to use a coarse grater.
3. Throw the prepared vegetables into the boiling mixture and cook for 8-10 minutes.

Further, the procedure with seaming and cooling is repeated. This option is somewhat different from the others, but for a Russian gourmet, it is the most acceptable because of the presence of familiar products.

It tastes even better with the onion

Each product changes the dish in its own way. Onions, for example, make lecho withtomato paste is more tender, fragrant and not so sharp. And if you add a few more tomatoes, then the product will taste even better.

For this option, the following ratio of ingredients is suitable: 3 kilograms of sweet pepper, 1 kilogram of onions and carrots, a half-liter jar of tomato paste and 0.5 kilograms of tomatoes, 0.5 cups of sugar, 100 grams of vegetable oil, 60 grams of s alt and 5 sprigs of cloves.

You will need to cook using the following technology:

1. Rinse and chop vegetables: grated carrots, cut tomatoes into 6 pieces, onion into half rings, and pepper into strips.
2. Put the prepared products in an enameled container. Add sugar, s alt, oil, cloves, put the resulting mixture on fire. To prevent the mass from burning, it must be constantly stirred.
3. 35 minutes after boiling, add tomato paste, cook for another half an hour until cooked.

The cooked product will make a wonderful cold appetizer.

Simplified version

There is a recipe according to which an analogue of the Hungarian dish is prepared without much hassle at all.

The main components of this unusual lecho: tomato paste, pepper and spices. A detailed list of products is as follows: 1 jar (500 grams) of tomato paste, 3 kilograms of bell pepper, ½ cup of any vegetable oil, 110 grams of sugar, 35 grams of vinegar and a little s alt.

The whole cooking process takes no more than an hour. To do this, you need:

1. Rinse the pepper, remove the core, and then cut into large pieces into 4-6 pieces.
2. Make a sauce with butter, sugar, pasta and s alt.
3. Put the pepper in a saucepan, pour over the tomato mass, and then put on the fire and bring to a boil. After that, make the flame smaller, let the products boil for another 15 minutes.
4. Then add vinegar. And after 5 minutes, the finished lecho can be rolled into pre-sterilized jars.

In 5 days it will be completely ready. And in this state it will stand all winter.

Specific Bulgarian cuisine

Each nation has its own characteristics. This is noticeable not only in the way of life of people and their manner of dressing. All habits and customs are perfectly characterized by national cuisine. For example, the Bulgarian lecho with tomato paste is not at all like what our hostesses cook. This is not a mixture of stewed vegetables that is familiar to us, but neat pieces of sweet pepper in a fragrant filling. To prepare such a delicacy you will need: 2 kilograms of pepper, 125 grams of sugar, 800 grams of pasta and 20 grams of s alt.

Cook this dish like this:

1. Peel washed pepper pods from everything superfluous (stalks and seeds), and then cut into even thin strips.
2. Tomato paste mixed with water in equal amounts, add the remaining ingredients (sugar, s alt). Pour the prepared mass into a saucepan, put on fire, bring slowly to a boil.
3. Put the pepper into the boiling marinade, simmer for 20 minutes over low heat. During this time, the pepper will release the juice and at the same time soak in the fragrant filling.

The hot mass can be immediately laid out in jars of any capacity, rolled up and sent for cooling for 1-2 days, wrapped tightly in a warm blanket.

For lovers of spicy food

As we have already said, cooking lecho with tomato paste can be done in different ways. For lovers of spicy, we can offer the following option.

From the products you will need: 1 kilogram of tomato paste, 20 grams of s alt, 2½ kilograms of sweet pepper, 0.5 cups of vegetable oil and table vinegar, 100 grams of sugar, 1 teaspoon of paprika and chili pepper.

Preparing very simply:

1. Peppers cut into strips.
2. Mix the rest of the ingredients and bring to a boil in a wide saucepan.
3. Pour pepper into the boiling mass, cook for 5 minutes over low heat. Lecho is ready.

Now it can be rolled up and sent for storage. The dish is surprisingly quick to prepare, and you can eat it after 3 days. It will take time for the product to infuse and acquire its characteristic taste. Then it can be eaten as a cold snack, served with meat or used as an addition to a hot dish.

Spicy salad

It is impossible to list all the lecho blanks with tomato paste. For those who are contraindicated in spicy additives and seasonings, a recipe with pepper and carrots is suitable.

It only takes: one and a half liters of water, s alt, vegetable oil, sugar, 3 tablespoons of tomato paste, carrots and sweet peppers.

Preparing everything in order of priority:

1. Dilute the paste with plain water. Take sugar with s alt in a ratio of 1: 2 and oil. Mix all the products, pour into a wide container and slowly bring to a boil.
2. Cut the washed carrots into strips, and the pepper into strips. Boil the products alternately in a boiling mass so that they soften a little, but do not become sour, but remain crispy. Otherwise, it will just be a vegetable mess.
3. Combine all ingredients together, add peppercorns, some cloves, bay leaf and simmer for 2-3 minutes.

Before rolling up the laurel leaves must be removed so as not to add bitterness to the salad.

What lecho is made of

Recently, vegetable dishes have become increasingly popular: fresh salads, juicy appetizers or fragrant stews. Among them, lecho clearly stands out against the general background. Any hostess prepared this dish at least once in her culinary practice. They learn about him from childhood and then love him all his life. Invented by Hungarian chefs, the dish is constantly being improved: there are new options and non-standard solutions. Most of the time it's about recipes. As you know, the main ingredients for lecho are peppers and tomatoes. But over time, the list of components has expanded markedly. They began to cook lecho with eggplants, onions, carrots and zucchini, and instead of tomatoes use tomato paste. This isallowed me to look at the dish itself from the other side. If initially lecho included meat products: smoked meat, fried bacon or homemade sausage, then over time this mixture turned into a wonderful cold appetizer and even an independent dish. In its composition, the set of vegetables and spices changed, but the cooking technology was simple and understandable to everyone. And now lecho can be confidently considered an international dish.