How to cook azu at home: the choice of ingredients and recipes

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

Azu is a hearty meat dish of Tatar cuisine. How to cook azu? The main ingredients are meat, potatoes, pickles and tomatoes or tomato sauce. More than half of the Tatars are Muslims. Pork is used in cooking only by a part of the population that does not strictly observe religious rules. Azu - a very old dish - is prepared from horse meat, beef or lamb. Russians and many other nationalities living in Russia often use pork for cooking Tatar dishes if they are used to consuming it.

Azu: the rules of the classic dish

How to cook azu at home? Azu is a dish for the whole family, and, of course, it is prepared in the native kitchen. No special technology or rare ingredients needed.

Here are the basic rules of a real Tatar dish:

1. From meat choose horsemeat, lamb or beef.
2. Ingredients (meat, potatoes, onions) are fried separately from each other. Sometimes pickles are also separately fried in oil or boiled in another dish.
3. Be sure to use pickles in such quantities when cooking that the broth turns out to be pleasant. Tomatoes or tomato paste are also needed.
4. Be sure to use hot peppers from seasonings.
5. There shouldn't be too much broth - it's not soup.

Pork Azu

How to cook azu from pork? As mentioned above, pork azu is not prepared. But if family members are accustomed to eating this particular type of meat, then it is better to choose a piece of pork without fat and cut it across the fibers, which is done with other types of meat. The pieces should be elongated (like beef stroganoff).

Pork is fried and stewed for 1.5 hours. The meat should become soft.

How to cook azu so that the meat is soft?

First, you need to choose a piece of the carcass of a young animal.

Secondly, cook for at least an hour and a half. After such exposure at a high temperature, it is absolutely safe to eat meat: potentially harmful organisms do not remain alive.

Thirdly, if the meat needs to be cooked a little faster, then experienced housewives recommend putting a piece of black bread (rye) and a little bit of soda into the broth.

Azu "Very tasty"

How to cook azu with pickles, but without hot peppers? The dish is relatively easy to prepare and is very tasty.

Cooking process:

1. Fry the pieces of meat in a pan. Next Continuestew them in the same bowl.
2. Pour water into a 5-liter pot (about two liters). Put her on fire.
3. Peel potatoes (almost 2/3 of the pot), onion (1 pc.).
4. Put meat into boiling water, add s alt, continue cooking. Place diced potatoes in the pan. Fry it lightly.
5. Chop pickled cucumbers (5 pcs.) very finely. Dip in the water to the meat. Add meat and potatoes. It should be covered with water.
6. Sauté the onion and put it in the pot as well.
7. When all the ingredients are ready, put a tablespoon of tomato paste, finely chopped garlic (3-4 cloves depending on their size) in a dish. You can add bay leaf. The last ingredients are not kept on fire for more than three minutes. Remove the bay leaf immediately after turning off the gas or add it to a fully cooked dish and take it out after a few minutes.

If such a dish is made from pork, then a layer of fat on the meat will give a good taste and increase the richness of the dish.

Frying the ingredients separately from each other gives the dish a very good taste. Azu is obtained the way professional chefs prepare masterpieces. The special taste is incomparable to that obtained if the ingredients are mixed immediately or not fried.

Chicken Azu

How to cook azu in Tatar from chicken? Azu is a centuries old dish. It has many different options. Azu can also be made from chicken, but it certainly will not be classic.

Ingredients: chicken - 300-500 g, 5 potatoes, carrots,onion - 3 pcs., 2 tomatoes, sweet pepper, half an eggplant, 3 cloves of garlic, bay leaf and other spices.

Cooking:

1. Sauté the onion and put it separately on a plate. Fry the chicken pieces in the same pan. Put a bow on it.
2. Put chopped potatoes, carrots, eggplant, tomatoes, sweet peppers to the dish. Simmer until done.
3. Put spices and keep the dish on fire for a couple more minutes.

If the potatoes are also fried separately from the rest of the ingredients, it will turn out tastier.

How to cook azu in a slow cooker?

Ingredients: 400 g boneless beef, 6-7 potatoes, 3 pickles, onion, tomato paste (1.5 tablespoons), bay leaf, garlic (2 cloves), parsley, sunflower oil, pepper, s alt.

Cooking:

1. Chop beef and onion and put in a multicooker saucepan with sunflower oil. Cook for 30 minutes in the "Baking" mode.
2. Put cucumbers and tomato paste into a dish and cook for another 10 minutes.
3. Put chopped potatoes in a saucepan, pour 200 ml of water, put spices and s alt. Keep the dish in the "Stew" mode for 1 hour.
4. Sprinkle the dish with fresh herbs.

Azu in pots

How to cook azu in the oven? Of course, in pots! In clay pots, the dish is especially tasty.

Ingredients: 350 g beef, 7 potatoes, 2 pickled cucumbers, onion, 2 large tomatoes, 1 tbsp. a spoonful of tomato paste, 2 cloves of garlic, bay leaf, pepper,s alt, sunflower oil.

Cooking:

1. Elongated small pieces of beef fry in oil.
2. Put finely chopped cucumbers and onions to the meat. Simmer the ingredients together for a couple of minutes.
3. Shift the food from the pan to the pots so that more than half of the free space remains. Pepper.
4. Put finely chopped potatoes on top of the pots. There should be some room left.
5. Peel the skin off the tomatoes. Finely chop and place the pieces on top of the potatoes.
6. Pass the garlic through the spadefoot. Let it fall on top of the tomatoes.
7. Pour all the ingredients with water mixed with tomato paste. You can add some s alt. The liquid should completely cover the potatoes.
8. Put the pots in the oven. Cook at 190 degrees for about an hour. Shortly before turning off, put bay leaves in the broth.

How to prepare azu for the holiday? If such a dish in pots is served with sour cream and fresh herbs, and a salad of fresh vegetables is placed next to it, you will get a delicious dinner, which is also good for a festive table.

Azu from horsemeat

How to cook a classic azu? Tatars in the old days cooked this national dish from horse meat.

Ingredients: 1-1.5 kg horsemeat, 12 medium potatoes, 4 pickles, 3 onions, 2 tbsp. spoons of tomato paste, 4 cloves of garlic, hot pepper, butter, s alt.

Cooking:

1. Meat fry in butter. Pieces should be smallslightly elongated.
2. Transfer the beef to a cauldron or a large pot. Cut the onion into rings and sauté in the freed pan.
3. Put the fried onions into a cauldron, pour the meat with onions with water. Boil the dish for an hour.
4. Cucumbers finely chop, boil them in a small amount of water separately from the meat.
5. Chop potatoes into small pieces and fry until half cooked. Put potatoes with cucumbers in a cauldron. Continue cooking azu for 25 minutes.
6. Garlic can be put into the cauldron 3 minutes before the fire is turned off, or just added to the dish when serving. Same with pepper.

Lamb azu recipe

How to cook azu faster? To speed up the process, you need to take the meat of a young animal. The Tatar dish is made from horse meat or lamb. If lamb is used for azu, then the fat must be cut off, because it usually gives an unpleasant aftertaste to the finished dish. Lamb has this property: if you cook for too long, the meat becomes tasteless and loses its softness. This means that it is better not to cook lamb for a long time, one hour is enough. Some recipes suggest cooking this type of meat in just 40 minutes.

Ingredients for the lamb azu recipe: 300 g meat, 7 potatoes, 4 pickles, onion, 4 tbsp. spoons of tomato paste or fresh tomatoes, garlic, spices, s alt.

Cooking:

1. Meat, cut into elongated pieces, brown. Add finely chopped onion to the meat and continue to fry the ingredients. Finely chop s altedcucumbers, put to the meat and continue to simmer, stirring.
2. Put tomato paste on the dish. Simmer for a couple more minutes. Then pour water over the meat and leave to cook.
3. Chop the potatoes finely and put to the meat. Let it boil. Put garlic, s alt and spices into the broth. Of the spices, hot peppers are better (Tatars eat azu sharp) and bay leaf. You can use adjika.

If there are few pickles left in the jar

How to cook azu if there are only a couple of pickles in the jar? You can add cucumber pickle. It gives the same taste as the cucumbers themselves. This taste goes well with meat and potatoes. But you shouldn't go overboard with it. In addition, you need to monitor the amount of s alt in the dish. The brine and the cucumbers themselves are usually very s alty.

Spices for cucumbers for azu

Cucumbers are s alted following different recipes. Almost all s alting recipes are suitable for azu. The following spices, which should be put in jars when pickling cucumbers, go well with the Tatar dish: cherry and black currant leaves, dill seeds, garlic. Acetic acid for this recipe does not need to be poured.

Azu is a culinary masterpiece. This dish is especially liked by men. Because it is hearty and has a bright taste of garlic and other spices. This is not the first dish, but contains a lot of broth, which is good for digestion. In addition, azu can be eaten with rye bread, which makes the meal even more nutritious.