Georgian delicacy churchkhela - what is it?

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

Those who visit the south of our country for the first time in their lives, especially the Black Sea coast, look with great bewilderment at small colorful sausages sold in bazaars and beaches. They are especially surprised by their unusual name - churchkhela. What it is and how it is prepared, we will try to find out now.

This is a national delicacy of oriental cuisine. Despite the fact that it is common in Armenia, and in Georgia, and in Azerbaijan, as well as in Greece, Georgians consider churchkhela to be their original “invention”, and even filed a patent for it. Now, along with khachapuri, chacha and suluguni, churchkhela is also a Georgian brand.

What is this? This is a walnut low, covered with dried boiled fruit juice. As the legends say, this delicacy appeared in ancient times, when warriors, going on campaigns, took with them tasty and nutritious sausages that did not require any hassle in cooking and perfectly restored strength. Since they often had to fight, they prepared churchkhela for future use, not being afraid that it would go bad. Year sheit will definitely last, and from the next harvest you can make new delicious sausages with nuts called churchkhela. What it is - you already have an idea. Now let's talk about how it is prepared.

How to cook churchkhela at home

To prepare this product, you will need to stock up on nuts, grape juice, sugar, flour and harsh cotton thread with a needle. You can take any nuts, although walnuts and hazelnuts are traditionally used. The whole hazel is strung on a thread, and the walnut kernels are divided into two halves. The optimal length of the walnut low is about 30 cm. This is just enough for a thick decoction of juice, called Tatara, to cover it with a dense layer. And it is best to choose the length of the thread depending on the depth of the pan in which the syrup will be boiled. The dependence here is this - the low must be completely immersed in the Tatar without bends and kinks.

After all the nuts are tightly strung, you can start cooking the tatar. Three liters of freshly squeezed grape juice is poured into a saucepan (preferably not enameled), a glass of sugar is added to it, all this is put on a small fire. Cook the juice with constant stirring until its volume is reduced by half. Do not forget that the foam formed during the cooking process must be removed. What happened in the end, Georgians call badagi.

Pour about a couple of glasses of badagi into a wide bowl and cool the contents. Dilute two cups of flour in the cooled syrup, carefully breaking up the resulting lumps. To ensure the homogeneity of the mass, it can be wiped through a sieve at the end. We combine both parts of the juice and again send it to the fire. Don't leave the stove. You must constantly stir the mass, otherwise it will burn. After the contents of the pan thicken and become shiny, you can turn off the fire and consider the process of cooking the tatar finished.

Let it cool slightly, take the nut low and completely dip it into the hot mass. After waiting about 20 seconds, we take out the thread, let the last drops drain, and send it to dry. After two hours, repeat the entire sequence of actions. Ideally, the Tatar layer should reach one and a half centimeters.

Since it will take a long time to make churchkhela in this way, you can slightly reduce the total cooking time of the delicacy by tying several threads with nuts to the rail at once and dipping them into the tatar at the same time. After you consider that the thickness of the layer satisfies you, send the semi-finished churchkhela to dry in the sun for a couple of weeks. Readiness can be judged by touch - if it does not stick to your hands, then drying can be considered finished. Now you need to wrap the sausages in a cloth and leave to ripen. In a month, you can treat your admiring loved ones with a delicacy called "churchkhela".

What is it, you now know and, as a true culinary specialist, you can experiment by changing varieties of nuts and fruit juices. And you can also do without a thread, simply by mixing the finished tatar with nuts. It will, of course, not be a churchkhela in the classical sense, butno less tasty treat.