Tarator: a recipe for Bulgarian coolness

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

In the summer heat, Russians prefer okroshka, and Bulgarians believe that there is no better lunch option than tarator. The recipe for this soup is so simple that even those who are not at all familiar with the art of cooking can cook it.

Basic of the basics

Cold soup "Tarator" has long been a hallmark of tourist Bulgaria. It seems that without trying it, one cannot say that he was able to truly get to know this country.

So, tarator, the recipe of which will be presented below, is prepared with sour milk or drinking natural yogurt. Actually, it will be required to make soup for four people about five hundred milliliters. In addition, you should stock up on four strong cucumbers. It is better to give your preference to ground varieties, but greenhouse varieties can also be purchased.

To spice up the soup, four cloves of garlic are used, and for flavor, dill is added, which will take about seven sprigs. A distinctive feature of the Bulgarian tarator from similar soups from the Balkan countries is the addition of walnuts with a volume of half a glass. Closes the list of ingredientsvegetable oil.

How to cook Bulgarian soup "Tarator"? The recipe is pretty simple. To begin with, yogurt (or sour milk) is poured into a deep container and actively stirred with a whisk for five minutes. The result should be a mass that looks like half-whipped proteins. By the way, it is better to do it with a mixer.

Leaving aside the yogurt, you can move on to chopping cucumbers. To do this, they are rubbed on a coarse grater. But you can also cut into thin strips. After that, the entire resulting mass is set aside for ten minutes.

While the cucumbers release juice, it's the turn of nuts and garlic. To do this, the latter is finely chopped and ground in a mortar with most of the nuts until a homogeneous gruel is formed.

Now it remains only to "collect" the tarator. For this, the recipe recommends first transferring cucumbers to yogurt and mix well. Then, a walnut-garlic mixture is added to the resulting mass, poured with one hundred milliliters of vegetable oil and brought to a uniform consistency. After that, the container with the almost ready soup is set aside.

Next, finely chop the dill and the rest of the nuts, mix them with a little s alt and send to the soup. To reveal the taste, the tarator should be in the refrigerator for about an hour, after which it can be served.

Little tricks - for Bulgarian soup

Tarator, the recipe of which is presented above, sometimes undergoes minor changes in culinary circles, which, however, only improve ittaste

So, instead of classic sour milk or natural yogurt, you can safely use kefir with a low percentage of fat or yogurt.

Some chefs like to experiment with taste, like this: to make it more spicy, they put red hot pepper, of course, in ground form, and to create a spicy game of sour and sweet notes, just add sugar. By the way, having mastered the classic recipe, you can try to include not only dill, but also other fresh herbs, such as cilantro.

In general, it is worth making tarator at least once to understand that there is perhaps no better soup for the summer season.