Shelpek recipe: how to make Kazakh flat cakes

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

Every nation, as a rule, has its own national cuisine with special dishes and different ways of preparing them. Any Kazakh woman knows the recipe for shelpek since childhood. These cakes are always in the main place in every home.

National traditions

Kazakhs are very proud of their national culture. This is not only costumes, dances or some kind of rituals. They consider their national cuisine to be a real source of pride. Among the huge variety of dishes, bread occupies a special place, of course. For Kazakhs, these are cakes with a rather unusual name. The recipe for sholpek is familiar to all housewives since childhood. They are prepared on weekdays and holidays. Guests are greeted with famous oriental cakes and escorted friends on a long journey. You can cook such bread on water, milk or kefir. The simplest recipe for shelpek includes three main components: for 3 cups of flour you will need a teaspoon of s alt and a glass of water.

Tortillas are easy to make:

1. First, all products must be combined together and kneaded from them to a fairly thick dough.
2. Use a knife to divide the semi-finished product into severalparts.
3. Roll each piece with a rolling pin into a pancake 2-3 mm thick.
4. Put the pan on the fire and heat the vegetable oil in it.
5. Now the workpieces need to be laid out alternately in boiling fat and fry for 3 seconds on each side. For better frying, tortillas should be moved with a fork in a pan, rotating them in a circle.

Finished products will only need to be folded on a napkin to leave excess fat on it, and then carried to the table.

Complex composition

If dairy products are used instead of water, the taste of the cakes will be more pronounced. Take, for example, the recipe for shellek with milk. This will require: for 400 grams of flour a glass of milk, 5 grams of s alt and baking soda, a tablespoon of granulated sugar, 400 milliliters of vegetable oil and a teaspoon of table vinegar.

The cooking process goes through the following steps:

1. Heated milk mixed with sugar, s alt and three tablespoons of vegetable oil.
2. Add soda slaked with vinegar.
3. Gradually adding flour, gently knead the dough. Then cover it with a towel and leave for 15-20 minutes.
4. Tear off a piece from the finished dough and roll it into a cake 1-2 mm thick.
5. Heat the rest of the oil in a frying pan and fry the silkpek in it. Lush cakes are deep-fried. They should swim right into the fat.

Before serving, you can wrap any filling to your taste in them. It can be specially cooked meat or mixed vegetables.

Different opinions

Some people think that the dough for silks should certainly be dense and thick. But this is not true. There are different options for its preparation, from which you can get an excellent Kazakh silkpek. The recipe, which uses yeast, is very reminiscent of another flour dish of local cuisine called baursaki. The composition of the components is taken almost the same: for a glass of milk - 5 glasses of flour, 25 grams of pressed yeast, 2 tablespoons of sour cream and melted butter, 10 grams of sugar, half a glass of water and a couple of glasses of vegetable oil.

In this case, the process will go as follows:

1. To prepare the dough, you first need to heat water and dissolve s alt and sugar in it.
2. Dissolve yeast in milk. You can add some sugar to make them work faster.
3. Introduce ghee, and then combine the solutions.
4. Adding flour in parts, knead the dough. Cover it with a lid or cloth and leave to proof for about an hour.
5. Now, in the usual way, divide the dough into pieces, roll each of them into a thin layer, and then fry in boiling oil.

Shelpeks prepared in this way are more tender and fragrant.

Kefir cakes

If, for example, there is no milk in the house, then the recipe for shelpek cakes can be slightly adjusted. In this case, the set of products will change somewhat. For baking you will need: per kilogram of flour - a liter of kefir, 50 grams of sugar, a pinch of s alt,half a teaspoon of soda and 150 grams of sour cream.

Cooking method:

1. First, in a separate bowl, you need to mix kefir, soda and sour cream.
2. Then, gradually adding flour and other ingredients in small portions, knead a soft, plastic dough.
3. Now the mass must be divided into 2 parts, each of which is rolled into a tourniquet.
4. Cut dough pieces into equal pieces and sprinkle them with flour.
5. Roll out the resulting semi-finished products with a rolling pin into cakes, and then alternately fry them in oil on both sides.

Ready-made shilleks are carefully removed from the pan with two forks and stacked on a plate. Excess oil can be removed by placing paper towels between them. A little later, they should be thrown away.