Karelian cuisine: recipes of traditional dishes, cooking features

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

Karelia is the land of lakes and rivers. This also affects the national cuisine. Its basis is freshwater fish and meat of wild animals. Complement its gifts of the forest. These are mushrooms and berries, various wild herbs and nuts. Still, fish occupies a central place in Karelian cuisine. Of course, in order to taste the dishes in their original version, you need to visit this amazing land. But you can try to do something similar at home.

Subtleties of Karelian cuisine

There are a lot of fish dishes here. Every housewife knows at least ten ways to prepare a catch. The fish is boiled, dried, s alted and even fermented. Its taste in ready-made dishes is set off by mushrooms and berries: strawberries, blueberries, blueberries and cloudberries. But wheat flour is practically not used here. It is replaced with great success by rye and barley.

Karelian cuisine is different in that it almost completely excludes dishes from dairy products. Certainly,today the boundaries of national cuisine are very blurred, but we are talking about traditions. The heat treatment of products is also special. There is no concept of frying here. What we consider fried, for them is boiled in oil.

Aboriginal dishes

Speaking of Karelian cuisine, one cannot but mention the fish soup. This simple fish soup is cooked here in different variations almost every day. Often this is an ear of several varieties of fish, sometimes with the addition of cream or milk. Various porridges are also characteristic of the Karelian table. Hostesses cook here barley and pea, oatmeal and millet porridge. But the highlight of the table is oatmeal. It is usually eaten with berries. Karelian cuisine is simple yet tasty and he althy.

Vegetables are often used as a side dish. These are turnips and radishes, zucchini and cabbage, potatoes and onions. As a rule, they are stewed or boiled. Traditionally, in the villages, they were simmered in ovens to make the vegetables tender and crumbly.

Desserts

Karelian national cuisine is an example of a he althy diet. It is still not common to eat sweets here. But each family harvests lingonberries and cranberries in large quantities. Berries are served with tea in a crushed form, used as a filling for pies. They make excellent jelly. Harvest dried blueberries and raspberries. It is usually used for medicinal purposes. The inhabitants of this amazing country have a lot to learn. Favorite drink is tea. It is usually drunk with baked milk. Often, an infusion of St. John's wort flowers, raspberry leaves and stems acts as tea.

Cooking Features

Surely readers were interested in the recipes of Karelian cuisine, so now we will go directly to their consideration. In the process of getting acquainted with the traditional dishes of the Karelians, you notice another characteristic feature - this is the almost complete absence of second courses. They are replaced by simple pies made from unleavened dough. Usually they are cooked with the same fish. They put it in the filling without first cleaning it, that is, together with the scales.

So, the first dish to give credit to is, of course, the fish soup. It is prepared from a variety of fish, but it is best to choose fatty varieties. Sliced potatoes and onions are placed in boiling water. When the water boils, the gutted and washed fish falls into it. It is recommended to cut off the head of the roach so that the ear does not taste bitter. Before the end of cooking, bay leaves and black pepper are added. Traditionally, a little rye flour was shaken into a hot ear. In some places, the finished soup was flavored with a raw egg.

Royal ear

For every day, fish soup was prepared from the simplest and most affordable products. But this dish can be worthy of a festive table. Considering the recipes of Karelian cuisine (you can see a photo of some of them in the article), one cannot help but pay attention to the trout fish soup with cream. This is actually a red fish in a creamy sauce, which we serve in restaurants as a gourmet dish.

You will need:

• Fresh trout - 400g
• Potato - 3-4 tubers.
• Carrots, onions -1 each
• Cream - 1 cup.
• Spices.

The cooking time does not exceed 30 minutes, so you can start cooking just before dinner. The fish must be thoroughly washed and divided into portions, potatoes cut into cubes. Pour 1.5 liters of water into the pan and put the potatoes to boil. Separately, fry the onions and carrots in butter. 10 minutes after boiling the potatoes, put the fish, and after another 7 minutes, fry. The potatoes are ready, now add cream and spices, bring to a boil and let stand for another 5 minutes.

Rybniki

There are also pies in Karelian cuisine. And such that just salivating will run. Of course, for the filling, you need to take boneless fillets, so that later you don’t have to pull them out of the finished pie. In fact, this is a chicken coop, but instead of a bird, there is a fish here. It is prepared from yeast dough, because unleavened is too fragile, and all the juice will escape during baking. For cooking you will need:

• Flour - 350g
• Water - 250 ml.
• Vegetable oil - 2 tablespoons.
• Butter - 50g
• Dry yeast - 2 teaspoons.
• Sugar - 1 tablespoon.
• For the filling you will need 700 g of fish and a little onion.

First of all, you need to prepare the dough. To do this, pour the yeast with warm water and leave for 10 minutes. Add all other ingredients and knead to a soft dough. While it is coming, you can do the stuffing. To do this, the fish fillet must be s alted and peppered to taste. Cut the onionsemirings. If you use green, then you need to chop it finely.

Divide the dough into 8 parts. Roll each of them into a cake and put a part of the fish in the middle. Top with onions and a piece of butter. Now roll up the envelope and make a puncture with a fork, and you also need to grease the surface with an egg. They are baked at a temperature of 200 degrees until golden brown. Then brush with butter.

Wickets

This is one of the most famous national dishes. To prepare the dough, pour a glass of yogurt or kefir into a bowl and add a little s alt. After that, gradually begin to add flour to make a soft dough. It is recommended to take rye flour, and if it is not available, then take wheat flour, but add brown bread crusts soaked in water.

It was these pies that became the symbol of Karelian cuisine. Gates can be prepared with different fillings. It can be milk porridge or mashed potatoes. Also cottage cheese will do. The dough must be rolled into a tourniquet and cut into pieces. Roll each of them lightly and stretch with your hands. The edges must be folded over and generously greased with s alted sour cream mixed with raw egg yolk. Bake in the oven for 10 minutes and brush generously with butter while hot.

Karelian roast

As we have already said, fish is traditionally used more often in Karelia. But the abundance of forests and game simply obliges you to cook meat dishes as well. Karelian roast is prepared from the meat of sever altypes. Of course, in urban areas it is difficult to find an elk, a bear or forest game. So let's make things a little easier:

• Pork belly - 250g
• Beef - 250g
• Lamb shoulder - 250g
• Onion - 100g
• Bay leaf and spices.

Meat cut into cubes and fry until golden brown. After that, the oven needs to be heated to 90 degrees and put in layers in the goose, first lamb, then beef and pork. Pour boiling water to cover the meat, and stew for 6-8 hours. It is very important to do this at a moderate temperature. The meat should not boil, then the dish will turn out surprisingly tasty and very tender.

Pie with blueberries

Sweet pies with berries are rarely baked in Karelia, but still these recipes should be given attention. Traditionally, such pies were made on the Makovey holiday, to see off the summer. The dough is used sour, yeast. Suitable and such as a fisherman. If you want to get more rich pastries, then add an egg to the recipe and replace the water with milk. You can replace your favorite yeast dough, it will still be very tasty.

The most important thing is fresh blueberries for the filling. For Karelian hostesses, this was not difficult, but today we often sell only frozen blueberries. But she fits perfectly. You just need to grind it with sugar. The risen dough is rolled out to a thickness of a centimeter and spread on a baking sheet. On top of it are berries rubbed with sugar. So that the juice does not flow out of the pie, ityou need to sprinkle a little potato starch. Or put a spoonful of starch right next to the berry.

This cake is very tasty with shortcrust pastry. To prepare it, you need to chop 200 g of creamy margarine with 2 cups of flour, add 2 tablespoons of sugar, 2 yolks and 1 protein. Roll quickly into a ball and refrigerate for 30 minutes.

Berry kissel

It can be prepared at any time of the year using fresh or frozen berries. The Karelians harvested a lot of wild berries during the season and then ate amazing jelly until the very spring. The cooking method is simple, it is accessible even to a novice cook. To do this, the berries need to be sorted out, washed and combined with sugar, without grinding. Proportions are selected individually. For 1 glass of berries, you need to take 3 glasses of water.

As soon as the water boils, lay the berry and add sugar to taste. Separately, in a cup, dilute 2 tablespoons of starch with cold water and pour into the pan in a thin stream. Boil - and you can remove from the fire. It turns out jelly of medium density. It can be changed by decreasing or increasing the amount of gelling agent.

Today we told you about Karelian cuisine. Recipes (photos of some dishes could be found above) will allow you to diversify the table and surprise your loved ones with delicious dishes.