What are kutabs and how to cook them at home?

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

Recently, one can often hear in cafes and restaurants about such an unconventional dish as kutab. But those people who are well acquainted with the cuisines of other countries will be able to explain what qutabs are.

What is this?

This dish came from Azerbaijani cuisine - it is traditional there. This pastry looks like small pies with filling, stuck together in the shape of a crescent. When compared with Russian cuisine, kutabs look very similar to chebureks, but this is only at first glance.

Stuffing is usually seasonal. It may contain ingredients such as meat, ripe pumpkin, cheese. Sometimes grains of ripe pomegranate are added to it, and kutab with herbs are also prepared. They are prepared according to the same principle - from unleavened dough, similar to dumplings, and differ only in the filling inside.

Now you understand what qutabs are. Next, consider the general principles of cooking.

The main thing in cooking

When making these pies, it is important to knead the dough properly.

Preparing it is quite simple, the only condition: it must be bland. If you cook dough with the addition of yeast, kutabs will become ordinary Russianspasties.

For the correct test you need to take:

• 400 g flour;
• 600ml room temperature water;
• a few pinches of s alt.

Preparing dough

1. Sift flour and mix with s alt.
2. Pour in water at room temperature. Knead the dough until smooth.
3. If it's not tough enough, add some more sifted flour and knead again.
4. Put the dough in a plastic bag and let it rest for 30 minutes.
5. When the specified time is up, the dough is ready. It remains only to roll it out and, after adding the filling, form kutabs.

To do this, divide the dough into even pieces and roll out with a rolling pin into sheets no more than 1 millimeter thick. Using any round plate, cut out the same circles. This completes the manipulation of the dough.

Now you can work on the stuffing. It is necessary to fry kutabs in deep fat or confectionery fat.

They are different

We figured out what kutabs are and how the dough is prepared for them. Now let's get to the stuffing. You can start them with almost everything that is at hand.

In the summer, the filling can be found even in the garden. And cook excellent kutabs with herbs. You get a light diet dish, which is also quite suitable for vegetarians.

For the filling, you can take any edible herbs: basil, cilantro, parsley, dill, tarragon, sorrel, green onions, tarragon, spinach and others -according to your taste and discretion.

To make the filling successful, the herbs must be thoroughly washed in running water and dried on a towel. Then you need to sort them out, remove all thick and tough stems and finely chop, adding a little s alt. The filling is ready.

Put a little prepared filling on the rolled and cut out dough. You need to spread it on one half, then, wrapping the second, pinch the edges so that you get a crescent.

There are two ways to fry kutabs: deep-fried or in an ordinary dry frying pan, without any additives. You can serve them with sour cream or kefir.

Meat filling

If vegetarian dishes are not to your liking, you can cook hearty meat kutabs.

For the filling you need to take:

• 200 g lamb (can be replaced with other fatty meat);
• 200g beef or veal;
• 200g onion;
• ground spices and s alt to taste.

Rinse and dry the meat. Pass through a meat grinder along with peeled onions. Mix everything thoroughly, adding s alt and spices. You can start forming pies. You need to sculpt them in the same way as the previous ones. In some cases, pieces of vegetables can be added to the meat filling to make it less greasy.

You can fry them only in boiling oil or fat so that the meat filling is completely fried.

Cheese stuffing

Another option for preparing this dish is kutaby with cheese. In this case, they can be made both s alty and sweet. It all depends on the type of cheese.and additives to it.

For their preparation, any cheese (hard and cottage cheese) is suitable, as well as cottage cheese.

For the filling, you need to take any type of cheese and grind it on a grater (if possible), and curd cheeses can be mashed with a fork. By adding a little sugar and sour cream to the product, you can make excellent pies with a sweet filling that will appeal to both adults and children. This filling option is possible only if the cheese or cottage cheese does not contain s alt. By the way, you can add some fruits or berries to the sweet filling.

In the case of s alted cheeses, you can make these pies filled with only one cheese, they will still turn out to be unusually tasty, with a pleasant creamy aroma.

And if you add a little greens to the stuffing from chopped cheese (cilantro, dill, green onions are perfect for this), you get kutab with cheese and greens. Herbs with their indescribable and peculiar smell slightly flavor the taste of cheese.

Summarize

In this article we talked about what kutabs are. As it turned out, these are original Azerbaijani pies with a variety of fillings. They are prepared from unleavened yeast-free dough.

This type of baking can surprise your family and friends, as well as decorate the festive table.

It is better to serve kutaba with butter on the table. You can drink them with milk, black tea or kefir.

Kutabs are prepared quite easily and simply, and thanks to the variety of fillings, their taste can be absolutelyvarious. The main thing is not to be afraid to cook and experiment.