How to cook kharcho at home. How to cook kharcho soup at home, step-by-step recipe with photos. Basic information about kharcho soup

Do you want to properly prepare a classic and also very tasty kharcho soup at home. Then this simple method will help you realize your idea.

Cooking time – 15 minutes.

Ingredient preparation time: 40 minutes.

After cooking you will receive 12 servings of 250 g each.

Nutritional value per 100 grams:

Ingredients

Beef – 500 grams.
Tomatoes – 300 grams.
Carrots – 170 grams.
Onions – 120 grams.
Round grain rice – 100 gr.
Garlic – 2 cloves.
Tomato paste – ½ tablespoon.
Vegetable oil – 2 tablespoons.
Khmeli-suneli seasoning – 1 heaped teaspoon.
Salt – 1 tbsp. l.
Bay leaf – 2 pieces.
Allspice – 3 peas.
Ground black pepper - to taste.
Filtered water – 2 liters.
Fresh dill - one small bunch.

Recipe

Prepare the meat for rich broth.

The secret of delicious kharcho is fresh and young beef. It is best to purchase it at a market where it is sold chilled; be sure to ask the seller for a quality certificate.
We wash the meat to remove excess blood, then cut it into large pieces so that the beef cooks quickly. Place in a saucepan, pour in filtered water, cover with a lid and set to cook.
When the water in the pan begins to boil, foam will appear, which will need to be removed immediately until it boils completely.
Having completed the above steps, reduce the power of the burner by one, salt, add bay leaf and allspice. Cover with a lid and cook until fully cooked for 40 minutes.
We wash the carrots, remove the peel with a housekeeper, rinse again, cut into small cubes, see the step-by-step photo.
Peel the onion and cut it into small cubes.
Pour vegetable oil into a frying pan, add onions and carrots. Fry the vegetables on high burner power with constant stirring until golden brown.
We wash the tomatoes, then put them in a deep container, pour boiling water over them and set aside for 2 minutes. We do this procedure in order to remove the peel from the tomato.
Easily remove the peel and cut into cubes.
In the remaining spicy oil from the fried vegetables, simmer the tomatoes with tomato paste.
Wash the round grain rice several times until the liquid becomes lighter in color.
Remove the husks from the garlic and cut into thin rings.
Remove the meat from the broth, cool and cut into medium cubes. We also catch bay leaves and sweet peas, since the broth has already absorbed the spicy aroma of spices, and finally strain through a fine sieve.
Place fried vegetables and beef in a saucepan with broth, bring to a boil, add rice and khmeli-suneli seasoning. Cook the soup until tender for 15 minutes.
Five minutes before the end of cooking the kharcho, add chopped garlic, sautéed tomatoes and sprinkle with ground black pepper.

If desired, you can include walnuts in the composition. They must first be fried to get rid of bitterness and added at the end of cooking the soup.

Serve real spicy kharcho soup for lunch or dinner, sprinkled with fresh herbs.

To prepare the national dish of Georgian cuisine - kharcho soup, according to the classic recipe, only beef meat is suitable. If you prepare this spicy dish, spicy due to the large amount of garlic and seasonings, using pork, goat, turkey or chicken, then no matter what you call it, it will not become a real “Kharcho” soup.

Soup kharcho. Classic composition of ingredients:

Fatty beef meat on the bones - 500 g
Garlic - 1 pc.
Onion - 2 pcs.
Tomato puree - 50 ml
Walnuts - 100 g
Rice - 150 g
Bay leaf - 2 pcs.
Tkemali sauce - 50 ml or tklapi (plum lavash) - 150 g
Ground red pepper - 5 g
Salt - 5 g
Seasoning “Khmeli-suneli” - 5 g
Peppercorns - 5 g
A bunch of fresh herbs - 1 pc.
Hot red and green pepper pods - 2 pcs.

How is the dish prepared in Georgia?

Real kharcho soup is prepared with the addition of tklapi - dried strips of plum puree from the pitted and peeled traditional Georgian tkemali plum.

Tklapi has a sweet and sour taste and creates a unique aroma of the classic kharcho soup. These thin stripes can be found in every village house in Georgia. Plum puree, after drying in the sun, can be stored for a very long time due to the acids contained in the fruit. Without adding “sour plum lavash” you won’t get a real Georgian beef kharcho soup.

In some regions of Georgia, juicy ripe dogwood berries are used to prepare tklapi; sometimes sweet varieties of cherry plum are also suitable for these purposes. Sour marshmallow is also added to other meat dishes typical of Georgian cuisine, for example, satsivi or goose with tklapi.

When preparing kharcho soup, a Georgian housewife breaks off a palm-sized piece of semi-dry plum marshmallow and soaks it in a cup of rich fresh beef broth. This mixture is the most important ingredient in the classic kharcho soup recipe, creating an ideal acidic environment for digesting beef meat, which is difficult for the stomach.

A large amount of garlic and onions allows you to break down difficult-to-digest animal proteins into their component parts. Thanks to the sour tkemali sauce obtained from tklapi, garlic and suneli hops, this thick, fatty soup is easily digestible and serves as an excellent source of energy during the cold season.

Rice, which is part of the ingredients of the classic kharcho soup recipe, is an excellent adsorbent, a source of carbohydrates, and also softens the harsh taste of the aromatic garlic-plum dish.

Grated walnuts are the hallmark of real Georgian kharcho soup. Sometimes not a single national dish in Georgia can do without them.

Most often, brisket is used to prepare Kharcho soup, in contrast to another Georgian fatty soup, Khashi, which is prepared from beef legs and peritoneum.

Classic soup kharcho. Cooking stages.

Pour cold water over the beef bones.
Skim off the foam when the water starts to boil.
Reduce heat and simmer beef broth over medium heat.
Young beef will cook in one hour. If the meat is old, it will take at least two hours.
The finished beef must be removed from the pan, cooled and separated from the bones.
The broth must be strained, otherwise small bones may cause discomfort when the kharcho soup is ready and poured into plates.
Cut the cooled meat into small pieces and place in a pan with broth.
Peel the onion and cut into small cubes.
The head of garlic must be peeled and crushed in a mortar or crushed with a rolling pin.
The green cilantro and parsley need to be finely chopped.
Add washed rice and chopped onion, parsley and cilantro sprigs to the broth.
Pour a mixture of broth and tklapi or tkemali sauce into the almost finished kharcho soup, add raw crushed garlic.
Before finishing cooking, season the soup with salt, suneli hops, bay leaf and add walnuts.
The finished dish can be decorated with green and red peppers and finely chopped herbs.

According to the classic recipe for kharcho soup, the taste of the finished dish should be sour, spicy and hot. This is probably why a large number of less sour versions of kharcho arose in Ukraine and Russia. Tkemali sauce, required for the original recipe, is often replaced with chopped tomato slices or tomato paste. Refusing to add plum sauce to kharcho, some chefs are experimenting with pomegranate juice and wine vinegar, traditional ingredients in the main dishes of Caucasian cuisine.

Perhaps cooking is comparable to good music. Each dish has its own melody, which changes when moving from one stage to another. And the final chord of this melody resonates with pleasure in every cell of the body.

Georgian men breathtakingly perform any musical theme with just their voice. And they also invented the recipe for “Kharcho soup,” rich, thick and aromatic. So let's sing about "Kharcho soup."

Recipe for real “Kharcho soup” in Georgian

“Kharcho soup” - a simple recipe for a hot dish Georgian cuisine.

To prepare “Kharcho soup” from beef for 8-10 servings you will need:

600 g beef brisket,
2 large bulbs,
4 medium tomatoes,
70 g rice,
100 g walnut kernels,
2 tsp tomato paste,
5 cloves of garlic,
2 bunches of greens,
1 pod hot pepper,
salt ,
pepper ,
Bay leaf ,
khmeli-suneli seasoning.

Cooking method

Cut 600 g of beef brisket into small pieces, each of which can easily fit in a spoon. Fill the bones and pieces of meat with cold water (2-2.5 liters) and set to cook over high heat. I practically do not cut off the veins before cooking, because... I think that bones and sinews give the broth richness. In addition, it is easier to remove a cooked vein from an already boiled piece of meat with less loss.
While the broth is boiling, carefully remove any foam that forms from the surface. In principle, we are preparing an opaque soup and the flaws from unskimmed foam will not be noticeable in it. However, the foam collects harmful substances from the meat, for example, remnants of medications that were given to the animal. So skimming foam is a very important stage of cooking meat.
To add more flavor to the broth, it would be nice to add parsley or celery root to the pan during cooking. But you can get by with just stems of greenery (in this case, they will need to be removed 15 minutes after planting). The broth has boiled, add salt, reduce the heat to low, cover the pan with a lid and leave for about an hour.
We rinse the rice, fill it with cold water and leave until the final stage of cooking the soup.
But I wonder where the simple Georgian peasants who invented the recipe for “Kharcho soup” got their rice? It's a long way from China. Most likely, the tradition of adding rice appeared much later, already in the twentieth century, when cooks thought about a nutritious filler for soup that would not spoil the taste of Kharcho and would be much cheaper than meat. However, I could be wrong...
Using a rolling pin and a plastic bag, chop the walnuts. The output should be pieces no larger than 3-4 mm. In one of the classic recipes from western Georgia, the nut is pounded in a mortar until it becomes fine crumbs, so that it is not visually noticeable at all in the finished dish. I like it when grains of nuts are visible in a bright red soup. Lightly fry the nuts and set aside.
Take 2 large onions, peel and chop as finely as possible. Onions add a certain pungency and flavor to a dish, but too much of it or large pieces can “overwhelm” the taste of other ingredients. Therefore, it is better not to overdo it.
Considering that the taste of Kharcho is based on meat broth with the addition of tomatoes and spices, fresh tomatoes cannot be neglected. At worst, you can take a “plastic” Turkish tomato, even it will give the dish an elusive aroma of freshness. After careful research at the market (March is ending after all), I managed to find Belgian plum tomatoes. They are moderately meaty and juicy - just what you need for soup.
Scald the tomatoes and remove their skins. Cut into pieces of about 2-3 cm. Take the hot pepper, remove the seeds (we are preparing a moderately spicy soup and we don’t need additional bitterness), cut into thin strips.
Place a frying pan on the fire, heat it up, pour in vegetable oil and fry the onion. Add the tomatoes, mix and let the vegetables simmer for about 5 minutes. After that, add hot pepper, 2 teaspoons of tomato paste, salt and pepper and leave for another 5 minutes. Tomato paste will add a little more sourness and make the color of our soup more saturated.
Remove meat and bones from the broth. Let's sort them. Add the pieces of meat to the pan and let the dressing fry again. After 3-5 minutes, add the resulting mass to the broth and bring to a boil.
Add rice. If you want to make Kharcho as a soup, and not as a thick stew, it makes sense not to add rice at all or add very little of it - 50 grams of dry cereal. Cover the soup with a lid and let it simmer over low heat for another 15 minutes.
We chop the greens - a bunch of dill and parsley. Chop 5 cloves of garlic. Grind the garlic with salt, a pinch of pepper and herbs until smooth.

Before you start cooking, you should figure out how to properly cook kharcho soup so that it turns out appetizing and aromatic in a Caucasian way.

Here are some secrets of proper cooking:

The best type of rice for cooking is the round variety. But you can use any cereal, except steamed and crushed.
The rice should ideally be washed 5-7 times until transparent or soaked for 1.5-2 hours. This procedure will allow unnecessary starch to come out, otherwise it will cloud the broth.
For a strong, fatty and rich broth, the ideal base is not just pulp, but meat on the bone.
The sour highlight of a significant number of Caucasian dishes is the Georgian tkemali sauce. In its absence, it can be replaced with cherry plum.
With additional replacement, tkemali can be replaced by tomatoes, pomegranate, adjika, lemon, and tomato paste.
When using tomatoes, it is better to remove the skin from the fruit in advance and use only the pulp.
There is no kharcho without seasonings. Its Caucasian highlight will be spices. The most commonly used are suneli hops, coriander, red pepper, saffron, adjika, and garlic.
Greens are an important component. But the peculiar taste of cilantro can be replaced with the usual dill, parsley or a few mint leaves.

Detailed recipe for classic Kharcho

A real classic recipe for kharcho soup is cooked in broth (usually beef) without the potatoes familiar to the Slavs. Vegetables and rice add consistency to the dish. A huge number of spices, tkemali sauce, and walnuts create a Georgian flavor.

Required ingredients:

beef brisket - 0.5 kg;
rice - ½ cup;
onion - 2 pcs.;
carrots - 1 pc.;
walnut - ⅔ cup;
garlic - 1 head;
greens - 1 bunch;
tkemali - 3 tbsp. spoons;
bay leaf - 2 pcs.;
hops-suneli - 1 teaspoon;
coriander - 1 teaspoon;
red pepper - ¼ teaspoon;
salt - to taste.

How to cook:

Rinse a piece of fatty brisket. Fill it with water with a volume of 2-2.5 liters of water. Prepare the broth by boiling the beef over low heat for 1.5 hours. Skim off any rising foam throughout cooking. Remove the fully cooked beef and remove the bones. Cut the pulp into small pieces and return to the broth.

Tkemali sauce is the core of a real Georgian dish. Because of them, the classic kharcho soup has the desired sour taste. Stir tkemali into the broth. If the sauce is not available, you can use chopped fresh plums or cherry plums.

Peel the vegetables. Carrots are chopped into cubes or small pieces. The middle heads of the onions are chopped into strips along the layers. Boil the broth and sauce for 5-7 minutes, then add the carrots to it, and after 10-12 minutes add the onion. Continue cooking for 30 minutes.

Wash long grain rice, but it is better to soak the grains in advance. After adding the grains to the broth, leave them to cook for 10 minutes.

Fry the peeled nut kernels without oil in a heated frying pan until browned and with a pronounced aroma. Afterwards, cool the kernels and then crush them.

Disassemble medium-sized garlic into cloves and peel off the husks. Grind the garlic in any way: pass through a press, grate, crush in a mortar. Mix nuts and garlic into a fine mixture. Add this crushed mass to the broth after boiling the rice for 10 minutes.

8-9 minutes after adding the nut dressing, add spices. You can add your own aromatic additives to the mandatory list. If necessary, add salt to the dish.

Chop a large bunch of green herbs. It’s good if among the greens there is not only cilantro, but also parsley, dill, and mint. Add the greens 2-3 minutes before cooking is complete.

The right soup comes out rich with a lasting aroma. Cool slightly before serving for 10-15 minutes.

Simple recipes for Kharcho soup

Based on the traditional version from Georgia, new components began to be added to the dish. The order of addition, cooking time, the presence of non-traditional ingredients - all this depends on the recipe. Slavic cuisine prefers the addition of hearty potatoes, Eastern European cuisine prefers bell pepper. Italians cook with basil and olives, and in France they add cheese and replace walnuts with cashews.

Lamb soup with tomatoes

Another well-established Georgian variation is kharcho soup with lamb rice. The acidity of tkemali in it will be completely replaced by ripe tomatoes, and the reduced amount of rice will compensate for the pepper.

Required ingredients:

lamb brisket - 600 g;
rice - 2 tbsp. spoons;
sweet pepper - 2 pcs.;
onion - 2 pcs.;
tomatoes - 500 gr;
carrots - 1 pc.;
parsley (root) - 1 pc.;
garlic - ½ piece;
peppercorns - 10 pcs.;
bay leaf - 1 pc.;
salt - to taste.

How to cook:

Chop the brisket into pieces along the ribs. Chop vegetables (carrots, onions, parsley root) into strips, after peeling them. Fry lamb ribs with vegetables in a deep frying pan.

Place the browned meat and vegetables into a pot for kharcho. Add a little salt and add water. To obtain the broth, leave them to simmer slowly over a fire for 1.5 hours.

Georgian lamb kharcho soup will gain its thickness from vegetables. Remove the skins from the tomatoes and wash the peppers. Grind the vegetables in a blender or chop with a meat grinder to obtain a mushy mass. Transfer the mixture to the broth and dissolve it well.

Place the thoroughly rinsed rice into the pan. Continue boiling the dish until the rice is completely cooked.

Crush the peeled garlic cloves with peppercorns. At the end of cooking, ground spices with bay leaves are added for flavor. The soup boils with them for no more than 2-3 minutes. Before eating the dish, it is recommended to let it sit for 20 to 40 minutes.

Nut chicken version

A simple and quick way to prepare a light dish. A light decoction of poultry with nuts, rich in spices, is one of the many options for chicken kharcho soup.

Required ingredients:

poultry carcass - 1 pc.;
onions - 4 pcs.;
tomatoes - 300 gr;
walnuts - 2 cups;
capsicum - ½ pcs.;
garlic - 2 cloves;
tkemali - 2 tbsp. spoons;
hops-suneli - 1 teaspoon;
cilantro seeds - ½ teaspoon;
saffron - ¼ teaspoon;
greens (parsley, cilantro) - ½ bunch;
salt - to taste;
lemon juice - optional.

How to cook:

Rinse, dry, and then cut a homemade, thick, fatty poultry carcass into pieces. Place the bird in a bowl and add water. Bring it to a boil at maximum, and then turn down the heat. Add salt to the water and cook the bird until almost done in 20-30 minutes, regularly skimming off the rising foam. Collect chicken fat for later use.

Bring washed tomatoes to softness, boiling them for 18-20 minutes. Then grind them through a sieve to remove the skin and obtain a thick, homogeneous mass.

Prepare the onion by cutting it into thin half rings. It is best to simmer it in rich poultry broth until transparent and soft. Transfer the stewed vegetable to the meat.

After 10-15 minutes, dilute tkemali sauce with tomato pulp in the broth. To enhance the taste, you can squeeze a little juice from the lemon.

Grind the nut kernels or grind them in a blender. Chop the greens. Dissolve the nut mass in a slightly boiling broth. Add herbs, spices and salt to it. Leave to simmer for another 7-10 minutes.

This preparation of homemade kharcho soup will not take much time, because... there are no grains in it, and poultry meat is cooked quickly. The dish turns out tender, with a spicy aroma of spices. Just before serving, sprinkle the plate with chopped parsley.

Recipes for cooking in a slow cooker

Some recipes turn out much tastier when cooked using a slow cooker. This also applies to kharcho. Prepared in household appliances, it acquires an intense, deep taste, and the food is not overcooked. All this is because modern multicookers have the function of simmering food, which is often found in recipes from any cuisine in the world.

Hearty pork option with potatoes

Kharcho soup with potatoes and rice in fatty pork broth will be a complete meal for everyone. This recipe is as close as possible to familiar Slavic dishes and contains a small amount of spices.

Required ingredients:

pork shoulder - 800 g;
rice - 1 glass;
lecho - 100 g;
potatoes - 2 pcs.;
onions, carrots - 1 pc.;
sugar - 1 tbsp. spoon;
cilantro - 50 gr;
garlic - 2 cloves;
salt, black pepper - to taste.

How to cook:

Cut the spatula into several pieces. Prepare vegetables for cutting. Chop the potatoes and carrots into cubes, and the onion into quarter rings. Grind the cilantro and garlic with a knife or blender. Rinse the multi-cup rice thoroughly at least 5 times.

Set the multicooker bowl to the “Frying” mode and sauté the onions and carrots in 1.5 tablespoons of oil. When the vegetables are golden, add meat to them. Simmer them for 7-8 minutes.

Add washed rice, leche, salt and spices to the bowl. To reduce the acidity from the leche, add a little sugar. Fill the bowl with water to the maximum volume. Pork kharcho soup will be ready in 1 hour when cooked in the “Stew” mode.

After adding the cilantro and garlic, leave the food to simmer for 15-20 minutes on the “Warming” mode.

Quick beef soup

By simplifying the recipe to a minimum, you can easily cook delicious beef kharcho soup with rice in a slow cooker in just 1.5 hours. The constant ingredients beef and rice along with garlic will make a dish with a Georgian flavor.

Required ingredients:

beef fillet - 300 g;
potatoes - 300 gr;
onion - 100 gr;
rice - 80 g;
tomato paste - 40 g;
garlic - 15 g;
greens - ½ bunch;
spices - optional;
salt - to taste.

How to cook:

Rinse the beef flesh. Cut the meat into pieces no larger than 2 cm. Rinse the rice several times. Chop the peeled vegetables. Chop the potatoes into 1.5 cm cubes, chop the onion into 0.5 cm pieces, and grate the garlic.

Pour some oil into the multicooker bowl. Stir in tomato paste and onion. Saute it on the “Fry” mode for 10 minutes.

Then add the remaining ingredients to the bowl: meat, potatoes, rice, garlic. Pour in water to the top, add salt and mix the ingredients.

This kharcho soup is prepared in a slow cooker on the standard “Soup” program under a closed lid for 60 minutes.

Unusual recipes for Kharcho soup

The soup with spicy seasonings is loved by many. By replacing meat with fish or tkemali with other ingredients, new variations of dishes were obtained. Such modified recipes entered everyday life and became part of common dishes with the term “Kharcho”.

Kharcho fish soup recipe

Fans of fish dishes will also not mind trying spicy Georgian stew. Taking a meat recipe as a base, we get a nourishing, thick, aromatic fish broth with an original taste.

Required ingredients:

fish - 500 gr;
onions - 4 pcs.;
tomato - 3 pcs.;
walnuts - 300 gr;
rice - 4 tbsp. spoons;
parsley roots, celery - 1 pc.;
bay leaf - 2 pcs.;
peppercorns - 4 pcs.;
tomato sauce - 2 tbsp. spoons;
garlic - 5 cloves;
salt, spices - to taste.

How to cook:

It is best to cook fish soup in vegetable broth. For this, peeled roots and onions are placed in already boiling water. They can be cut in half. Season the broth with bay leaf and black pepper. Make vegetable broth from them.

Finely chop 3 onions and chop the garlic cloves with a knife. Rinse the rice thoroughly 6 times. Crush or chop the nuts. Divide the fish into large pieces.

Make the vegetable broth transparent by straining it through cheesecloth or a sieve. Pour over the pieces of fish. It is best to prepare this Kharcho soup from noble varieties of fish: sturgeon, stellate sturgeon or other river fish. Place chopped onion with clean rice. Add salt to everything and continue cooking until the rice is completely swollen.

5-7 minutes before completion, dissolve tomato paste, chopped nuts and crushed garlic in a saucepan. Add herbs and seasonings.

Recipe with pomegranate juice

It is difficult to cook tasty kharcho soup with its classic sourness without tkemali. But a juicy pomegranate will provide a Caucasian note with the necessary acidity.

Required ingredients:

beef - 400 gr;
rice - 3 tbsp. spoons;
pomegranate juice - 150 ml;
onion - 1 pc.;
walnuts - 6 pcs.;
parsley (root) - 1 pc.;
garlic - 2 cloves;
bay leaf - 1 pc.;
hops-suneli - ½ teaspoon;
basil - ½ teaspoon;
coriander - ½ teaspoon;
salt, red, black pepper - to taste;
greens - 1 bunch.

How to cook:

Make salty beef broth. First, it is brought to a boil over high heat, and the rising foam must be skimmed off regularly. Cook the meat for 1.5-2 hours. Remove the boiled beef from the broth and disassemble into pieces.

Finely chop the peeled onion and roots and simmer in oil for 6-7 minutes. Pour pomegranate juice into them. Let it simmer with vegetables for 2-3 minutes.

Remove shells and membranes from walnuts. Give the kernels a golden color in a hot dry frying pan, and then grind them in any way.

Pour well-washed long rice into the broth. After it boils, pour the onion-pomegranate dressing into the pan and add the nut mixture. Continue cooking the soup for 10 minutes.

Leave the spiced dish on the fire for 5-7 minutes.

At the end, add small herbs and garlic, letting them simmer for 2 minutes. Leave the finished dish to steep for 15 minutes.

2016-11-28

Hello my dear readers! Remember the Georgian grandfather from the story of Grigory Gorin, who, despite all the waiter’s tricks, firmly stood his ground and politely demanded: “I want some kharcho!”? So, since the morning of this rainy, gloomy day, I have been repeating this simple phrase. Then she “freaked out”, turned to His Majesty Google for help and typed into the keyboard the phrase “how to cook kharcho soup, a simple recipe” that only he could understand.

To my great shame, I haven’t bothered to cook any kharcho to this day! By God! Our mother traditionally cooks this soup for my son’s arrival. She puts rice in the soup when her grandson drives up to her house so that it doesn’t get overcooked. What kind of kharcho with overcooked rice?

After Googling a little, I decided to contact my mother - it was more reliable. My mother got the recipe from Aunt Nino, who is well known to readers of my blog (she was scattered all over the Internet like carrier pigeons). The recipe for making kharcho is really simple. You need to stock up on the necessary products, and cooking will not be difficult.

Many culinary blogs are passionately arguing about how to properly cook kharcho soup: from beef or lamb, with or without nuts, with tomato or tklapi? Aunt Nino could even cook it from chicken and pork. And I didn’t see anything in this that would diverge from the canons of classical Georgian cuisine.

I kindly ask connoisseurs of Georgian cuisine not to throw rotten tomatoes at me. I don’t insist that my recipe is the most authentic, correct, purebred, etc. Kharcho soup is no less varied than borscht. And authenticity can be discussed up to the Turkish Spas, to the Greek Kalends and to the carrot ritual.

A simple recipe for kharcho soup

Ingredients

How to cook

Cut the meat into small cubes, chop the bones and cartilage, put it in a saucepan (with a displacement of at least 4 liters), fill it with about 2.5 liters of cold water. Place on medium heat, bring almost to a boil, reduce the heat to very low, skim off the foam. Now we are free for 2.5-3 hours.

Cut the tomatoes in half, grate them, and discard the skins. Simmer the tomatoes in a heated frying pan over low heat for 10-15 minutes (time depends on the moisture content of the tomatoes). Add Imeretian saffron to the finished sauce.

If by some miracle you managed to get real tklapi for your kharcho soup,
then tear it into pieces, add water (150 ml), simmer for 10 minutes over low heat.

You can strain the finished broth, separate the meat from the bones, put the meat in a saucepan, pour in the strained broth, and add a finely chopped peeled onion. You can skip all these operations with straining - we really want to cook kharcho soup according to the simplest recipe? After 5 minutes, add the contents of the frying pan, bring almost to a boil, add washed rice, hot peppers cut in half, and bay leaf. Cook for 10 minutes over low heat, add tklapi or tkemali, stir.

Season the kharcho soup with finely chopped crushed garlic, crushed black pepper, season with salt, add the rest of the spices, chopped cilantro, turn off the heat.

My comments

Use khmeli-suneli for kharcho soup instead of the indicated spices if you are confident in the quality of the product.
Hot pepper pods can be replaced with ground red pepper to taste. The soup should be very spicy, but not everyone likes it that way.
Which rice is better? I take the round Krasnodar one. Take any short rice that cooks well, but does not turn into porridge.
If all acidic ingredients are missing, use good quality tomato paste (3-4 tablespoons).
Similarly, we cook pork kharcho soup (lean brisket with cartilage, shoulder on the bone) and with home-made Balzac-aged chicken (not to be confused with the old one).
Should I add walnuts? Aunt Nino put in either rice or nuts. I like the rice option better.
Fresh shotis puri goes well with kharcho soup; khachapuri in a frying pan (recipe) is also quite good.

How to cook lamb kharcho soup

This wonderful simple recipe was provided by my friend and blog co-author Vera Ramazova.

Ingredients

1 kg of lamb on the bone (breast, shoulder). This amount will yield approximately 400 g of pure meat.
3 handfuls of round rice.
1 large onion.
1 tablespoon of tomato paste.
2 heaping tablespoons of ground walnuts.
4-6 large cloves of garlic.
1 teaspoon ground coriander.
1 bunch of fresh cilantro.
Ground red hot pepper (fresh or dry)
Salt.

Cooking method

Cut the lamb into cubes, add 2.5-3 liters of water, cook the broth as in the previous recipe. If the meat is too fatty, then let it simmer for 3-4 minutes, drain the water, pour in again and cook, strain, remove the meat from the bone.

Strain the broth. Finely chop the onion, brown in vegetable oil, add the tomato, dilute with broth, add kharcho to the future soup, add washed rice. Season with garlic, red pepper, ground coriander, nuts, put through a press, add meat, salt and, after 3-4 minutes, chopped fresh cilantro. Add a little boiling water if necessary. If you are satisfied with the taste of your kharcho, then turn off the heat and enjoy this delicious dish.

For spicy lovers, I advise you to try cooking it again.

I hope that our meeting today was useful for you. Please share this article on social networks if you liked it. Subscribe to blog updates - I will be glad to meet with you regularly. Good luck and bye everyone!

Always yours Irina.
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