For many, Georgian cuisine is limited to barbecue, satsivi and khachapuri. This gives a poor acquaintance with the subject, as the proud people have a lot of interesting recipes in their storerooms. Including appetizers! For those who wish to join the Georgian culinary art, we offer you to prepare Tbilisi salad. The dish is quite light - both in calorie content and in the complexity of the preparation. In addition, it lives up to all the expectations placed on Caucasian recipes - the salad is spicy, slightly islandy and distinctive.
Approximate recipe
Tbilisi salad requires quite a few basic ingredients: a glass of beans, a quarter kilogram of meat, onion, a small chili pepper and large Bulgarian red. Plus a handful of walnuts. Let’s make a reservation right away: the color of sweet pepper does not affect the taste, it is simply traditionally believed that such a “Bulgarian” is more meaty. In addition, the salad with it looks brighter. The ratio of components, of course, can be changed depending on your preferences. And the Tbilisi salad acquires its unique taste through dressing and spices. Moreover, the taste shades can be obtained different, if you slightly vary the components.
What to take meat
Most often, in Georgia they prepare Tbilisi salad, the recipe of which includes boiled beef. A piece is supposed to be selected not oily, but not too dry. During cooking, it is desirable to add a variety of spices to the water, designed to make the taste of meat richer. However, if you are going to put the broth in another dish, you can restrict yourself to ordinary peppercorns and laurel. Those who consider beef stiff can replace it with pork or lamb. The processing remains the same.
No less popular is the Tbilisi salad with chicken. The recipe used most often implies again boiling it. Usually a breast is taken, but other parts of the body are also quite suitable - just the salad will turn out to be a little more fat, and it will take more time to prepare the bird.
If you didn’t like boiled meat, you can put dried cured meat in Tbilisi salad if you take pork or beef, or smoked one if chicken is chosen.
Right bow
Whatever meat is used in Tbilisi salad, the recipe recommends cutting red, sweet onion into it. Not everyone likes his taste; in this case, a white salad can be a substitute. In the absence of it, you can use it, ordinary, onion. To rid him of excess bitterness and pungent odor, two methods are used to choose from:
- Chopped onion is poured with boiling water and immediately with very cold water. To stand the rings in boiling water even for five minutes is not worth it: they become sluggish.
- The rings are marinated in diluted lemon juice or diluted citric acid. The process lasts no longer than seven minutes.
The most usual way (vinegar) will simply ruin the Tbilisi salad, because all the spices will be lost, and the taste of the other components will “clog” with a vinegar note. In extreme cases, you can use wine vinegar, but it will be too noticeable against the general background.
Beans - the most important thing
It is also important which beans are included in the Tbilisi salad. First of all, you need to remember: only the red variety is taken - neither white nor spotted "sound" in it. Second remark: it is advisable to cook it yourself. If you are not too lazy to wait, soak the beans in the evening with cold water, in the morning change it to fresh and cook for at least an hour. Ready beans should be soft, but dense - no boiled beans.
However, with general employment and constant lack of time, many use canned beans. As it turned out, it does not spoil the Tbilisi salad at all - reviews about it still remain enthusiastic.
Seasonings to choose from
The most important thing in any Georgian dish is spices and herbs. Peppers (preferably ground just before adding to the dish), a couple of chopped garlic cloves, and chopped cilantro are always included in the Tbilisi salad. Suneli hops are desirable, but not necessary: you can replace the spicy set of your choice.
A few words about nuts. Already peeled from shells and partitions, they are fried - without oil, dry. The degree of roasting should be medium, so that they lose excessive friability, but do not dry out. They crumble already after cooling - it is easier to control the moment of termination of roasting.
Tbilisi salad is seasoned with a mixture of wine vinegar and olive oil. That is why, if you decide to pickle onions in vinegar, you will need to adjust the fill taking into account the amount that will certainly remain on the rings.
Cooking process
Otherwise, all the actions are of no difficulty, since preparing a Tbilisi salad is no more difficult than any other. In step-by-step actions, the process looks like this:
- Beans are prepared: either boiled, or drained from the liquid in the jar;
- meat is cooked if the boiled component is selected, and cut into cubes;
- the onion is cut - in rings, if the heads are small, in half rings or quarters, if a large specimen is caught, scald / pickle if necessary;
- processed and chopped nuts;
- chopped bell pepper and smaller - chili;
- chopped cilantro and garlic;
- preparing a gas station;
- all the components are combined, the Tbilisi salad is mixed (sometimes this step is skipped; then the ingredients are artistically laid out in separate heaps and only then sprayed with the fill);
- the dish is infused for about half an hour - cold is not necessary - and served on the table.
Despite the simplicity of the components and the cooking process itself, the Tbilisi salad turns out to be tasty, rather light, beautiful and deliciously fragrant.
Additional components
Some housewives diversify the salad by adding additional ingredients. Two seemed to us the most successful, shading the “native” taste of the dish and not contradicting the very idea of Georgian cuisine. The first is pomegranate seeds. They can be sprinkled on top of the salad, you can mix in the total mass - it turns out equally well. Secondly, cheese. But with reservations. It is better to take a gentle, crumbly like feta cheese. Feta will be a little worse. And the natural highlight is a goat.