Everyone who loves khachapuri with cheese will surely enjoy the Georgian national dish, achma. This is a pie consisting of several layers of dough stuffed with suluguni, Imereti or any other salty cheese. The dish is traditionally served hot, but also in the cold, it does not become less appetizing. That is why Achma with cheese is prepared on large baking sheets so that the uneaten pieces of the pie can be heated the next day. The best recipes for this dish are presented in our article.
The secrets of cooking delicious acma
The following recommendations will help you prepare real Georgian delicious Achma at home:
- Cakes should be rolled as thin as possible, then the achma will turn out more tender and better soaked.
- If during the baking of the cake its top and sides begin to burn, they should be covered with foil, after which you can continue cooking in the oven.
- When cooking lazy Achma from pita bread, you need to additionally lubricate the cakes with sauce, otherwise the pita bread will not be soaked, and the cake will turn out dry.
- When pre-cutting the acma into pieces before baking, the cuts should not be done completely, leaving a couple of layers intact. This is done so that the filling does not leak to the bottom of the mold and does not burn.
Achma filling options
Traditionally, suluguni is used as a filling for preparing achma. But there are other options, for example:
- 50% suluguni and 50% Imereti cheese;
- feta;
- feta cheese
- Mozzarella;
- cottage cheese;
- 50% suluguni (feta cheese, feta) and 50% cottage cheese;
- meat;
- cheese and mushrooms, etc.
If you wish, you can even cook sweet achma for tea. At the same time, instead of salted cheese, you need to add sweet cottage cheese with raisins and dried fruits to the filling. Of course, this is not Georgian achma, but improvisation, but it turns out such a cake is very tasty and interesting.
Georgian achma with cheese: recipe with photo
Traditional Georgian Achma is a multi-layered pie with salty cheese filling inside. Every Georgian woman should be able to bake such a pie, and in different villages there may be recipes for preparing this delicious dish.
The traditional cheese achma is prepared in the following order:
- In 100 ml of water, eggs (2 pcs.) And salt (½ teaspoon) are added. All ingredients are whipped until foam.
- The previously prepared pouring from eggs, water and salt is poured into a depression from sifted flour (500 g).
- Elastic dough is kneading gradually. If necessary, you can add flour to it.
- From the grated suluguni (0.6 kg), sour cream (100 ml) and melted butter (150 g), the filling is prepared.
- The dough is divided into 9 parts. Each part is thinly rolled out, while one layer should be approximately 1.5 times larger than the rest.
- Each layer of dough is separately boiled in boiling water for 20 seconds, after which it is lowered into a basin of ice water for 15 seconds and dried on a towel.
- A cake is formed. At the bottom of the mold, the largest layer of dough is laid out, the filling is distributed in the center, then the dough, the filling again, etc. When the last layer of dough is laid out, the edges of the lower sheet need to be lifted up, as if to “seal” the sides of the cake.
- The formed pie is immediately cut into portioned pieces and smeared with dressing from an egg (1 pc.) And sour cream (50 ml) with salt.
- Achma is baked with suluguni cheese for 50 minutes at a temperature of 180 degrees.
Before serving, cool the dish.
Lazy pita bread with cheese: recipe
In order not to waste time rolling the cakes, some housewives adapted to cook acma from pita bread. It is worth noting that, to taste, it is not much inferior to the traditional Georgian dish.
To prepare achma, three sheets of thin pita bread are laid out on the bottom of the lap form, overlapping each other by about a third. The filling made from suluguni (400 g) and 1 egg is distributed on top. The cheese filling is poured with kefir sauce (150 ml) and eggs, after which it is covered with another sheet of pita bread. In general, the formation of the cake occurs similarly to the method presented in the previous recipe. In total, for such an amount of filling, you need to take 7 sheets of pita bread.
Pita bread with cheese before baking is poured with melted butter. And only after that the cake form is sent for 30 minutes to the oven, heated to a temperature of 180 degrees.
Achma with feta cheese
Chicken pie can be cooked according to a traditional recipe or a simplified version with pita bread. In the first case, nine layers of dough will need to be rolled again. Then they will need to be cooked, cooled in ice water and dried on a towel. The amount of feta cheese will be similar to the weight of suluguni (600 g).
When choosing the second cooking option, the feta cheese will be laid out as a filling between the layers of pita bread. At the same time, so that the pie does not turn out dry, melted butter should be added to the grated cheese, and grease each sheet of pita bread with kefir or cream sauce.
Armenian Achma with cottage cheese and pita cheese
For the preparation of acchma according to this recipe, cottage cheese is used as a filling (300 g), mixed with suluguni in a ratio of 2: 1. Greens to taste (green onions, parsley, cilantro), black pepper and salt are added here. If pure cottage cheese is used as the filling, then it is necessary to add a pinch of soda into it so that when baking it begins to melt like suluguni.
The process of forming a pie from pita bread is no different from previous options for cooking this dish. To dry the sheets turned out juicy and tender, they are well soaked in a sauce of eggs (2 pcs.) And kefir (300 ml), after which they spread the filling. Achma with cheese and cottage cheese from pita bread is baked in the oven until browning, about 35 minutes. The finished dish immediately after the oven is poured with melted butter (100 ml).
Puff Pastry Achma
Very tasty achma is also obtained from puff pastry, while cooking the dish is simple. For its preparation, you will need a package of puff yeast-free dough, each layer of which is rolled out in accordance with the size of the form. The first sheet, which is laid at the bottom, will be larger and thinner than the rest.
In the process of pie formation, a filling is laid out on each dough layer, which includes salted cheese (200 g), cottage cheese (200 g) and melted butter (200 g). Top the filling is poured with cream sauce with eggs (2 pcs.). In this sequence, all layers are gradually formed. The last sheet of dough is smeared with the remaining creamy egg sauce. Achma with cheese and cottage cheese is baked from puff pastry for 20 minutes at 180 degrees. Immediately after the oven, it should cool down a bit, and only after that the pie can be cut into pieces.
Cheese Achma in a slow cooker
Delicious achma can be cooked even in a slow cooker. To do this, you need 3 sheets of pita bread. The first sheet is laid out on the bottom of the multicooker bowl so that its edges hang from the outside. The remaining 2 pita bread must be cut into pieces of any size. After that, they are soaked in kefir fill. To prepare it, you need to mix kefir (500 ml) and eggs (2 pcs.) In one bowl. At the same time, you should prepare the filling of grated salted cheese (suluguni, feta cheese, etc.).
A cake is formed as follows: on the first sheet of pita bread several pieces soaked in kefir are laid out, then the filling, then again a layer of soaked pita bread, again grated cheese, etc. The last layer should be cheese. After that, the hanging edges of pita bread are folded inward, and the achma with cheese is closed. Pieces of butter are laid out on top. The cake should be baked for 45 minutes on one side, then it will need to be carefully turned over and sent to the crock-pot to continue cooking for another 40 minutes.