In the Caucasus, quite often people use the recipe for boiled lamb, as this meat goes well with many side dishes and sauces. In addition, boiling it, you can cook several dishes at once. For example, numerous soups like kharcho and shurpa are prepared from a fragrant and transparent broth. This article will talk about the recipe for boiled lamb with a photo, with which you can get a lot of juicy tasty meat.
Features boiled lamb
If you cook boiled lamb according to the correct recipe, then the resulting meat will differ in several noticeable features. First of all, such a product is absorbed by the body much easier compared to other types of cooking. In addition, in this case, you will not have to use ingredients of exceptionally high quality to obtain the optimal result - this will significantly affect the price, since low-grade meat in stores can be purchased much cheaper.
In fact, for the preparation of boiled lamb with vegetables, it is recommended to use exclusively meat, which contains a large number of connective tissues, since collagen melts in it when heated. So the best option is to choose the lower part of the sternum, neck and shoulder blade.
Meat selection
Recipes with boiled lamb are not very popular because of the specific smell, which many do not like. In order to avoid this problem, you need to carefully consider the choice of product in the store. First of all, one should not buy male meat. In sheep, it is much more tender and practically does not smell, although it has a darker color. However, if it is impossible to purchase it, then the lamb must be pre-soaked for 8 hours before use, changing water at least three times, and also cut off all excess fat.
Classic recipe
If you want to cook boiled lamb according to the classic recipe, then initially you will need to purchase all the necessary ingredients. As a result, you will get not only tasty and juicy meat, but also fragrant broth, from which you can later prepare the sauce or boil the soup. So, for 4 servings of meat you will need to prepare:
- half a kilogram of lamb;
- 2 liters of pure water;
- 150 grams of carrots;
- 100 grams of onion;
- 1 turnip;
- about 1 teaspoon of salt;
- 2 teaspoons of spices and Caucasian cuisine.
Step cooking
Boiled lamb in itself is a healthy and tasty dish. However, for its preparation, the following sequence of actions should be fully observed:
- First of all, you must first prepare the lamb itself for subsequent cooking. To do this, thoroughly rinse it and put it in a pan.
- Pour water exactly so that the meat is completely hidden by water, and then everything is covered with a lid and put on a strong fire. It is necessary to wait for boiling, and then greatly reduce the temperature.
- While you wait for boiling, you can start preparing vegetables. They are washed and peeled, and then cut into small cubes. After boiling water, vegetables are added to the meat. In the future, water should in no case be allowed to boil, since lamb needs to be cooked exclusively on low heat.
- After this, you need to constantly remove the foam as you cook, because if you do not do this, it will settle, and the broth will subsequently turn out to be very cloudy. That is why it is not the best option to pre-cut the meat into small pieces, because although it cooks noticeably faster, there will be much more foam.
- Once the meat is ready, it can be taken out and used to add to the hot main dishes, and strain the broth through a sieve. Lamb can be served with fresh herbs, sliced vegetables or pickles - they perfectly emphasize the taste of meat.
Cooking time
As you can see, the above recipe for boiled lamb does not indicate how much time it takes to prepare a dish. It all depends on the age of the used lamb. If you bought the meat of a very young animal, then in order to get a soft and juicy dish, it takes only an hour and a half of cooking. However, it is very difficult to buy it, because in stores you can find mainly meat of older adults who have already reached the age of one. In this case, the cooking time will need to be increased to 2 hours. However, such meat has its plus - the broth from it turns out to be very rich and aromatic, so the soup will be much tastier.
It is also worth paying special attention to the fact that if a frozen product is used during cooking, the cooking time must be increased by another hour.
Boiled lamb dishes
It is worth noting that lamb is not particularly common in Russia, where more often chicken, pork or beef are bought in stores. However, there are several recipes for a variety of dishes that use this product as the main one.
Therefore, if you are wondering what to cook from boiled lamb, then you should pay attention to such dishes as irishtyu, that is, meat with vegetables, which are cooked in clay pots, as well as manti stuffed with lamb and chicken fat. Also, boiled lamb is often used to cook meat in Kazakh, which is better known as beshparmak.
Conclusion
Basically, boiled lamb is now cooked exclusively for the fragrant broth, with which you can cook delicious Caucasian soups. However, even the meat itself in this form is very useful, because it is well absorbed by the body and gives it many useful substances and vitamins. So you should at least once try hot boiled meat sprinkled with fresh herbs and onions with a side dish of mashed potatoes or rice with spices.
Well, if you add classic adjika or horseradish to the dish, you will not be able to forget its taste for a very long time. In addition, lamb is considered an excellent dietary product, since it has a fairly small amount of fat, and its calorie content is only 250 kcal. Such a dish in reasonable quantities does not harm harmony.