Azerbaijanis love and know how to cook deliciously, but strict religious standards dictate certain restrictions on Muslims. Islam left an imprint on the national dishes of Azerbaijan. Meat recipes , for example, involve any meat other than pork.
Distinctive features of Azerbaijani cuisine
A characteristic feature of Azerbaijani culinary, unlike Russian, is that here in every kitchen there is always a strong aroma of spices. It is customary to supplement the national dishes of Azerbaijan with a generous set of spices. Aromatic herbs are used in large quantities. These are such famous plants as basil, mint, dill, parsley, as well as sumy, saffron, caraway seeds, fennel, various types of pepper, cinnamon, cloves and many others.
National dishes of Azerbaijan include all kinds of vegetables and fruits. Even in soups and hot meat snacks, fresh and dried cherry plums, grapes, figs, apples, apricots, plums, barberries, pomegranates, citrus fruits, etc. are added.
Azerbaijani cooks are also good at making desserts. Various dried fruits and nuts are crushed, and together with cinnamon, honey, saffron and mint, they improve the taste of original sweets - nougat, Turkish delight, firn, baklava, kurabye, halva. They are also used for filling shor-kogal, shakerbury, zeyran, mutaki, kyat and many other sweet products from and without dough.
Housewives take special containers for cooking - cauldrons, pitnitsy, saji, tandoor and others, but this is not a mandatory requirement, they are just very convenient and, as a rule, have thick walls and special cavities for hot coals or electric heaters.
Baku pilaf
Azerbaijani pilaf with dried fruits and meat is a complex dish, which is prepared in several stages.
Rice is cooked separately - 1 kg of cereal should be poured into a cauldron with plenty of cold water and put on fire. When it boils, add 2 tbsp. tablespoons of salt. Cook rice until half cooked, then rinse with hot water and drop in a colander.
Next is gazmah. From flour and one or two eggs, the dough is kneaded and rolled into a cake to the size of the bottom of the cauldron.
At the bottom of the cauldron, 5-6 tablespoons of ghee are poured, a flat cake is placed on the oil, and prepared rice is poured on it with a slide. Half a cup of saffron infusion is added, covered with a lid and simmered over low heat for about an hour.
Nar guvrum is prepared separately - this is usually lamb, but chicken can also be used. For a dish, you need to cut 1 kg of meat into pieces, salt, pepper, sprinkle with zira and put in a roasting pan with melted butter. Fry over high heat. At the end, add two heads of finely chopped onions and dried fruits (apricots, figs, prunes, raisins and barberries). Stir and pour hot water and a half cup of saffron infusion. Stew until meat is cooked.
When setting the table, put the rice with broken gazmakhma into pieces on a large dish, nicely distribute the guvrum nar and sprinkle with pomegranate seeds.
Azerbaijani pilaf with dried fruits and meat can be made in a slow cooker. In this case, the cooking time will be significantly reduced.
Lamb Offal Dish
This dish is called jiz-byz. For it, the intestines, heart, lungs, testes, kidneys, liver and fat tail fat of a young sheep are used, as well as 2 heads of onions, potatoes and spices (pepper, sumac, zira, salt).
Jizz-byz, like many national dishes of Azerbaijan, is cooked in a special cauldron.
In the cauldron, fat tail fat is melted , washed and cut into small pieces of offal, spices and chopped onion. Everything is fried over high heat, then potatoes are placed in a cauldron and hot water is added. Everything is stewed for 40 minutes. Served to the table sprinkled with cilantro, basil, dill and other herbs.
Hamrashi soup
Azerbaijani hamrashi soup is prepared just before serving to the table, as noodles are added to it, which from a long stay in the broth loses its taste. As for beans, it is better to cook it in advance or soak overnight.
National dishes of Azerbaijan are often prepared from young mutton with the addition of legumes. Hamrashi is no exception. For him, the meat should be scrolled through a meat grinder and combined with salt and pepper. Add salt and spices to the pan with boiled beans. Bring to a boil, form large meatballs from minced meat, lower them into a pan and leave to cook.
Prepare a fresh dough from flour and water, roll into a very thin layer and cut into small strips. Send the resulting noodles into a pot with beans and meatballs. Bring to a boil and turn off the heat.
Serve with plenty of crushed cilantro, basil, mint, coriander and parsley.
Azerbaijani okroshka ovduh
Azerbaijani okroshka is not made on kvass, but on a sour-milk drink of yogurt. Ingredients include boiled eggs, fresh cucumbers, green onions, cilantro, dill and garlic, mashed with salt. All of these components need to be cut, put in a plate and pour yogurt. The ingredients are combined immediately before serving, and before that they are stored in the refrigerator separately.
Sometimes in the okroshka add slices of boiled lean beef.
Chagyrtma
National dishes of Azerbaijan rarely leave anyone indifferent. This also applies to chagyrtma. The composition of a delicious and nutritious meal includes a lot of onions, chicken with bones, eggs, butter, bell pepper, fresh tomatoes, aromatic herbs and dry spices.
Chicken should be cut into small pieces, 60 grams each, salt, sprinkle with spices, pour a small amount of vinegar and leave to marinate.
Dip 1 kg of tomatoes in boiling water and peel.
Finely chop one and a half kilograms of onion, salt, add pepper, zira, saffron infusion and simmer in a cauldron until soft, mashed. To prevent the onion from burning, add a little hot water, but not oil.
Butter, 200 grams, mix with onions, 45 minutes after the start of the stew.
After another 5 minutes, put the chicken pieces in the onion and simmer everything together for about 30 minutes.
Break 8-10 eggs into a bowl and whisk lightly with a whisk to get a homogeneous cream-colored mass. Pour it into the cauldron, constantly stirring.
Immediately after that, cut the tomatoes into small pieces and send to the cauldron. There, chop bell pepper and herbs. Bring to a boil and turn off. Serve hot, laid out in separate serving plates.
Kebab
Lula-kebab - a kind of shish kebab from minced meat. To cook it, you need to get special flat skewers.
Minced meat is traditionally made from fatty lamb, onions, cilantro, basil, parsley, salt and ground spices - pepper, sumac and zira.
Short minced sausages are formed from minced meat and stringed on skewers, and then fried on the grill. To make the stuffing viscous, it is passed twice through a meat grinder or knead for a long time in an electric combine with knives. After this, the minced meat is beaten on the table and placed for 30 minutes in a cold place. Even without eggs, after such preparation, he very firmly holds on to the skewer, without losing shape. Ready-made sausages are laid on thin pita bread and eat, washed down with warm yogurt.
Pita bread is made from unleavened dough, consisting of flour, water and salt. So that when folding the kebab, cracks do not appear on it, it should turn out to be thin and plastic, so the Azerbaijani pita bread is not fried in oil, but baked in tandoor and used for kebab not immediately, but after it has recovered and becomes soft . Since not everyone has a tandoor, it is successfully replaced by a cast-iron frying pan with a thick bottom.
Dolma
Dolma - very small cabbage rolls that are not wrapped in cabbage, but in grape leaves.
Minced meat is made from lamb, boiled rice, pea puree, onions, salt, pepper and cilantro, basil, parsley and celery. Rice and peas are half as much as meat. Spicy leaves are chopped very finely, and meat and onions are passed through a meat grinder. All ingredients are thoroughly kneaded and put on a grape leaves scalded with boiling water with a teaspoon. Leaves are wrapped and dipped in salted boiling water. Cooking time - 30-40 minutes. They eat dolma hot, seasoned with yogurt.
Khinkali
Khinkali in Azerbaijani - products from unleavened dough, resembling noodles, only more coarsely chopped. Nothing is added to the dough except water and wheat flour. In the cuisines of other nations, khinkali is a cross between dumplings and manti, that is, with a filling. Khinkali in Azerbaijani - simple flat squares of dough. They are added to a variety of first and second courses. Khinkali is also served separately, with some sauce, for example, with garuda sauce and with guillah meat.
For gimyima, minced meat is stewed with spices and grape vinegar until soft.
Garud - a sauce of yogurt and garlic, mashed with salt.
Khinkali boiled in salt water are put in a plate, on them - giymya, pour garud from above and sprinkle with chopped greens.
Kutaby
To make kutaba with meat in Azerbaijani style, you need to cook dough and minced meat.
For the test, wheat flour, a little salt and water are required. It is mixed rather steeply so that it is possible to roll a thin flat cake from which to cut circles with a diameter of 17-19 cm. Put the minced meat in the middle, fold the dough in half, like on chebureks, tightly close up the edges. Fry in a pan with butter.
Kutabs with meat in Azerbaijani style are made from lamb, therefore they should be eaten hot, sprinkled with sour sumac. Onion is added onions, slices of sour cakes of dried apricots and other fruits, pomegranate juice, salt and pepper.
Shaker-churek
This is a traditional sweet dish served with tea. Cooking it is very easy. From 1 kg of wheat flour, two whipped proteins, half a kilogram of butter and the same amount of powdered sugar, you need to knead the dough and roll it into balls. Dip each ball into the yolk and put on a baking sheet covered with Teflon paper. Bake in a hot oven until golden brown. Put ready-made balls of shaker-chureka on a dish and sprinkle with powdered sugar mixed with vanilla or cinnamon.
Firni
Firni is another dessert dish that resembles a very thick jelly or milk porridge. Making it is not much more difficult than a shurek-churek, and the unusual taste and texture will surprise those who are not familiar with Azerbaijani cuisine. Firnee needs rice flour (100 g), half a liter of milk, a tablespoon of melted butter, as much sugar, a little salt and ground cinnamon.
If there is no rice flour, then use ordinary white rice, grinding it in a coffee grinder. Rice flour is poured into boiling milk in a thin stream, sugar and salt are added and boiled over low heat, making sure that it does not burn. At the very end, pour in the butter and mix thoroughly. Serve guests, spilling into cups and sprinkled with cinnamon.