Traditional Bulgarian cuisine: dishes and their features

Traditional Bulgarian cuisine has a variety of flavors that can conquer the heart and stomach of even the most spoiled tourist. In many ways, it is similar to the Mediterranean one, because when creating culinary dishes, meat, eggs, cheeses and sour-milk products are often used. The peculiarities of the local Bulgarian cuisine are the pronounced taste of the dishes, the presence of a large number of seasonings and spices and a lot of herbs, vegetables and cheeses of their own production.

Features of Bulgarian cuisine

The basis for Bulgarian dishes are most often meat and various vegetables: cucumbers, tomatoes, onions, peppers. Also, legumes are often used: beans, lentils.

Vegetables are present on the table both fresh and in the form of pickles and pickles. They are eaten as a separate side dish, and as part of hot dishes. Local culinary experts masterfully combine vegetables with dairy, flour, meat and fish products.

National dishes of Bulgarian cuisine often contain fermented milk products. Yogurt, yogurt and kefir are used, for example, for making soups and snacks.

Another feature of Bulgarian dishes is the presence in them of a large number of seasonings and spices. Because of this, sometimes food is too spicy, and meat dishes are sometimes too fat. Those who first met the national cuisine of Bulgaria should heed these warnings to avoid digestive problems.

The best dishes of Bulgarian cuisine are served in institutions that are called mehana. Here you can enjoy the local flavor and eat. You can taste appetizers and salads, first and main dishes, pastries and desserts in the mehany. A special place is given to national cheeses. In addition to the fact that this product is added to salads, main dishes and snacks, it is necessarily present in sliced ​​form on the table along with bread.

Traditional Bulgarian Cuisine: Salads

Popular salads for Bulgarian cuisine are:

1. Milky Salad - A milk salad that includes cucumber, garlic, nuts and yogurt. Another local name for this dish is snowflake.
2. Shopska Salad - Shopska salad consisting of vegetables, olives and national pickled cheese. By the way, shops are a small nation living in the west of Bulgaria.
3. Ovcharska lettuce - a shepherd's salad of vegetables, eggs and two types of cheese.

These dishes contain vegetables and dairy products, the presence of which is famous for Bulgarian cuisine. The recipes for some of these salads are listed below.

Milky Lettuce. Milk salad

Essential ingredients for this dish:

• yogurt - 1 liter;
• cucumber - 3 pieces;
• walnuts - 3 table. spoons;
• dill - 5 branches;
• garlic - 3 cloves;
• salt to taste.

Cooking process:

1. Strain the sour milk through a sieve or cheesecloth, folded several times. Repeat this process until the acquisition of yogurt consistency of thick sour cream. Transfer the resulting mass into a deep bowl.
2. Peel the cucumbers and finely chop.
3. Grind dill, nuts and garlic in a blender with the addition of one or two pinches of salt.
4. Add cucumbers and a mixture of greens and nuts to the yogurt. Mix well.

Shopska Salad. Shopska salad

To prepare this dish you will need the following:

• siren (Bulgarian feta cheese) - 150 grams;
• cucumber - 4 pieces;
• tomato - 3 pieces;
• paprika pepper - 2 pieces;
• parsley - 4 branches;
• black olives - a few pieces for decoration.

Cooking process:

1. Bake bell peppers in the oven until light brown. Without cooling, put inside a plastic bag and leave for a while. After remove the peel and get rid of the core. The resulting pulp is rather coarsely chopped.
2. Cut tomatoes, cucumbers and onions into medium-sized pieces.
3. Put the chopped components in the container, add the chopped parsley and mix.
4. Arrange the resulting vegetable mixture in portioned plates.
5. Grate the siren on a fine grater and put on top of the salad.
6. Garnish each serving on top with olive.

On the table must be present olive oil and vinegar. Bulgarian cuisine suggests that the layers of this dish do not need to be mixed before serving. Each will independently add the desired dressing in his portion of Shopska salad.

Traditional Bulgarian cuisine: snacks

A special place in the Bulgarian cuisine is reserved for snacks, in particular, two types of local cheeses. One of them is a siren - a delicious Bulgarian cheese. The second cheese is Qashqal made from sheep’s milk.

The easiest to execute is a siren snack. You just need to cut the product into slices, sprinkle with olive oil and sprinkle with red ground pepper.

Also, the appetizers, which are famous for Bulgarian national cuisine, include:

• kashkaval pan - breaded sheep cheese;
• liver chushka with garlic - fried pepper with garlic;
• boiled queen - boiled corn.

Liver ingots with cheshen. Fried pepper with garlic

To prepare this dish, you can use both ordinary paprika and spicy chili peppers. Essential Ingredients:

• pepper - 6 pieces;
• garlic - 4 cloves;
• parsley - 6 branches;
• olive oil - 3 tbsp. spoons;
• wine vinegar - 1 tbsp. the spoon;
• salt and pepper to taste.

Cooking process:

1. Wash the pepper well, get rid of the stalk and core.
2. Fry it whole in a preheated pan, greased with butter, until golden brown. Then you need to remove the fire to a minimum, cover the pepper with a lid and simmer for twenty minutes.
3. Grind garlic and parsley, add salt, pepper and olive oil. Mix well.
4. At the bottom of a deep dish put a layer of cooked pepper, on top a layer of greens and butter, then pepper again and again the sauce. In order for the dish to be well marinated, you should leave it overnight. Bulgarian cuisine involves serving this appetizer cold.

Traditional Bulgarian cuisine: first courses

The most common first dishes of Bulgarian cuisine, the recipes of which are presented below, are:

1. Tarator - cold yogurt soup with vegetables, nuts and garlic. This dish is very popular in Bulgaria.
2. Shkembe chorba - a thick, rich soup of scars (certain parts of the stomach of cattle). This dish should be seasoned with garlic, vinegar and pepper. The peculiarity of this soup is that it facilitates the course of a hangover syndrome.

Tarator

To make this cold soup you will need the following ingredients:

• cucumbers - 500 grams;
• unsweetened drinking yogurt - 800 grams;
• sour cream - 250 grams;
• chili pepper - ¼ pod;
• walnuts - 100 grams;
• garlic - 2 cloves;
• cilantro, dill - several branches;
• vegetable oil - 100 grams.

Cooking process:

1. Wash the cucumbers, peel and grate them on a coarse grater.
2. Put the resulting mass into a deep container, add unsweetened drinking yogurt and sour cream. Mix well.
3. Finely chop the pepper, cilantro and dill. Transfer to a bowl with cucumbers and yogurt and mix.
4. Chop the garlic. Add it to the total mass with vegetable oil. Mix.
5. Finish the nuts, put them in the soup and mix again.

Traditional Bulgarian cuisine: main dishes

A mandatory attribute of food in this country is a large number of spices and seasonings. Most often, hot dishes of Bulgarian cuisine are prepared on the basis of meat and vegetables. The most striking and popular are the following:

1. Chushka Spit Burek - stuffed peppers baked in batter.
2. Musaka - casserole of potatoes and meat.
3. Gyuchev - meat, cheese and vegetables in pots, laid out in layers.
4. Kebapchetta - small sausages made of pork or beef.
5. Sarmi - cabbage rolls from grape or cabbage leaves.
6. Selskiy shot - mutton liver with rice.
7. Shopska siren in guveche - Bulgarian feta cheese in a pot with tomatoes and eggs.
8. Sach - a dish of several varieties of meat with various vegetables, which is prepared in a special large frying pan.
9. Svinsk or Kavarma Piloshka - roast in pots of pork or chicken, respectively.
10. Placia - fish stewed with vegetables.

Chushka Spit. Stuffed baked peppers in batter

To prepare this dish you will need the following ingredients:

• Bulgarian pepper - 6 pieces;
• chicken egg - 4 pieces;
• siren - 300 grams;
• breading flour;
• breadcrumbs.

Cooking process:

1. Remove pepper from the pepper, leaving the vegetables whole and wash well.
2. Bake them in the oven, heated to 200 ° C, for twenty minutes until the skin is darkened.
3. Put hot pepper inside a plastic bag for fifteen minutes. After this time, peel the vegetables.
4. To prepare the filling, you should knead the Bulgarian cheese, beat two chicken eggs lightly and mix these components well.
5. Beat two more eggs separately for breading.
6. Gently stuff the pepper, being careful not to damage it. Flatten vegetables slightly for easy frying. Roll pepper in flour, then in the egg, then in breadcrumbs for breading and again in the egg.
7. Fry vegetables in a heated pan greased with vegetable oil until golden brown.

Shopska siren in Guveche. Bulgarian feta cheese in pots

For this dish you need to take the following:

• siren - 500 grams;
• tomato - 2 pieces;
• Bulgarian pepper - 1 piece;
• chicken egg - 6 pieces;
• chili pepper - 6 pieces;
• parsley;
• vegetable oil.

Cooking process:

1. Lubricate the clay pots from the inside with vegetable oil. Put the siren at the bottom, then a layer of sliced ​​tomatoes and sliced ​​bell pepper, pour over the top with vegetable oil.
2. Cook for 6-7 minutes in a well-preheated oven until vegetables let the juice flow.
3. Take out the pots, drive one chicken egg into each, pour over the vegetable oil again and insert the chilli pepper in the middle.
4. Cook in the oven until the eggs are completely baked. Serve hot, previously garnished with parsley.

Traditional Bulgarian cuisine: pastries and desserts

Perhaps the most famous Bulgarian pastry is banitsa. This is the name of the national layer cake. Its filling can be both salty and sweet. But the principle of cooking is the same in both cases. Thinly rolled dough is interspersed with layers of the corresponding filling, then all this is baked in the oven.

Also, traditional Bulgarian pastries are presented with such dishes:

1. Pärlenki - thin cakes, bread substitutes. They can be served both in pure form and with the addition of garlic, siren or cascaval.
2. Pitki - as well as dumplings, are eaten instead of bread. Additives used are similar. The only difference is that the feeds are much more magnificent and softer.
3. Mekitsa - fried dough that Bulgarians eat for breakfast, adding powdered sugar, jam, honey or a siren to it. This is a kind of national alternative to American donuts.

The most colorful desserts in Bulgaria are as follows:

• jelly with honey and nuts - Bulgarian yogurt with honey and nuts;
• Tikva with honey and nuts - pumpkin baked with honey and nuts;
• Bulgarian halva.

Such pastries and desserts are famous for Bulgarian cuisine. The recipes for some of these dishes are presented below.

Parlenki. Grilled cakes

These cakes are present on the table instead of bread. To prepare them, you need the following ingredients:

• flour - 450 grams;
• chicken egg - 1 piece;
• unsweetened drinking yogurt - 400 milliliters;
• fresh yeast - 20 grams;
• sugar - 1 teaspoon;
• salt - 1 tablespoon;
• soda - 1 pinch;
• vegetable oil - 3 tablespoons.

Cooking process:

1. Of the listed ingredients, you should knead a fairly steep dough and put it in a warm place for 30 minutes.
2. Divide the dough and roll it into flat cakes one centimeter thick. Grease them with vegetable oil and grill. You can also bake dumplings in the oven.

Milky banitsa. Milk layer cake

Bulgarian cuisine involves serving this dessert chilled, cut into pieces. Essential ingredients for the dough:

• flour - 400 grams;
• chicken egg - 1 piece;
• vegetable oil - 1 tablespoon;
• vinegar - 1 tablespoon;
• water - 250 milliliters.

Essential ingredients for pouring:

• milk - 1 liter;
• sugar - 250 grams;
• butter - 150 grams;
• vanillin.

Cooking process:

1. Of the listed components, knead a soft, stretching dough.
2. Roll out very thin cakes. Grease each of them with melted butter, gently collect in a heap and put these impromptu flowers in a greased baking dish next to each other.
3. Top with the remaining melted butter and bake in the oven at 170 ° C until golden brown.
4. In the meantime, you need to prepare the fill. To do this, heat the milk, add sugar and mix until it is completely dissolved.
5. Beat eggs well with a whisk, then pour in a thin stream of the milk mixture, without stopping mixing. Add vanillin.
6. Pour the baked goods with the mixture and send to the oven, preheated to 170 ° C until golden brown.

What is the true Bulgarian cuisine? Its features are that vegetables, local cheeses and sour-milk products are widely used for cooking. There is also a lot of meat. Often the technology of cooking in pots is used. The above recipes for Bulgarian dishes are quite simple to use, but the end result will surprise you with its unusualness and allow you to feel the taste of Bulgaria.