Kabardian cuisine has much in common with the cuisines of other peoples of the North Caucasus. Meanwhile, in her piggy bank there are many national dishes that can be tasted only here. In our article you can learn better what Kabardian cuisine is. Recipes with photos will give a visual idea of the dishes and help you quickly master the cooking technique. For convenience, all dishes are divided into categories: snacks, first, second, savory pastries, desserts.
Features of Kabardian cuisine
The main dish of Kabardian cuisine, like several hundred years ago, was and remains meat with sauce. In the 19th century, the highlanders stopped eating pork, so today on the table at the Kabardins there is only lamb, beef, as well as chicken and turkey. The sauce is prepared either sour cream, or traditional garlic brine, or onion. Ayran or broth diluted with garlic is always served to boiled or fried lamb. Instead of bread, they use steep wheat porridge called "pasta". The dishes always serve a lot of fresh herbs.
From vegetables, Kabardians use potatoes, beans and peas all year round, as well as cabbage, tomatoes and eggplant. Highlanders only eat cheese at home. The most popular dishes of Kabardian cuisine and recipes for their preparation will be considered below. All of them, as well as other dishes of the North Caucasus, can be seen on the festive table of Kabardians.
Kabardian snacks
Kabardinians in the process of preparation pay more attention to the first and second courses and to a lesser extent appetizers and salads. Vegetables are most often served sliced with plenty of fresh herbs. From meat snacks are prepared offal and home-made sausage called "Sokhta".
For cooking offal, beef tongue or liver is used. First, it is boiled in a large amount of salted water, then it is cooled and poured with serum. After that, garlic, dry spices and herbs are added to the dishes with offal and sent to the refrigerator for 10 days. After time, the offal is taken out and served to the table in chopped form.
For home-made sausage, lamb liver (110 g) and lamb fat (70 g) should be chopped into small pieces, then add onion (1 pc.) And corn flour (20 g). In the process of mixing the meat, gradually add salt, pepper and water. With the resulting mass, fill the lamb intestines, tie them and boil the sausage in salted water until tender. Sokhta is served with traditional Kabardian brine sauce.
First meal
In Kabardian cuisine many recipes of various soups and broths are presented. The most famous among them is Shurpa. In the process of preparing this soup, first boil a saturated broth from a large piece of lamb. Then a whole onion and coarsely chopped potatoes are added to it. When serving, the meat is torn apart by hands, since it is not customary for Kabardians to use a knife with food.
Another traditional Kabardian soup is called ashryk. This is a corn soup, for the preparation of which corn and beans (in a glass) are used. They are cooked in separate pots, and then transferred to one dish and poured with milk (2 l). When serving the dish, first put the feta cheese, then the jerky, and only then pour the soup. Top with a frying spoon of onion, paprika and red hot pepper.
Kabardian cuisine is represented by a wide variety of bean dishes. One of them is bean soup, the recipe of which is presented below.
Bean soup: a recipe for cooking at home
At the very beginning of the preparation of bean soup, you must soak the beans (white or red to choose from). To do this, you need to sort it out and fill it with cold water for 7 hours. To soak the beans, it is recommended to refrigerate them so that they do not ferment. After the specified time, it must be washed and put on the stove to cook on low heat until tender.
When the beans are ready to add potatoes to the soup, then chopped carrots. When the vegetables are cooked, you must also add the
jerky and frying of onions and sweet paprika. Serve the soup with finely chopped herbs.
Second dishes of Kabardian cuisine: recipes with photos
Highlanders' second courses also have their own characteristic cooking features. First of all, Kabardian cuisine is distinguished by an abundance of meat dishes. In each family, the festive table is served: lagur - potatoes with jerky, gadliber - pieces of chicken stewed in sour cream, or lamb and carrot.
Kabardian kebab deserves special attention. Prepare it from lamb and liver. Jal-bour (the so-called kebab) is a small piece of fat and liver, wrapped in a film of internal fat. Top them sprinkled with brine, strung on a skewer and fried on charcoal. By the way, brine served to almost every first or second dish. And they prepare it by mixing such ingredients as Ayran (80 ml), broth (70 ml), garlic (2 cloves), salt and pepper.
Those who want to try to cook more main dishes should look at recipes for Kabardian cuisine from Sana (Sana07), presented at one of the Russian forums. They are very popular with users. Here you can learn how to cook a lamb leg stuffed with beans, boiled turkey with sauces, chicken in pastry, etc.
Kabardian cuisine: photo and recipe for Gedliber chicken
This recipe is often called the hallmark of Kabardino-Balkaria. Kabardian national cuisine and gedliber are as one, therefore they cook this dish very often, and not just on holidays.
For a gedlige, you must first take the chicken into pieces. After that, it is laid out in a pan, fried under a lid in its own juice, and then in the resulting fat. Next, the chicken should be salted, pepper, add onions, garlic and paprika. Continue to fry until golden brown, and at the end of cooking add a spoonful of flour and sour cream (0.5-1 l). If the sour cream does not completely cover the pieces of chicken, then you need to add water. Stew the meat for a few more minutes, and then remove the speed from the heat. Serve with traditional millet paste.
Kabardian recipe
This dish on cooking technology is a bit like goulash, but still has some characteristic features. In ligzha, lamb (less often beef) is first cooked and then stewed with vegetables until the resulting gravy resembles a sauce in consistency. Thanks to carrots, the gravy is dark, but if desired, finely chopped tomato can also be added to the dish.
Libzhe (Kabardian cuisine) is prepared from lamb, which is cut into identical pieces, and then cooked directly in a pan under a lid in a glass of water. When the liquid evaporates, vegetable oil, onions (as much in volume as lamb) are added to the meat, and then carrots. Fry vegetables with meat for several minutes, then add a spoonful of flour, the same amount of sour cream and half a glass of water. Hold the dish on the stove for a few more minutes until the sauce becomes thick. Serve with traditional pasta.
Traditional side dish: millet porridge koyzhapha
In addition to traditional brine sauce, sour cream sauces are widely used in Kabardian cuisine. The option of cooking one of them, with cheese and millet, is offered below.
The name of the sauce that is widely used by Kabardian cuisine is koizhapha. At the very beginning of its preparation, beat two eggs in a stew-pan, then add 1 liter of sour cream here. Further, you need to put the stew-pan on the fire and wait until the sour cream boils (it rises like milk). After this, add millet washed in hot water (2 tbsp. Tablespoons). Cook until the cereal is ready (about 20 minutes). Now add the cubed Adyghe cheese (100 g), wait until it melts, and you can remove the sauce from the heat.
If koyzhapha turned out not to be thick enough, then before adding cheese, it is necessary to pour 2 tbsp in a stewpan. tablespoons of corn (wheat) flour. The same technique is used in the preparation of any other sauce.
Unsweetened pastries
In each cuisine of the peoples of the North Caucasus, various pies are widely distributed, resembling thin cakes externally. Kabardian cuisine also offers them. Pie recipes are based on the use of kefir yeast dough. But the filling can be completely different. For example, Kabardians most like pies with beet tops, as well as pumpkins called keb-dalyan.
First, according to your favorite recipe, which is always available in the "piggy bank" of each hostess, we prepare yeast dough on kefir. While the dough will "rest", we will do the filling. To do this, pumpkin, previously boiled or baked in the oven, must be brought to the consistency of mashed potatoes. Then add the fried onions to the filling, garlic, salt and pepper squeezed through the press. Mix everything well, and you can begin to form cakes.
The dough ball must be flattened by hand, so that a cake is obtained. In the center of the cake, put the ball of filling the same size as the dough. Pinch the edges up, and then once again make a hand cake. Now it needs to be turned upside down and rolled out with a rolling pin, carefully so as not to tear the dough. Fry pies in a hot dry pan for a minute on each side. Grease with butter before serving.
Sweet layer bread
Kabardinians instead of traditional bread made from wheat flour prefer to serve pasta - thick porridge from millet. And if they cook bread, then most often sweet, from puff pastry.
First you need to knead the dough with eggs (3 pcs.), Milk (1 tbsp.) Sugar (1 teaspoon), salt, soda (¼ teaspoon each) and flour. Let it rest for 15 minutes, and then cut it into 4 parts and form balls. After a few minutes, roll each part finely, literally up to 1 mm, and grease with butter. Then sprinkle each layer of dough with sugar, lay on top of each other and roll. Place the coiled roll in a pan, let stand for 5 minutes, and then fry for 7 minutes on each side over low heat.
Kabardian cuisine offers two options for preparing this bread: sweet and salty. In the first case, add more sugar between the layers, in the second - sprinkle with salt.
desserts
As desserts, Kabardinians most often serve baklava, pastille or halva made from ghee and wheat flour. Meanwhile, Kabardian cuisine is famous for another interesting delicacy called zykarys. To cook it, you need to make flagella from a cool dough. Then they are cut into small pieces, fried in vegetable oil, folded into a mold and poured with burnt sugar and honey. Frozen zykarys cut in the shape of rhombs like baklava.
Kabardian cuisine, recipes with a photo of which are presented above, are uncomplicated in execution and very satisfying. They can easily be classified as delicious and healthy food.