Traditional Georgian kebabs are fried lamb chunks oozing juice over coals from a vine. Clubs of fragrant smoke envelop the skewers, giving the meat unique notes and creating a special atmosphere around the barbecue. To enjoy a colorful dish, you should choose a good meat: resilient, beautiful and pleasantly smelling. It is not necessary to search for lamb: kebab made from chicken, beef or pork, cooked on the most ordinary wood, will turn out to be excellent - especially if you use one of the brightest Georgian marinades.

Classic Georgian Lamb Skewers

To embellish the taste and aroma of fried meat on charcoal according to an old Georgian kebab recipe was considered unnecessary. There is no need for pickling if the meat is high-quality and young, soft and tasty in itself, therefore it is especially important for this recipe to carefully choose it.

Required Products:

  • lamb - 1 kg;
  • salt - to taste, usually a couple of teaspoons;
  • chopped black pepper - to taste, and it is advisable to take peppers with peas, and slightly crush it (for example, with a knife) immediately before use: this way the taste and aroma will be brighter.

This is a basic recipe, so the list of products and the method of preparation are extremely concise.

How to cook:

  1. Rinse the meat, dry it with paper towels. Inspect the product for contamination, remove them.
  2. A piece is cut into small washers or cubes about 3-5 cm thick. The main thing is that they be the same size, otherwise the kebab will be cooked unevenly. If desired, you can strip the product from films, remove tendons and trim excess fat. However, it is worth saving a small strip of fat on each piece: if it is not at all, the kebab turns out to be drier and stiffer.
  3. The meat is tightly strung on skewers and placed over the coals. The number of pieces on the skewer depends on its length and the size of the barbecue, usually 4-6 pieces are obtained. If the pieces are still of different sizes, group them in size and be prepared to remove from the heat a little earlier or later than the rest of the kebab.
  4. During cooking, the future barbecue is sprinkled with spices and rotated every few minutes, allowing each side to fry well and making sure that this happens evenly.
  5. On average, the process takes 15-30 minutes, but you should not rely on time, but on the taste and appearance of the meat. It is necessary to periodically remove, incise and sample individual parts.

To emphasize, balance the taste and texture of this simple dish, various sauces (especially traditional), fresh vegetables and herbs, pita bread help.

Pork in a Wine Marinade

Georgian pork kebabs often include a touch of wine. If you don’t want to let wine on the marinade, there is a blitz option: just sprinkle it with meat at the end of cooking.

Ingredients:

  • pork - 1.5 kg;
  • dry wine - 500 ml;
  • onions - 0.5 kg;
  • a mixture of peppers to taste;
  • salt to taste.

Red wine not only provides meat with a heady aroma and sour taste, but also dyes the fibers in an unusual rosy color. If you want to avoid external changes, use white wine.

How to cook:

  1. The meat is prepared in the standard way: peeled and cut.
  2. Onions must be cut into rings. You can cut them in half, smaller is undesirable.
  3. It is recommended to mix onions and meat, or even slightly mash, so that the onion juice comes out and starts working.
  4. The mixture is seasoned with pepper, poured with wine and left in the refrigerator for several hours.
  5. The meat is strung on skewers, salted and proceed to uniform frying.

Any ready-made kebab in Georgian is perfectly combined with red wine. But it is customary to accompany it with another drink: mineral water.

Georgian Beef Yogurt Sauce

Initially, the basis for this sauce called "tzakhton" was the local fermented milk product - yogurt. But you can use sour cream 10-20% fat, and neutral yogurt, and thick kefir.

 

Required Products:

  • yogurt - 500 ml;
  • unshelled walnuts - 120 g;
  • cilantro leaves - 100 g;
  • parsley leaves - 100 g;
  • dill leaves - 100 g;
  • garlic - 4 medium cloves;
  • salt to taste;
  • black pepper - to taste;
  • red pepper to taste.

The sauce is a mixture of sour milk base with fresh herbs and spices. The above is a complete list of ingredients, but if you want, you can without loss give up a few points, add something from yourself or change the proportions. The main thing is to maintain the basic principle.

Cooking:

  1. Chop the nuts, you can chop them with a knife, or cover with a towel and roll with a rolling pin. In the traditional zakhton, the particles of nuts should crunch on the teeth, so they use a fraction of 3-5 mm without rubbing the kernels into a homogeneous mass.
  2. The greens are washed and dried, unnecessary stems are separated, and the leaves are chopped with a knife.
  3. Garlic is turned into a paste. It is convenient to use a special garlic squeezer or blender.
  4. All components are combined in a convenient vessel and thoroughly mixed.

Thanks to the yogurt base, the sauce is light and summer, garlic and pepper add piquancy, and nuts and cilantro add a recognizable flavor, so the tzakhton organically combines with Georgian barbecue.

Meat in pomegranate juice

Pomegranate is often used for Georgian barbecue. The easiest and fastest way is to use the juice in its purest form.

Ingredients:

  • pomegranate - 1 pc.;
  • barbecue on fire.

How to cook:

  1. Cook the kebab. The subtle astringency of pomegranate works perfectly with the laconic taste of a classic barbecue, that is, not subjected to preliminary marinating.
  2. Roll the washed fruit over a hard surface, mash it so that grains burst under the skin.
  3. Cut the fruit, and squeeze the juice directly onto the roasting meat.

The abundant content of fruit acid makes the juice also an effective base for marinade.

Ingredients:

  • meat - 1 kg;
  • onions - several heads;
  • large pomegranate - 1 pc.;
  • black pepper - to taste;
  • red pepper - to taste;
  • coriander - a pinch of seeds or a few fresh twigs.

Spices are recommended not to be taken in powder form, but in the form of grains. It is enough to chop them lightly with a knife.

Cooking method:

  1. Onions are cut into rings or half rings. If you wish, you can beat a small amount into a paste, but the cube will not work, it will be difficult to remove from the meat. The resulting onion coals will spoil the taste of the dish.
  2. Squeeze juice out of pomegranate. If this is done manually, it is convenient to use the method above.
  3. The meat (clean and chopped) is spread onion, seasoned with spices and poured with juice.
  4. After a few hours, the meat is removed, salted, put on skewers and fried until tender.

You can complicate the basic recipe by diluting the juice with alcohol, adding a couple of tablespoons of vegetable oil or soaking the meat previously in sparkling water. Often expand the list of spices, and the finished dish is decorated with pomegranate-based sauce or fresh cilantro.

Kebab recipe with tomatoes and cilantro

Tomatoes and coriander greens are used both in preparing meat for frying, and when serving ready-made barbecue. These recipes are almost identical.

Ingredients:

  • meat - 1.5 kg;
  • tomatoes - 5 pcs.;
  • onion - 4 heads;
  • cilantro - a thin bunch;
  • garlic - 1-2 cloves;
  • salt to taste;
  • pepper to taste.

You can add other herbs at your discretion.

How to cook:

  1. Chop tomatoes and onions. Large pieces of tomato are suitable for the marinade, from which you need to squeeze the juice, and onion rings. If the sauce is being prepared, it is recommended to cut the products with a medium cube and place in a blender bowl.
  2. The cilantro is washed and dried. Only finely chopped leaves go to the sauce, and it’s more convenient to drop the whole branches into the marinade. So before frying, it will be easier to remove so that they do not carbonize and spoil the taste of the dish.
  3. The garlic for the marinade is cut into a medium cube, and for the sauce - crushed with a hand press, or added to other vegetables in a blender.
  4. Raw meat, previously sliced, overlaid with onions and garlic, add spices, pour tomato juice and leave in the cold for several hours. Then remove from the marinade, salt, string on skewers 5-6 pieces and cook in the usual way. The sauce is seasoned and punched until smooth in a blender, and then served on the table.

So from the same products that are easy to find on the market, or grown in the garden, you can cook one of the most delicious sauces and fragrant marinade.

Ready kebab is covered with a golden brown crust, but the surface should not be charred; the fibers lose their pinkness and glandular taste, chew easily; a small amount of clear golden juice is released.

Although it is almost impossible to supplement this simplest technology for cooking meat, barbecue leaves room for imagination and is universal in its own way.

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