Khashlama

Ingredients Directions The benefits of the dish History of the dish

Nutrition Facts
Calories: 99
Protein: 8
Fats: 4
Carbohydrates: 7

Information
Time: 1 hour
By: Ilili-bbog
Ratings 5
Your ratings:

The cuisines of the peoples of the Caucasus are replete with rich and incredibly tasty dishes. When you watch how Caucasian housewives cook these delicacies, it seems that their preparation is easier and you can’t imagine, but no, in any Caucasian dish there is always a “zest”, thanks to which the taste of the dish is so incredible. Khashlama, a dish, disputes about the origin of which do not subside. According to some chefs, beef khashlama is a classic of Armenian cuisine. Others claim that khashlama comes from Georgia. It is almost impossible to resolve the dispute, the cultures of all the Caucasian peoples are too tightly intertwined.

And is it worth arguing, most importantly, a delicious and lovingly prepared dish. The uniqueness of khashlama lies in the fact that this dish cannot be attributed to the first or second course, it all depends on the recipe. And there are a huge number of khashlama recipes - from lamb, veal, beef, poultry, as for the rest of the ingredients of the dish, the main principle here is more vegetables and herbs. Everything is also ambiguous by the method of preparing khashlama - some cooks cook it with the addition of broth, others, on the contrary, stew vegetables and meat in their own juice, some add beer to the dish, others add white table wine.

Whatever recipe you choose, you will get a great fragrant dish, it is only important to lay the meat and vegetables in layers in a certain sequence and not mix them during cooking. We offer to cook the classics of the genre - beef khashlama, and our photos with step-by-step cooking of the dish will help you cope with the recipe, feed your family deliciously and satisfyingly.

History of khashlama

No matter how experts argue, but the word Khashlama comes from the Armenian word "khashel" - meat that is boiled in a piece. Armenian cuisine is considered the oldest cuisine in the world, it is almost two thousand years old, but even after many years, Armenian cuisine dishes are prepared using the technologies of their ancestors. Once upon a time, khashlama was considered the food of those living high in the mountains. The highlanders did not have special conditions and opportunities for cooking frills, but there was always a lot of meat, because the Armenians have always been excellent cattle breeders.

Armenians have always cooked food on fire, in tonirs, clay ovens, from which the food received a special taste and aroma. There is only one controversial point about the presence of potatoes in the dish, but from ancient cookbooks it became clear that in those distant times the place of potatoes in the dish was occupied by chestnuts. Nowadays, in living conditions in the city, it is not always possible to cook excellent khashlama in tonir, city dwellers cook the dish on the stove, in thick-walled dishes or in a cast-iron cauldron, but the Armenians have preserved the culture of cutting and laying ingredients to this day.

Ingredients:

Beef meat - 1 kg
Onion - 500 grams
Potato - 500 grams
Carrots - 500 grams
Tomatoes - 300 grams
Bulgarian red pepper - 150 grams
Bulgarian yellow pepper - 150 grams
Eggplant - 200 grams
White wine - 250 grams
Dill greens - 200 grams
Basil - 25 grams
Suneli hops - 25 grams
Salt - 30 grams
Allspice black pepper - 30 grams
Bay leaf - 2-3 pieces
Sunflower oil - 100 grams

Cooking process:

To prepare classic Armenian beef khashlama, you will need the following products.
We will prepare Khashlama from such products.
Wash the beef meat under running water, dry it slightly and cut into large pieces, approximately 8x8 cm.
Wash the beef and cut into large pieces.
Put the chopped meat into a mixing bowl, add a little salt, basil, suneli hops, mix so that the spices are evenly distributed.
Put the meat in a bowl and season with spices, salt, mix thoroughly.
We use wine as a marinade, add wine to the meat, mix again for even distribution.
Add wine for marinade to meat.
Cover the bowl with meat and leave to marinate for 10-20 minutes.
Cover the pickled meat with a lid and leave for 10-20 minutes.
While the meat is cooking, let's prepare the vegetables. Rinse the carrots thoroughly under running water, if necessary, use a vegetable brush, peel the skin with a special vegetable cutter.
Rinse the carrots under running water, peel the skin.
Let's do the same with potatoes, remove a thin skin from the washed vegetables.
Peel the skin off the potatoes.
Bulgarian peppers free from stalks and seeds. We put all the peeled vegetables in a separate bowl and fill with water.
We do the same with peppers.
Put the marinated meat in a cauldron with heated sunflower oil. For 5 minutes, fry the meat over high heat, then add a little water, reduce the heat and leave to simmer for another 10 minutes.
The meat is lightly fried over high heat, then left in the cauldron to simmer a little.
We cut off the top of the tomatoes, do not remove the skin, cut the fruits themselves into rings.
Cut the tomatoes into rings.
We also cut all the vegetables - carrots into slices, potatoes into large quarters, peppers into thin strips, lightly salt the eggplants so that the juice comes out.
Vegetables cut into large pieces.
Peel the onion, cut into half rings.
Cut the onion into half rings.
While we were preparing the vegetable slices, the meat was sufficiently aged.
During this time, the meat was simmered.
Remove the cauldron with meat from the stove, cool slightly and begin to form the dish. Put the onions on the meat first, then the carrots.
Let's start forming the dish - lay the onions on the meat in layers, then the carrots.
On top of the layer of carrots lay out the rings of tomatoes, again onions.
Then a layer of tomatoes and again onions.
Lay out the eggplant squeezed from the juice as the next layer.
Next, lay out the eggplant circles.
Put bell peppers on top of the eggplants and the last layer of potatoes.
After eggplant comes a layer of bell peppers and potatoes on top.
Wash the dill greens under cold running water, cut off the thickened branches, shake off the drops of water and dry on a napkin.
Rinse dill greens thoroughly and dry on a napkin.
In a cauldron with vegetables, add the remaining spices, bay leaf, put whole sprigs of dill on top. We use a plate as a kind of press, cover the vegetables with it, close the cauldron tightly with a lid, put it on a gentle fire for 40 minutes. If the vegetables did not give enough juice, you can add a little water, control the process of cooking khashlama, but mix the contents of the cauldron.
We put whole sprigs of dill greens on the laid vegetables in a cauldron, cover the cauldron with a lid and put on fire for 40 minutes.
After 40-45 minutes, the dish is ready, now we open the cauldron, remove the plate, mix the khashlama and put it into the serving plates. To serve the dish, large clay bowls are used; if desired, you can decorate the finished dish with herbs. Your family will enjoy this delicious dish and appreciate it. Enjoy your meal!
When the dish is ready, put the khashlama in large clay bowls and serve. Bon appetit!.

Khashlama in Armenian is a hearty and high-calorie dish, something in between the first and second courses, served on the table as an independent dish, without side dishes. Khashlama is prepared practically without oil and fat, but only by languishing. And since there is no fat and frying, it turns out that there is no harm from eating the dish, but only good!

The benefits of khashlama

The high content of vegetables in the dish also makes it very useful, because bell peppers, carrots, tomatoes are a storehouse of useful micro and macro elements, vitamins of groups A, C, D, E, K, PP. In addition, there are a lot of carrots in khashlama, and it saturates the dish with carotene. Also, carrots have a large amount of amino acids, they are much more in it than in other vegetables. By the way, nutritionists say that boiled carrots have three times the amount of antioxidants compared to fresh ones.

Separately, it is worth mentioning the benefits of meat, because there is more meat in khashlama than vegetables. Animal fats contained in meat, for example, have choleretic properties, and vitamins of groups A, B, C, E, PP and minerals, which are so rich in meat, participate in the blood formation of the human body, increase hemoglobin. Of course, the way the meat is cooked is also important. Strongly fried or smoked meat is considered harmful, and steamed, stewed meat is beneficial. In this regard, khashlama is a very, very healthy dish, carrying, thanks to the method of preparation, both the benefits of meat and the benefits of vegetables.