Khychiny
- Nutrition Facts
- Calories: 236
- Protein: 8
- Fats: 6
- Carbohydrates: 36
In the world there are a huge number of recipes for cakes. Almost every nation has its own special recipe. HozOboz will teach you today how to cook khychins - these are really delicious and tender cakes from Kabardino-Balkaria and Karachay-Cherkessia, which have an interesting history.
Story
Khychin is a thin unleavened pie with potato and cheese or meat filling with greens. Khychiny is a national dish
Karachays and Balkars, and although they were differently evaluated by the Balkars and Karachays in terms of their prestige, absolutely all their varieties were extremely popular among the people. In the past days, it was considered the highest hospitality of every hostess of any house to invite a guest “to khychins”. This is one of the most honored dishes among the flour dishes of the Karachay-Circassian and Kabardino-Balkarian cuisine. Any feast without khychin was simply unimaginable. Without khychin, the meal was known to be poor, especially without meat khychin.
In some of their details, the Balkar khychins differed from the Karachai ones. For example, the Balkarians made potato khychins very thin, and baked them in a frying pan, lubricating it with a small amount of butter. Until there were pans and their predecessors,
khychins were cooked on coals. Karachay khychins were made thicker and usually fried in a large cauldron in boiling fat, and eventually in butter. Since the cauldron was of impressive size, several khychins could be cooked in it at once. The cauldron or cast-iron utensils in which khychyns were fried were called “dzhaukyazan” or “dzhauchoyun”, they were in every house.
The most prestigious and popular type of khychyn were meat ones, which were called "etkhychyn". Meat for minced meat was cut into small pieces, which were then chopped with an ax on special wooden planks made of hardwood. Pieces of lard were sometimes added to minced meat. Then everything was thoroughly mixed, salt and spices (garlic, onion, pepper) were added.
A little later, after the meat khychin, “byshlak khychyn” appeared, that is, cheese khychin. Along with meat, cottage cheese and cheese, from about the second half of the 19th century, potatoes, as well as sorrel, young sugar beet leaves, and sometimes even nettles, were added to the stuffing for khychyns. Actually, it was potato khychin that became the most popular and widespread among Karachays and Balkars. Of course, khychins with meat have always been and remain more prestigious, but not everyone could afford to serve them to the ordinary table every day, and it was always possible to cook khychins with potatoes. However, in the social elite, potato khychyn was never served to a guest - only meat, and if there was no such possibility, they did not serve any at all. Potato khychyns were not served at the solemn table either, which, however, does not make them less tasty and beloved. Khychins with potatoes, which, however, can also be called khychins with cheese, since we will be making a double filling, KhozOboz offers you to cook today.
Ingredients:
- Wheat flour - 4.5 cups;
- Kefir (airan) - 450 ml;
- Soda - 1 teaspoon;
- Potatoes - 3 pieces of medium size;
- Cheese - 200 g;
- Butter - 50 g.
How to cook khychin. Recipe:
- To begin with, we will boil potatoes in their uniforms. We carefully wash each potato, put it in a saucepan, fill it with water and cook until tender.
To boil the potatoes, wash them thoroughly and place them in a pot of water, where we then boil the tubers until cooked.
- While the potatoes are cooking, we will prepare the dough. Pour kefir into a deep bowl or, if you have such an opportunity, ayran. In general, you can even use sour milk.
For the dough, pour kefir, sour milk or, preferably, ayran into a bowl.
- Add soda to kefir.
Pour soda into kefir.
- Then, little by little, we begin to add flour to kefir, stirring the dough with a spoon.
Now we introduce flour into the dough in small portions and mix everything well with a spoon.
- Gradually the dough begins to thicken.
Thicken the dough.
- Then we begin to knead the dough with our hands. We add enough flour so that the dough stops sticking to the hands, but retains its elasticity, approximately like dough for dumplings.
Knead the already thick dough by hand until it becomes elastic.
- Our cook needed 4.5 cups of flour to make such a beautiful, pliable and elastic dough. Depending on the kefir and the flour itself, you can go both less and more of this very flour. That is why we add flour gradually, without stopping the process. kneading. We leave the finished dough for half an hour, covered with a towel.
Considering that the stickiness of flour is different, you should knead the dough according to your own feelings until elastic. In our case, it took 4.5 cups. In order not to overdo it, introduce flour gradually.
- Then we prepare the filling. Mash the cheese with a fork. You can also use regular cottage cheese.
For the filling, mash the cheese or cottage cheese with a fork.
- As a result, there should not be large lumps of cheese.
Knead the cheese so that there are no lumps.
- Peel the finished potatoes.
We clean the boiled potatoes.
- Add potatoes to cheese and knead.
We combine potatoes and cheese and knead well again.
- The filling should have a more or less uniform consistency. You can optionally add fresh herbs or dried herbs. We do not add salt to the filling, since the cheese itself is quite salty. But, if you use regular cottage cheese, add a little salt to taste.
To add flavor to the filling, you can add herbs to it, as well as ground pepper or other spices to taste.
- Divide the dough into 10-12 equal parts.
Divide the finished dough into about 12 parts.
- Each part of the dough is slightly rolled out with a rolling pin.
Roll out each piece of dough.
- Put 1.5-2 tablespoons of filling on the dough.
In each blank we place one and a half - two tablespoons of potato-cheese filling.
- We pinch the edges of the dough from above as shown in the photo. You should get a kind of ball.
We close the hychins in the form of a ball as in the photo.
- Then we roll out this ball with a rolling pin thinly enough. If suddenly the dough breaks, do not be upset, but simply moisten the gap with water and sprinkle with flour - the hole will disappear.
The resulting stuffed ball is thinly rolled out with a rolling pin. If the dough breaks during the process, simply moisten the gap with water, and then sprinkle it with flour.
- Fry khychins in a hot dry frying pan. As soon as fried spots appear, turn over kick to the other side. In the process of frying, the khychin can swell, then you need to carefully pierce it with a knife.
Preheat the pan and fry the pies on both sides until brown spots form. If the pies begin to swell, just gently pierce the dough with a knife.
- Remove the khychin from the pan, put it in a saucepan and grease it on both sides with butter. Cover the pot with a lid to khychins remained warm for as long as possible.
Ready khychins must be greased with butter and placed in a saucepan, which must certainly be closed with a lid.
- According to this recipe, about 10 khychins are obtained - an almost full pan. Agree, they turned out great hychins - the photo is more than eloquent.
From our set of products you can cook about 10-12 pies.
- Bon appetite.
Bon appetite.
Benefit
Many people say that khychins are not the healthiest food. Of course, you should not abuse flour products. However, do not forget that this dish is often served with ayran (or kefir) as a bite, so such food will not be so heavy for the stomach. But the fact that it is very tasty is a fact, KhozOboz guarantees. Now you know what khychins are and how to cook them. There seem to be no particular difficulties, but HozOboz still wants to remind you that when rolling out Khychin can break, so you need to do everything as carefully as possible and not rush anywhere. But you already know that, don't you?
