Avar Hinkal: recipe for cooking

Hinkal is a real masterpiece of Dagestani cuisine, which was recognized far beyond the Caucasus. I must say that there are several varieties of this dish. For example, Lak or thin hinkal, for the preparation of which use a thinly rolled out unleavened dough. There is also a layered hinkal, which is very similar to the German strudels. For its preparation, use dumpling pastry, rolled into thin cakes, which are sprinkled with herbs and onions, and then rolled into a roll. But today we will talk about cooking one of the most "whimsical", but also the most delicious versions of this dish - lush or avar khinkale.

First, we must immediately remember that the Avarian hinkal, the recipe of which will be given below, has nothing to do with Georgian khinkali or large pelmeni. Hinkal - it's not even a dish, but a whole complex dinner, which includes fragrant meat broth, boiled meat, sauce (sour or tomato, with garlic added) and actually hinkal - lush pancakes made of dough cooked in meat broth.

It must be said that in order to cook a tasty Avar hinkal, the recipe of which, in principle, is not complicated, one must have some experience in cooking, as, as already mentioned, the dish is quite "capricious". Not without reason in Dagestan, one of the determining factors in choosing a bride is the ability of a girl to cook hinkal for a long time.

Let's start cooking Avar hinkal. The recipe includes the following ingredients: mutton pulp (alternatively, you can use beef or chicken), a bulb, a hundred grams of cilantro and dill, salt, pepper. To prepare tomato sauce we need a kilogram of juicy fleshy tomatoes, half a head of garlic, one hundred grams of butter. For the test, take about a kilogram of flour, half a liter of fresh yogurt or curdled milk and half a teaspoon of soda.

So, how to cook Avar hinkal? First of all, we will wash and put the meat to boil, removing the foam from the broth so that it will turn out to be transparent. Let's look at the greenery of cilantro and dill, separating the leaves. We connect the stems of greenery with a string in a bundle and put it in broth, there we will send the bulb entirely. By the way, the onion can not be cleaned, but it's easy to wash and cut off from the roots. The onion peel, cooked in broth, gives that golden color.

While the meat is boiled, let's prepare the dough. I must say that it depends on how the dough will be cooked, it depends whether the Avarian hinkal will turn out to be delicious. The recipe for the preparation of the test is as follows. We sift the flour so that a mound is formed, on top of which it is necessary to make a depression. There we put salt, soda and we begin to add yogurt or kefir, kneading lush dough. It is very important to knead the dough well, but do not make it steep. We can cover the dough with a napkin, so that it does not get weaker, and leave it for a proofing for half an hour.

Let's start preparing the sauce. To do this, three tomatoes on a grater, add tomato mass, add black pepper and pour it all into a bowl, where the butter is already melted. We wait until the liquid boils, and we reduce the heating to a minimum, leaving the sauce to stew for about twenty minutes. During this time, he should boil well, having decreased in volume approximately half. Now cut the left leaves of cilantro and dill and send them to the sauce, continuing to stew it for another ten minutes.

Grind three or four cloves of garlic, put them in the saucepan and add there a couple of spoonfuls of boiled cold water. Then we pour the tomato mass into the saucepan, cover it with a lid and put it in a warm place before serving.

By this time the meat was cooked. We extract it from the broth and put it in a bowl with a lid, and the broth is filtered.

The dough is divided into several parts. Roll out each piece of cake so that its thickness is 0.7-10 mm. We cut the dough into small diamonds (the length of the side of the diamond is about 3-4 cm).

We throw the dough into the boiling broth (not all at once, in small batches, otherwise we will not have time to pull them out and pierce them). Threw the dough, mixed and covered the pan with a lid. As soon as the soup boils, remove the lid and mix again. Varim hinked for one minute, during this time he turns into a lavish little loaf. We extract the finished hinkal with a jumble on the dish and then pierce it in several places with a toothpick (you can use a fork). If you do not make a puncture, the dough will lose its splendor and become blue. The same operation is done with the other cakes from the dough.

Now you know how to cook Avar hinkal. And how to serve this dish? On the table we put a large plate of boiled meat, which you need to sprinkle with herbs, a dish with a ready khinkal, a sauceboat with tomato sauce and cups or bowls, into which poured a fragrant broth.

We begin the meal. Take the cake from the dough, dunk it in the sauce, bite it, wash it with broth and seize with boiled meat. Delicious!