Chakhokhbili - 9 cooking recipes

For cooking, they take young (with fat) meat, cut it like goulash, in small pieces. The peculiarity of the chakhokhbili cooking technology is that the meat is fried “dry”, that is, without any added fat, in a cauldron, for about fifteen minutes. Afterwards, the meat is “dry boiled” - without water, due to the moisture contained in the vegetables. Therefore, products containing a lot of moisture, such as tomatoes, are added to chakhokhbili, they are steamed in boiling water and added to the dish without the skin. Probably, even in the Ancient East, all Black Sea and Mediterranean cuisines knew this technique. The onions, already fried in oil, are added in another bowl so that they do not absorb the moisture of the meat and other vegetables, and during stewing ("low-fat") they do not become a boiled and tasteless mass. The stew lasts 30 minutes. Finally, spices are put in chakhokhbili: basil, cilantro, red pepper and, of course, garlic. Additional spices can include dill, mint, tarragon, suneli hops and Imeretian saffron. In total, chakhokhbili is prepared for about one hour. In addition to tomatoes, potatoes (fried) also go there and are almost ready, first in another bowl, and only then, when adding spices (closer to the end of cooking), is it added to the dish itself. If there is not enough liquid in the chakhokhbili, you can add a little boiling water (for half a kilo of meat no more than half a glass). Although it is better to correct this by increasing the amount of tomatoes.