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It’s hard to imagine a complete meal in the modern world without sauces. After all, they are not only capable of making dishes more attractive in appearance and pleasant in taste, aroma and consistency. Sauces can help a housewife diversify the number of dishes she prepares from the same type of product. In addition, the use of sauces speeds up and facilitates the preparation of certain dishes.
The origins of most seasoning sauces are in French or Georgian cuisine, where they are so important that they are practically inseparable from ordinary food. But in the vast majority of cases, modern life is so practical that people do not have time for culinary delights. And almost the entire variety of sauces that exist in the world has been reduced to several variants of ketchup, which has become a household name when people want to talk about the use of this or that sauce. Yes, and ketchup recipes tkemali sometimes they deviate far from the traditional Georgian recipes for making this sauce. However, so that the housewife has the right to choose according to her taste, the article will present traditionally Caucasian ingredients for preparing tkemali sauce, and possible options for replacing them.
Tkemali, what is it?
While most people associate ketchup with a tomato-based sauce, tkemali is a uniquely Georgian condiment that consists of fruity and aromatic-spicy components.
Since it grows mainly in Georgia, it is quite often customary to replace it with any type of mountain cherry plum. In principle, to prepare tkemali sauce, you can use cherry plum of any color: red, yellow, green. Since in recent years many varieties of cultivated cherry plum, often called “Russian plum,” have appeared in Russia, many people willingly use it not only for making jam, but also for preparing the incredibly aromatic and exotic tkemali sauce, which is especially good in combination with meat dishes. However, it is not forbidden to use the most common plum to make this sauce, although this somewhat contradicts traditional Caucasian ideas, since the taste of the sauce should be sour, due to the acidity of the fruit.
Tkemali sauce should be quite spicy, but still the main fragrant note, in addition to plums and hot peppers, comes from a variety of herbs, primarily cilantro and mint.
Thanks to the sour taste of tkemali ketchup, it is simply irreplaceable for making kharcho soup. And in the Caucasus, in addition to adding to meat dishes and chicken, the sauce is often used to season dishes made from cabbage, eggplant, beets and beans.
Real Georgian recipe
For the manufacture of plum ketchup tkemali for the winter, you need to find and prepare the following components:
- Tkemali plum (cherry plum) – 2 kg;
- Garlic – 1 medium-sized head;
- Ombalo (mint) – 200 grams;
- Dill (herb with inflorescences) – 150 g;
- Fresh cilantro – 300 grams;
- Hot red pepper – 1-2 pods;
- Water – 0.3 liters;
- Coarse rock salt – 2 heaped teaspoons;
- Sugar – optional 1-2 tbsp. spoons;
- Coriander seeds – 4-5 peas;
- Imeretian saffron – 1 teaspoon.
Instead of plums, in tkemali you can use cherry plums of different colors and even ordinary sweet and sour plums. But keep in mind that in the latter case you will have to add a tablespoon of wine vinegar to your preparation so that it is well preserved for the winter.
Ombalo or pennyroyal grows mainly in Georgia, so it is not easy to find. Often, many housewives replace it with regular meadow mint or even lemon balm. True, there is an opinion that if there is no pennyroyal, then in this case the best way to replace it is thyme or thyme in the same quantities.
The remaining ingredients for the sauce will not be so difficult to find, so what follows is a description of the process of making tkemali plum ketchup.
How to cook
Wash the cherry or plum, add it to water and boil it at least until the seeds are easily separated from the pulp.
After this, the cherry plum mass is cooled and freed from seeds. You can leave the peel, it won’t hurt at all, but, on the contrary, will add additional sourness to the tkemali sauce.Then the cherry plums or seedless plums are put back on the fire, dill tied in a bunch, chopped hot pepper, seeded and salt are added. Hot peppers can be used in dry form, but all other herbs for making real tkemali sauce must be fresh.
The cherry plum puree is boiled for about 30 minutes. One kilogram of cherry plum should yield about 250 g of sauce after boiling. While the fruit puree is boiling, grind the garlic and all the remaining herbs in a blender. After the required boiling time has passed, carefully remove the dill sprigs with inflorescences from the puree and discard. After this, add all the herbs with garlic, the necessary spices, and sugar, if you see fit, to the future sauce. Mix all ingredients thoroughly, return the sauce to heat and boil for another 10-15 minutes.
Tkemali ketchup is ready. To preserve it for the winter, sterilize small tall jars of 0.5-0.75 liters in advance. Since the sauce turns out to be a rather liquid consistency, you can also use glass containers for industrial sauces with screw-on lids to store it. Lids for winter storage must be sterilized.
The easiest way to store tkemali sauce is in the refrigerator, but prepared according to all the rules, it can easily be kept in a cool place where direct sunlight does not reach.
A simple recipe for tkemali ketchup
If you are not a staunch supporter of Caucasian cuisine, but you are just a little tired of ordinary tomato ketchups and want to quickly and easily prepare a tasty and original plum sauce, then you can use the following tkemali recipe.
Take one kilogram of sour plums, apples, ripe tomatoes and bell peppers. In addition, you need to prepare 5 heads of garlic, 2 pods of hot pepper, herbs (basil, cilantro, parsley, dill 50 grams each), sugar - 50 grams and salt - 20 grams.
All fruits and vegetables are freed from excess parts (skin, seeds, husks) and cut into slices. Then tomatoes, plums, apples, both types of peppers, herbs and garlic are crushed using a meat grinder.
The resulting puree of fruits, vegetables and herbs is placed on the fire and boiled for 15-20 minutes. Stir everything with a wooden spatula to avoid burning. Add sugar and salt, stir and boil for another 5 minutes. Then distribute the finished tkemali ketchup into sterile jars, roll up and store in a cool place.
Tkemali ketchup is easy to prepare, but it can add the aroma and taste of summer fruits, vegetables and herbs to an everyday winter menu and will go well with almost any dish.
