(c) Can Stock Photo
cuisine: Georgian
Timing: approximately 2 hours
Cooking level: difficult
Nutrition: high
Khinkali. This is a typical Caucasian dish, originally Georgian, a country which lies in South Caucuses, having one of its neighbors the beautiful Armenia.
Georgian cuisine is rich in heavy meals, such as khachapuri, khinakli and others. Today we are going to learn how to make khinkalis. Khinkali is a dumpling, which means that khinkali contains of dough stuffed with meat and lots of spices. Khinakli is known to be one of Georgia’s national dishes.
Khinkali is very nutritious and makes you feel full very fast. However, khinakli is not easy to make like most of the Caucasian dishes it requires much effort. It will take more than an hour and a half to cook this amazing dish.
Usually khinakli is made of meat, most often beef meet, but sometimes lamb meat replaces the beef meat. The traditional and classic version of khinkali is the one stuffed with meat, though there are new versions of khinkali stuffed with cheese, herbs or mushrooms
Ingredients for approximately 30 khinkalis are
For dough
1.5 kg flour
2 eggs
500 ml warm water
For filling
700 grams of beef meat
Dried red pepper
Salt
Caraway seed
2 onions (recommended but not a must)
500 ml water
First to make the dough you need to take the flour and add it into the bowl, and then you have to add 2 eggs there mix and then add the water. The dough must be made in a round shape. You divide the dough into 2 pieces and knead them until they are firm.
Then you take a glass and dig it into the dough so that you get small round shapes and carefully take each shape out.
Then you take each of the dough and make it larger. After all the round shapes are ready you need to prepare for the filling.
So for the filling you add meat, spices, 2 chopped onions and salt all in the same ball. Then mix the mass with hands and add water little by little, squashing the filling all the time. We add the water to make khinkalis juicy and not dry.
Then when the filling is also ready, we should take one round shape of dough, add 1 teaspoon of the filling, and then by fingers we stick the edges of dough. After you have done this to all your round dough, it is time to place them into a deep jar. You have to boil them for about 15 minutes, and in that case if they are cooked they will not burst.
When they are ready you just serve them like that, without any sauce, just the black pepper.
Keep in mind that you only must eat the bottom of khinkali and not the whole part. The part which is only the dough is thrown away, because it is just dough which is bad for your stomach and is clinging to your stomach if you eat it. So better just avoid eating that.
Enjoy your khinkalis, you will like that.
