Caucasian kitchen  unusually diverse. Speaking about it, it is impossible not to stop your attention in the kitchen of Dagestan. It is as colorful as the secrets of cooking others. However, there are some nuances here that are worth learning more closely.

Formation and features of the Dagestan cuisine

To understand why the Dagestan cuisine is so attractive, you need to have an idea about the characteristics of the formation of everything. Of course, in ancient times there were trade relations with other regions. However, any kitchen is created on the basis of not imported, but national products and preferences.

Therefore, the dishes of the Dagestan cuisine were originally prepared from those plants and animal products that could be found at hand. Accordingly, the fauna of the highlands left an imprint on cooking.

You can list the main features of the local national cuisine. These include:

• originality in the absence of difficulty in cooking;
• plenty of spices;
• preference in meat dishes is given to mutton and horse meat;
• very often dough is used in cooking;
• the sharpness of most dishes.

As a rule, it uses simple recipes in its composition. When creating them, products that are difficult to obtain in local conditions are practically not used. This is not about modern delights, but about national dishes.

Everything that can be put into food has been and is today at hand with cooks, dagestan dishes  They look very impressive, but they do not require special skills. It is no coincidence that such foods are easily prepared in almost every village.

Spices and the use of pepper cuisine is famous for since ancient times. Pepper is placed in most dishes, and it is considered natural, Dagestan chefs can not do without spices. They know a lot about seasonings, and many plants grow here, on the territory of the republic. In particular, in the traditional kitchen constantly use such seasonings as:

• garlic;
• cilantro;
• caraway;
• bay leaf.

The result is delicious, but spicy dishes, each of which has its own special sophistication. Dagestanis can cook the same dish in different ways, using various ingredients. Another feature is the widespread use of lamb.

Pork is practically not eaten here, which indicates the influence of Islam on many aspects of life. Beef is in second place after lamb. Rarely, but still there is horse meat as a raw material for cooking.

By the nuances can be attributed, and the skill of cooks and chefs of Dagestan to use for cooking a variety of by-products. It is made of tripe here inventively, using the heart, liver, intestines, scar and so on. Many admirers, speaking of local culinary delights, recall, above all, the same lamb, which the mountaineers know how to cook superbly.

Dough is a must-have product for making Dagestan dishes. Here, instead of bread, home-made flatbreads are often eaten. Used and homemade noodleswith which you can cook a lot delicious dishes  - for example, Burchak-shurpa. It is a kind of broth, which includes, in addition to noodles, another potato, meat and beans.

Finally, dairy products are widely used in the kitchen of Dagestan. Sour cream, cottage cheese and cheese are included in many dishes, and it is safe to say that local chefs treat these products masterfully, often combining “jelly” and dough for cooking extraordinarily delicious baking. Confirmation - traditional dagestan pie  - a miracle.

Traditional cuisine of Dagestan.

Dagestan chefs can offer a lot of very mouth-watering dishes, for the preparation of which does not require any special products. Here are some recipes of the cuisine of Dagestan make her extraordinary popularity.

Preparing a cake of unleavened dough. It rolls onto double tortillas, after which mince is applied to one tortilla, the second one closes the filling from the top and fastens the edges.

The filling can be anything. Here and meat, and cheese, and greens. This cake is fried on both sides of a hot skillet, or baked in the oven, and then oiled or greased.

Many Russian gourmets believe that this is a kind of dumplings. In Dagestan, the khinkal has several species (Avar, Dargin, etc.); every nation prepares it according to its own specific recipe, which was transmitted to them from their ancestors.

One of the methods of preparation: unleavened dough, coolly mixed, cut into small pieces, and then cooked in meat broth, where before that lamb was cooked with onions. On the table they serve everything at once on separate dishes - hinkal itself, broth, boiled beef, as well as garlic seasoning. You can cook it in the form of a soup, where the dough and meat are in a bowl of broth.

• Sohta

This dish is made from mutton liver, which is first boiled, and then crushed by hand or in a meat grinder. Dried apricots and onions are added to the mince, mixed well, after which the mutton guts are filled with mass and boiled. Sohta is very popular far beyond.

• Gyurza

Gyurza is an Azerbaijani dish, it is very similar to dushpyar. To prepare this dish, knead the dough (flour, salt, egg and water), roll it out and cut it into slices. In the middle of the circle lay out the stuffing. The filling is prepared from ground beef  with onions and spices, ready minced soaked in vinegar, before putting on the dough, squeeze the stuffing. Laid out the stuffing, sculpt, creating a beautiful pigtail. Cook in salted water, boiled gurza poured over melted butter.

• Dolma is the favorite delicacy of gourmets.

There are about 15 recipes dolma. But, without a doubt, the most delicious is obtained with grape leaves. We wrote a great article about that. Read, cook and share in the comments results.

The national cuisine of Dagestan does not do without sweets. Here, halva from flour and honey, which is served on the table with finely crushed nuts, comes to the first place. Halva is always prepared on Uraza-Bayram. A large number of sweets is prepared for the holiday: Sheker-Bura, Baklava, Sheker-Churek, Gogaly, Shirin Gogaly.

Dagestan is the oldest cradle of many Caucasian peoples and nationalities, unique in its composition, a multinational republic, which has dozens of ethnic groups that consolidate around its kindred and linguistic, but independent large six nations: Avars, Kumyks, Dargins, Laks, Lezgins, Tats .

The cuisine of each of these peoples is somewhat similar, but it is also original, it contains the thousand-year traditions of the departed ancestral peoples of the indigenous population of Dagestan. In recent times, the menu of the majority of the poor mountaineers has been scarce. Vegetable and dairy products prevailed from which they were prepared lean soups, porridge, barley bread, dairy products, which are complemented by wild edible plants. Vegetables were almost unknown, meat appeared on the tables on special occasions.

Modern Dagestan cuisine is unambiguously impossible to characterize. Many dishes that were not previously consumed at all or were prepared only on the days of celebrations are now included in the everyday menu of each family.

Dishes found in every single region of Dagestan carry a special flavor. For example, in each national region they cook khinkal, which is served as a first or second course, but you can always determine what its origin is. Common dishes are "Kurze", "miracle", which is prepared from various herbs, cottage cheese, vegetables, eggs, and gourmets who understand the meaning of Dagestan cuisine will never be mistaken what nationality the chef prepared this dish. There are many such examples.

Avara khinkal.
  Dough: 1 bottle of kefir, 2 eggs, some salt and quick soda. Flour - to obtain a soft dough as a cake.
Bouillon: cooked until the meat is ready from the baranine (in the absence of such, you can use beef or chicken, in no case use pork).
Priprava: 2-3 onion heads in vegetable or animal oil, add tomato paste  or tomato puree (ideally, tomatoes, brought to the consistency of tomato paste), mix with water and boil for 1 minute, add to taste with salt, a little black pepper, and greens. After cooking, add crushed garlic to taste (the amount of cloves depends on your taste).

Prepare the dough, let it stand for 20-30 minutes under a dry towel.
  Roll the dough into a thick sausage, cut into pieces 5-6 cm long and 1 cm thick, stick each piece with a fork from two sides. The resulting cakes to throw in boiling, pre-salted broth. Boil until all the cakes are completely up. Serve in large bowls with slices of meat (portions), 6-7 lozenges per bowl. Pour over the top with broth and pour over the soup to taste.

Hinkal with garlic

   Lamb-1.2 kg, flour - 10.5 cups, water - 2.75 cups, onion - 6 pcs., Sour milk - 3 cups, garlic - 120 g, salt.

Boil the meat with a piece of onion and salt. Knead steep unleavened dough, roll it into thin sausages, cut into small pieces and press down with a finger to shape the shells. Boil them in boiling broth. Serve with broth. Separately serve boiled lamb with garlic, pounded with salt and diluted sour milk.

Hinkal Tasabarda

Flour - 4 stacks., Egg - 1 pc., Water - 1.5 stacks., Meat - 700-800g, salt, pepper to taste, tomato paste., Garlic - 1 head

Boil the meat, it is desirable that the broth remains transparent after cooking. Prepare the dough, roll out, cut into small squares and throw in the ready broth to cook until done. Fry the tomato paste. Squeeze the garlic through the garlic press with the tomato. All mix and eat.

Chicken Mutton Soup

   Lamb 100 g, lamb kidney - 50 g, heart - 50 g, light - 30 g, tomato puree - 20 g, onion - 1 pc., Churek 200 g, spices - to taste, cilantro.

Mutton, kidney, heart, light boil, then finely chopped. Salt, spices, tomato puree are added to the cooking broth. Churek crushed onions chopped. Meat, churek, onions combine, pour broth and bring to readiness.
  Serve hot by adding herbs.

Chuchu
Egg-vegetable dish of Iranian origin. It is known in Azerbaijan, adjacent areas of Dagestan.
  According to the composition, it is very primitive: fresh, chopped greens of young spring plants, mostly spicy (and in Central Asia also young alfalfa) - cress, green onions, garlic, spinach, sorrel, mint, quinoa, leek, parsley, dill, etc. ., quickly for a couple of minutes, roasted in a cauldron in oil or in fat tail and filled with an equal volume of beaten eggs. The basis of the chuchu is an ancient ritual sacrificial dish in honor of the onset of spring, the revival of nature (hence the eggs and young greens).

Shashlik in Dagestan

   900 g of mutton, 20 g of green onions and other greens, 100 g of onions, 40 ml of vinegar, 40 ml. Cognac, 200 g tomatoes or cucumbers for a side dish, salt and pepper to taste.

Cut the lamb into cubes with a bone of 40 g. Largely chopped onion and greens mixed with meat, salt and pepper, put in enameled dishes and soak in the cold for 5-6 hours. Shake off the greens and onions, strung the meat on skewers and fry over hot coals 3 min; then remove, pour brandy and again put on the grill. When the liquid from the meat drips onto the coal, the fire flashes and a crust forms on the meat, and the juice remains inside.
  Fry over coal for 15 minutes, periodically turning the skewers. Skewers served on skewers, watering wine sauce. Separately on a platter serves pickled onions, fresh tomatoes and cucumbers.

Fried goat roast (whole) on a spit
To scorch a kid of a kid, wash and sprinkle with salt. Peel (liver, heart, lungs) clean, wash, cut into small pieces and mix with chopped dairy cheese, grated walnuts, garlic, crushed with salt, herbs (mainly mint and savory). The resulting mass is stuffed goat. Put the carcass on a skewer and fry over hot coals. Semifinished meat to coat with adjika, slightly diluted pomegranate juice  or black wine, much less often - vinegar. Before serving, remove the mince, put the fried carcass on the dish and garnish with minced meat. Separately serve hot sauce.
  In the same way, you can roast lamb carcass on a spit.

Khaltama

   Cornmeal - 3.5 cups, lamb - kg, garlic - 30 g, spices, salt

Brew flour with salted water and knead the dough. Shape oval cakes from it (haltama). Boil the meat in the broth and put the cakes. When they are ready, pour the broth into cups. Meat and haltam submit separately, garlic dressing - in the sauce-pan.

Dumplings with nettles
Knead the dough, as usual for dumplings. Let it lie down for 30 - 40 minutes, then roll it into a 1.5 - 2 mm thick layer. 150 g finely chopped leaves of young nettle and 50 g of chopped onion mix and fry in 1 - 2 tablespoons of oil. Form the dumplings and boil them in boiling salted water. Serve with butter or sour cream.

Durma

   Lamb - 200g, rice - 1/4 tbsp, onion - 2 heads, pepper, salt.

Turn the lamb through a meat grinder or chop, add the washed rice, onions, pepper, salt, top up 2st. spoons of water. Finely chop the dill and parsley and mix with minced meat. Wrap stuffing in horse sorrel leaves and simmer in a small amount of broth.

Before considering the peculiarities of the Dagestan cuisine, it is necessary to imagine what Dagestan is. It is the most multi-ethnic republic in the Russian Federation. There is no such nationality as Dagestanis. The Republic of Dagestan is considered to be more than a hundred ethnic groups as their home. Each of them has its own culinary preferences. National dishes of the Dagestan cuisine are characterized by diversity. In each area they are cooked with some special features. It is definitely impossible to say which dish is the best. Each of them is attractive in its own way.

Dagestan cuisine rooted in the distant past, carefully preserving the traditions of past generations. Only local products are used: meat, flour, cheese, cottage cheese, greens, vegetables. Dagestanis love tomatoes, beans, onions, garlic, dried apricots. In the recipes of some dishes you can find wild-growing ingredients: nettle, quinoa, mint, etc. Despite the many differences inherent in the regions of the republic, the richness of the Dagestan cuisine is characterized by some common features:

• Preferred meat - lamb, and fresh. Sometimes Dagestanis spoil themselves with beef. Pork almost never occurs. A lot of dishes that use offal: liver, scar, heart and others. Skilled Dagestan cooks are also capable of making amazing dishes from such seemingly not very valuable raw materials.
• Culinary products are very peculiar, but not complicated in their preparation. Refined, expensive and inaccessible raw materials are usually not used. All ingredients are local. Most dishes are able to do in any home in Dagestan.
• National dishes of Dagestan cuisine are often very spicy. Everywhere put a lot of pepper, both for the first and for the second course.
• In addition to pepper, Dagestanis use a rich set of various spices and spices: cilantro, bay leaf, cumin, garlic and others. Dagestani chefs in the arsenal always have a set of interesting national seasonings. Meat dishes, for example, hinkal, be sure to fill with sour cream with garlic or tomato sauce  with roasted grated cumin and black pepper.
• Very popular dishes with dough. For example, burchak-shurpa - the first dish of beans, potatoes and fresh homemade noodles. Instead of bread, all kinds of flat cakes are prepared, including the famous Dagestan churek. Many dishes from dough with various fillings of pumpkin, lamb, eggs, herbs, onions and a variety of herbs. Use wheat, rye and cornmeal.

The popularity of lamb dough is associated with the traditions and peculiarities of the life of the peoples of Dagestan. Thus, sheep breeding has always been widespread in this region. The shepherds took nutritious food with them, so national recipes contain a lot of dough and meat. And many culinary products can be taken with you. National dishes of Dagestan cuisine, as a rule, are very nutritious.

The visiting card of the Dagestan cuisine is khinkal. It's like dumplings in Ukraine, plov in Uzbekistan and dolma in Azerbaijan. It is impossible to say for sure whether this is the first dish or the second. Khinkal is cooked in all regions of Dagestan. True, there are some differences. For example, Kumyk and Lak khinkal are made from unleavened dough, and Avar - from dough based on sour milk. By its design, the Khinkal resembles dumplings. Stuffing made of lamb or cheese. Hinkal can be served separately or with lamb broth. In Dagestan, it is believed that if a girl wants to get married successfully, she simply must be able to cook this dish deliciously!

Another dish resembling dumplings is kurze. Only they make out in the form of a drop and be sure to pinch the pigtail. And the filling here is more savory and diverse: meat, vegetables, cottage cheese, eggs, potatoes, cheese, onions, plus, of course, various herbs. Moreover, these components can be in various combinations.

Miracle - the most popular dish - is a simple pie, which is prepared in any house in Dagestan. The filling is spread in the center of the cake and closed with another cake. The edges are folded, a hole is cut out in the center and baked in the oven. In some villages, a miracle is still being done in traditional open stoves. The taste of such a miracle is incomparable with the version from the modern oven.

Sohta is a boiled sausage stuffed with minced lamb liver, fried onions and boiled dried apricots.

Khaltama - Dagestan dumplings. Prepare dough from corn flour, form small ovals from it and boil in mutton broth. Traditionally, the dumplings themselves are served in separate plates, and the broth and meat are served separately. The dish is seasoned with garlic dressing or fermented milk sauce.

Kaurma - a dish of scars. They are first boiled, then finely cut, fried together with pieces of the heart, liver and onions.

Love in Dagestan and sweets. Flour halvah, nut halvah, sweet popcorn, baklava, chak-chak, urbech, are very popular and interesting. walnuts  with natural honey.

All these dishes are easy to prepare.

For example, flour halva is a traditional sweetness for the holiday of Uraza Bayram. Cook it in a pan. To do this, melt the butter on it, pour in the flour and mix thoroughly until a crumbly mass of yellow color is obtained. Then add honey, a little more disturb. Finished halvah spread on a plate, level the surface, cool, cut into slices, decorated with nuts. They eat with tea.

One of the most interesting sweet dishes is Urbech - a thick dark brown mass obtained by milling hemp or flax seeds. The grinded oily mass is mixed with honey and melted butter. It turns out tasty and nutritious delicacy, which is used in traditional medicine.

Dagestanis are very hospitable people. Each mountaineer considers it an honor to adequately receive a guest at any time of the day or night. The guest is served the best food. One of the ancient traditions of Dagestan is that the hostess, before lunch or dinner, always leaves a portion of food in case the guest unexpectedly comes. Guest in the house - happiness in the house, so say Dagestanis. And the constant attribute of hospitality of this sunny country, of course, is national dishes  Dagestan cuisine.

Lamb, beef, fragrant thin pies with different fillings and a lot of homemade wine - this is how guests are welcomed in Dagestan. In this mountain region live 14 nations and 14 more ethnic groups, so the concept of "Dagestan cuisine" is like a colored mosaic with hundreds of the smallest details.

There are many dishes, and in each place they are cooked a little differently, coloring with local secrets, ingredients and ways of serving. Each region of Dagestan gives its own special flavor to the preparation of any national spirit. The most common dishes of the Dagestan cuisine are the miracle, khinkal and kurze.

A miracle

To learn how to prepare Dagestani thin pies for the miracle (accent on the last letter), the correspondent of the “MRTK Mir” went to the restaurant “Zhi is”. This restaurant was recommended in the representative office of the Republic of Dagestan under the President of the Russian Federation in Moscow as a place where authentic Dagestan dishes are prepared.

“A lot of meat and a lot of baking,” - this is how the chef of this restaurant, hereditary lezghinka Zarema Ramazanova, described Dagestan cuisine in a nutshell. She added: “A miracle is easy. You will quickly learn. "

Here is her recipe for a miracle specifically for the readers of MTRK Mir:

For unleavened dough, you need to take 500 g of flour, sift through a sieve, add salt and gradually pour in 1 glass of water, kneading a dense, soft dough. Mix it a bit and leave for 20 minutes to "rest." For the filling, prepare minced beef and lamb in a ratio of 2 to 1. At 500 gr. mince take 1 onion, chop finely, combine with meat, salt and pepper, add 1 raw egg. All knead.

Then we form a thick sausage from dough, cut it into pieces 2 cm thick and roll each into a very thin oval pancake (folded in half, it should fit into your pan). We spread the filling on one half of the pancake with a thin layer, otherwise the miracle may not fry inside. The edges are left free. Mince close the second half cakes and connect the edges. Excess dough to cut. I use a figured roller knife, it turns out beautiful "cloves".

Miracle fry in a dry frying pan, without oil. The pan must be well heated and transferred to her miracle. Fry on both sides, remove on a wooden board and grease with melted butter.

Now cut into several pieces and serve immediately. Miracle must be eaten hot.

Meat stuffing is only one of many possible. Here are a few more:

Green stuffing
  Nettle leaves, spinach, quinoa, cilantro, wash thoroughly and chop finely. Add finely chopped and browned onion onions (2 tablespoons per 300 grams of greens), salt, pepper, mix well. Such a filling can be put more than meat, the miracle turns out juicier.

From cottage cheese and cheese

Take 200 gr. cheese and grated Dagestan cheese, mix, add the egg, finely chopped and toasted in ghee butter onions (1 onion), salt a little bit and mix well. If you slightly change the proportion and add more cheese than cottage cheese, then the filling will be nice to “reach out”, it will also be interesting.

From pumpkin
  500 g pumpkin cleaned, rubbed on a grater, add finely chopped and browned onion onions (2 tbsp. L.), Salt to taste, add 1 tbsp. l sugar mix.

Dargin Miracle
  The Dargin miracle is being prepared in a completely different way. For him cook yeast dough  from flour, salt, warm water  and yeast. The dough should not be very dense, but still so that it can be rolled out with a rolling pin. It is necessary to let him go, knead, let him go again.

For the filling take the pulp of lamb or beef and raw peeled potatoes in equal parts. Meat cut into small pieces, add finely chopped interior fat, onions, cut into thin slices, salt, add black pepper and a little chopped basil. At the very last turn, add the same potatoes, cut into very thin slices.

Separate the part from the dough, roll it out into a thin layer of 3-4 mm. Fold in a pan so that the edges hang slightly. We put the stuffing layer about 1.5 cm thick, on top we cover with the second layer of thinly rolled dough, of smaller diameter. We connect the edges and tightly pinch pigtails. Top lubricate sour cream and bake in pre-heated degrees to 230-250: oven from two sides (about 20-25 minutes). Then we take out on a board or a plate, grease with butter, cover with a towel. After 15 minutes, served on the table.

Hinkal

Hinkal is the pride of the mountaineers, it is prepared absolutely everywhere in Dagestan. Do not confuse with georgian khinkali! This is a completely different, complex dish. Khinkal is served as a first and second course at the same time, prepared at any time of the day for the family and for guests, for all occasions.

Hinkal is not even a dish, but a whole range of dishes consumed simultaneously. These are pieces of boiled dough in broth, in each place they differ slightly in recipe and form, which they eat, dipped in sauce, with lamb or beef (sometimes with chicken) and washed down with strong meat broth with spices. By khinkalu necessarily go sauces. Most often it is sour cream or kefir with garlic and greens. Spicy tomato sauce is also loved by khinkalu.

Avar khinkal - this lush, thick lozenges. The dough is kneaded with yogurt or whey, and salt and soda are added, which makes it lush, delicate in taste, and extraordinarily satisfying.

Kumyks cook khinkal from unleavened dough, like on dumplings. It is rolled out in a thin layer, cut into small squares, diamonds or stripes, and then boiled in broth.

Lak khinkal. The dough is rolled into sausages, which are cut into cubes the size of a walnut. Each piece is placed on the left palm, making a depression in the middle of the thumb of the right hand (giving the dough the shape of an “ear”).

For the Darginsky khinkal, the unleavened dough is rolled out with a thin layer, sprinkled with chopped walnuts, rolled into rolls and cut into small pieces. and fry. Sauce - crushed garlic with vinegar. For the shepherd's dough, they roll it out in the form of a thin sausage and tear off the pieces that fit in the fist. Before lowering into the water, the pieces of dough are squeezed in a fist.

Kurze

Kurze is a Dagestan kind of pelmeni (or dumplings, since the fillings make the most different). They differ in pinching and fillings. The fillings are made from meat, like on dumplings, but with tomato sauce and spices, or from greens (nettle, spinach, halta, quinoa, ramson, cilantro in any combination). Still make kurze with cottage cheese, both sweet and salty, then add greens). For the kurze with eggs, the filling is prepared from raw eggs with fried onions and butter. Only in one village can you tell about dozens of options for cooking kurze. And so in every new place. Greens are stewed or put raw, eggs are added where raw, where boiled chopped, and where raw stew with the filling. Spices are used very different, fried onions, green onions, salt, sugar, and cinnamon are added to cottage cheese. What just you will not try in Dagestan!

Baking, meat, drinks

In Dagestan, a lot of baked. From fresh, yeast, sand and puff pastry. Sweet buns, biscuits and cakes.

And with all sorts of sweet fillings and salty. Very loved, for example, boats from pastry dough  stuffed with cottage cheese or cottage cheese and cheese, in half. They are not pinned down to the end, so that in the middle the filling looks outwardly appetizing.

And, of course, in Dagestan a lot of meat is cooked: kebabs, homemade lamb sausages with cumin and other spices, sushta (sausages with liver and rice), sarises (sausages with liver, garlic and corn flour), stew with tomato and dry wine, roast.

Recipes Dagestan cuisine based on what people give mountains. These are lamb and beef, poultry, dairy products, rice, flour. And also onions, tomatoes, a lot of greens (dill, parsley, green onions, cilantro). Of the favorite sour milk drinks, especially tsuru neck. This is the Dagestan analogue of tan. When butter is knocked down, whole fresh milk is poured into earthenware jugs and they pump such a jug for a long time. As a result, homemade butter comes off. And the serum that remains is the tsuru of the neck. Chilled, it perfectly quenches thirst.

Every rural family does home winebecause the vineyards feel great on the slopes of the mountains. Until now, each owner has his own secrets of making this drink. Sweet, semi-sweet and dry grape and fruit wines accompany any festive feast.

But still the main drink of the Dagestan people is tea. They drink it all the time: at breakfast, lunch and dinner, in between, when guests come and just in between times. And all the time on the table is sweet pastry  and candy.

Tatyana Rubleva

Section: Kitchens of the Peoples of the Former USSR
Based on materials collected by I. Feldman and others.
   35th section page

  Dagestan cuisine

For each national cuisine, a single numbering of recipes is used.
The recipes are composed mainly for one serving.
Product weight is in grams.

Dagestan cuisine

Like the rest of the peoples of the North Caucasus, Dagestanis prefer mutton to all types of meat, less often beef. They prefer dishes from natural meat (mostly boiled or stewed with tomato, vinegar, garlic, and numerous herbs, spices, and spices). The food of Dagestanis is very spicy, even the first courses, which are richly flavored with pepper. Among the first courses, the most popular are those whose component is unleavened dough (burchak-shurpa, etc.).

Dagestanis love dough in various combinations, especially main dishes from dough with various fillings: miracle (with meat, curd, pumpkin, nettle, onion), kurze (with meat, greens, egg, etc.), hinkali (pieces of fresh dough, boiled with meat in different combinations and with different seasonings).

Milk and dairy products (katyk, ayran zhurt, etc.) serve as the main food (at the same time as a drink and seasoning).

As an independent dish (with butter, sour cream, etc.) and instead of bread all kinds of flat cakes are used, especially the famous Dagestan churek.

National sweets are very popular: halva made from flour, hemp, popcorn, walnuts with honey.

For dessert, most often consume fruit and tea.

Dagestan cuisine recipes

1. Burchak-shurpa

Beef is poured with cold water and over high heat brought to a boil, remove the foam, reduce heat, put the beans and boil with a low boil. When the meat and beans are soft, put the diced potatoes. 12–15 minutes before the end of the heat treatment, the noodles are placed, and in 10 minutes they add spices and pasted tomato puree. When serving, season with crushed garlic and sprinkle with herbs.

Wheat flour 30, egg 1/2 pcs., Water 10, beef 160, beans 55, potatoes 130, onions 15, tomato mashed potatoes 10, greens 2, margarine 10, salt.

2. Khaltama

Cornmeal is brewed with boiling salted water and kneaded dough. Oval shaped cakes (haltamu) 50–60 g are molded. Mutton is cooked and haltma is boiled in this broth. The broth is poured into cups, meat and haltam are served separately, and garlic dressing - in a saucepan.

Cornmeal 90, lamb 160, garlic 5, spices, salt.

3. Hinkal with garlic

Lamb is cooked with a whole piece of onion and salt, kneaded fresh unleavened dough, rolled into thin sausages, which are then cut into small pieces and, pressing down with fingers, give the products the shape of shells. Cook in boiling broth.

Hinkal is eaten with broth. Separately served boiled lamb and garlic, pounded with salt and diluted with sour milk.

Lamb 200, wheat flour 300, water 100–110, onions 70, sour milk 100–125, garlic 20, salt.

4. Sohta

Boiled lamb liver is minced. Add finely chopped and fried onions, boiled dried apricots. Mix well. This stuffing is filled with carefully processed and washed mutton guts, the ends of which are tied with thread.

Cook in boiling water.

Lamb liver 200, onion 70, dried apricots (or raisins) 50, ghee 50, pepper, salt.

5. Miracle with cottage cheese

Curd mass is prepared as follows: eggs are put in cottage cheese, finely chopped onions and salt, fried in ghee, are mixed well. From sifted wheat flour, water and salt knead fresh dough. Roll out cakes. In the middle of each put curd mass, close it with the second cake and connect the edges. Put on a greased frying pan and bake in the oven. Miracle smeared with butter or sour cream.