Khinkali recipe

Hey guys! Today we are going to make some khinkali! So, prepare yourselves, here comes the Georgian dumplings dish that you can’t refuse!

Ingredients:

• 1 kilogramme meat (500 grams beef, 500 grams pork)
• 1 kilogramme all-purpose flour
• 4-5 onions
• 50 grams coriander
• 50 grams parsley
• 2 eggs
• Salt to taste
• Black pepper to taste
• 2 red or green peppers
• Water
• Thyme to taste
• Ground coriander to taste
• Ground mint to taste
• Tarragon to taste
• Cumin to taste

Preparing the dough

There’s this thing about preparing the dough that it should not be very soft or something, so beware of that! I guess, you will need half litre of water and you will dissolve some salt in it. It’s better if the water is kind of warm. So, you dissolve 1 tbs salt in it. Pour the flour in a large bowl, dig the center a little bit like a volcano and pour the salty water into it. Now, I’ve written eggs in the recipe, because many people mix eggs in the dough. However, as my father prepares the dough it doesn’t need any eggs, so I don’t use eggs either. But if you want, you can add them to the flour mixture. I must say, that my father makes the perfect dough for Khinkali, so, you know, just in case.

When you mix all these things together, you should make kind of hard dough. It should not be very soft like it is for cakes and stuff, as I’ve mentioned that already, so you will need strong hands and arms to do that. They say it’s really hard for people to prepare the dough for Khinkali, as it requires some time and effort. Remember, if the dough is soft, it will not hold the meat in it and it will open up and then you won’t have Khinkali, but you will have some kind of soup, I guess!

When the dough is prepared, you can put it into the refrigerator or if you have other things prepared already, you can start making Khinkalis at once. Well, we usually do that, because someone prepares the filling and my father prepares the dough, so that everything is ready at the same time and then we just work together and it just takes a couple of minutes Khinkali to be made.

Preparing the filling

The filling is meat with some onions and peppers and parsley and coriander. Now, there’s this two types of Khinkali known mostly: Mtiuluri and Kalakuri. So, what’s the difference between the two, you may ask. I’ll tell you that Mtiuluri doesn’t have parsley in the filling, while Kalakuri does! I guess, they didn’t seed parsley in mountainous Georgia and that’s why Mtiuluri (which means something from the mountains or Mtiuleti in Georgian) doesn’t have parsley in it. So, it depends on you, whether you want to eat Khinkali with parsley or not. I, personally, like Kalakuri and so we always prepare Khinkali with parsley and coriander both.

So, my father always buys beef and pork together and then he grinds them himself in the grinder with some onions and parsley and coriander and peppers. Of course, you can buy grind meat in the grocery store, but here in Georgia many people buy meat in chop shops or something like chop shops, where they know someone and they tell you when the meat was bought and brought there and whether it is new or of a day or something, and you trust them that they won’t sell you something bad and stuff like that, you know what I mean. So, on one hand, that’s kind of a good thing, too. And, if you buy grind meat in some grocery store, you will have to grind or chop those onions and parsley and coriander and peppers yourself in a chopper or something, and then you mix them with the meat.

When the meat is ready, don’t forget to season it! First of all, you need to season it with salt. You should pour salt on the whole surface of the meat mixture and then mix it thoroughly. Then, if you are not sure whether or not the salt is enough, you can just taste a little piece of it just to get the taste of salt with meat, but don’t swallow it. Well, that may be not a very good idea, though, as we know that raw meat is not good for us and there may be some things in it that may cause some diseases, etc. In any case, think before act!

So, for the seasoning and stuff, I usually like to use some spices in the filling to make Khinkali more tasty. I use some ground coriander, too (because, you know, ground and fresh herbs don’t taste the same) and I use thyme and a little black pepper, some mint, tarragon, cumin and maybe some Svanetian salt, too. Blue fenugreek is also great and Georgians call that “Utskho Suneli” and it really has a special flavor and I really like its taste and, therefore, I use it almost in every dish. And when you mix this everything thoroughly, you should take some warm water, maybe one or two cups will be enough and pour it into the meat mixture, so that the filling won’t be dry. And it’s up to you how much water you will use in it. Many people love when the filling has much water, so that when they bite Khinkali they can sip some juice from it. And there are some people who like Khinkali to be dry. So, when you pour in some water, you should mix it gently and see it the consistency is good for your taste, and if it is not, then you will add some water too and so on.

Now, the filling is ready to be used with the dough, you just need to cut the dough.

So, first of all, you take the prepared dough and roll it so that its thickness is something like 1 centimeter, I guess. Then usually people take 3 or 4 centimeters diameter glass and just cut those circles out of the dough. That’s a process children love very much, but they can’t really do that right and then they get upset and they turn rusty and stuff.

When you cut out those circles from the dough, then you should roll them a little bit so that the diameter should be 10 centimeters perhaps. And then there’s this little thing _ you should leave the middle thicker than the edges! That’s the main thing in rolling those small doughs!

After that, it’s time to put some of the filling on the dough and wrap it. You should make those pleats and then seal them on the top, so that they won’t come apart or something. They call those things wrinkles and it’s said, that the more wrinkles Khinkali has, the better it is. I don’t really know why. And I’ve heard about 19-wrinkled Khinkali that is well-known and when you wrap Khinkalis, people usually ask you how many wrinkles you made and stuff like that, and then if some people make Khinkali together, they usually compete with each other with the amount of wrinkles, and it’s kind of fun and entertaining, of course. They also make some shapes of Khinkali, such as braided Khinkali and fishtail and stuff like that, and they are pretty beautiful, if you ask me.

Then, you boil some water in a saucepan. Well, usually we put this saucepan filled with water on a gas some time earlier, so that it will boil until everything gets ready. In general, we put approximately 20 dumplings in a 50 centimeters diameter saucepan filled with water. So, when the water boils, you put Khinkalis gently in the water in different places so that they won’t stick on each other. And then you take a wooden spoon or something and gently stir for the same reason. Then you should wait for the water to boil again and when it boils you should keep the time. Usually, it needs 7 to 10 minutes Khinkali to be ready after the water boils. So, it’s pretty easy to cook it. When it’s done, you should take them out with a colander spoon of something, so that it drains and then you put each of them on a plate just so they won’t be on each other or something. They should be separate so that they won’t stick on each other.

My aunt does this thing, she prepares Khinkalis when she has a free time and just puts them in the refrigerator and freezes them and when she wants Khinkali, she just takes some out and puts them in a boiling water and it’s ready in just a couple of minutes! That’s just great! So, when me and my brother visit her, she can just prepare Khinkali in seconds, you may say that.

You know, there are these things sold almost everywhere and you can make Pelmenis with them. People love that too, and Pelmenis are smaller that Khinkalis, but the taste will be the same if you do them with the same dough and filling, of course, and my cousin really likes making those Pelmenis with that shape, but since he is just 5 years old, he can’t always make them right and he just gets angry if someone tries to correct him.

It’s known, that if you eat Khinkali, you should drink beer with it. So, Khinkali and beer are very popular together. And when eating Khinkali, you should have some black pepperaround somewhere, because it’s really tasty when peppering Khinkali a little.

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