Lobiani recipe

Lobiani is another dish that is very much loved in Georgia. In all the bakeries you will find Khachapuri, but Lobianis are pretty popular too. It’s like the top 2 dishes sold in fast food bakeries. The first place is for Khachapuri, of course, and Lobiani is on the second place. Personally, I like Lobiani better than Khachapuri, and don’t ask me why, I don’t really know, I just like its taste and I love beans, I must say. As for the Khachapuri, I like eating it if I, my aunt or my mother prepare it, mostly because of the recipe - the homemade version it’s kind of different and just the type I like. In fact, everybody makes it that way.

Now, it’s known that Lobiani traditionally comes from Racha - that is a mountainous region in Georgia and that’s where I’m partially from. And that is a great area, very beautiful and the landscapes are just so picturesque there, that people just don’t want to leave it. There is even this film called “Racha my love” and maybe the film industry then was not that developed to take impressive images of the whole place, but it truly described the life of people there and the people’s habits and characteristics which are pretty distinguished among Georgian people. They have some different style of living and they are kind of different, in short. As they are mountainous people, they have many traditions kept and you will find their holidays or weddings with all those stuff, that people did centuries ago. Their traditional dressing is different and beautiful, too, and their traditional dancing became really popular some years ago and nowadays almost everyone knows how to dance Rachuli and usually, people dance it on every wedding and celebrations like that. It’s a really beautiful dance, and it doesn’t need much practice or stuff like that, so you can easily learn to dance it if you want to.

Anyways, Lobiani is very popular in Georgia and, I guess, it’s not that hard to prepare it.

Well, I’ve told you that Rachuli Lobiani is a traditional one, and if you want to prepare it, you will need much time and work, as it is not that simple to make it. But there are different recipes simplified and most of the people in Georgia use those simplified recipes just to save time.

Still, there’s this kind of simplified recipe of Rachuli Lobiani that I want to share with you. If you prepare it and then prepare other simplified Lobiani, you will understand what everyone’s talking about - the difference between the two. Then you may imagine, what the real Rachuli Lobiani will taste!

So, here we go.

Simplified Rachuli Lobiani

Ingredients:

• 1 kilogramme beans
• 100 grams lard
• 1 kilogramme all-purpose flour
• 1 tbs dry yeast
• 1 tbs granulated white sugar
• 2 tbs oil
• 1 tsp salt

Now, if you are making Rachuli Lobiani, you should consider some things about it. First of all, you need lard for the filling. You can find lard in packages like butter in grocery stores and just buy them easily like that. In Racha, when they slaughter pigs, they use their fat for storage and then they use it instead of oil when preparing dishes. You know there are different parts of the pig, where they have fat, right? So, people in Racha usually use fat from the abdomen in their Lobiani, because it doesn't have that specific smell and taste that fat from other parts have. And when I tell you that the others have this specific smell, I mean it! Well, it’s not that it’s unbearable or something, it’s just if you are not used to it, you won’t find it very tasty.

I don’t know about grocery stores in your cities, but here in Tbilisi it’s pretty hard to find this packaged lard in grocery stores. So, you may find it useful to buy some piece of pork and just put it into beans while cooking them, so that it will emit its taste and it will be kind of like taste of lard. When the beans are cooked, you can take the pork out as it will already have emitted its taste. However, if you are in a hurry you can’t use lard or pork in it.

Secondly, it’s very important to know what type of beans to use in your Rachuli Lobiani. They prefer type “Batumela” and it’s sold almost in every grocery store in Georgia.

What is more, they don’t use spices, and not even black pepper in this Lobiani. They only use salt.

Preparing the filling

First of all, you should cook the beans. You have to soak them in the water and let them be like that during the night and then the next day you can easily cook them. So, you put the beans into the water in a saucepan and when the water boils, you should pour that water out and pour another in and continue cooking. When the beans are ready, you will pour all the remaining water out, so that only the beans are in the saucepan. Then you will add some salt to taste, some lard and mix it and make it kind of like a puree.

And remember, that cooking beans take some time and it may take even hours, so be patient!

Preparing the dough

In a warm 1 litre water you will add 1 tbs sugar, 1 tbs dry yeast and 1 tsp salt. Remember, I told details about this in my other blog about pizza dough? So, you need this sugar for the yeast. And you should wait the yeast to become ready for a couple of minutes. Then you will stir the mixture and pour it into a bowl filled with flour. Then you should make a soft dough and set it aside to be more or less doubled in size. It’s better if you put it somewhere in a warm place. Sometimes people even wrap it with some clothing to keep it warm.

When the dough is ready, you will cut it into small pieces. And it’s up to you, how large you want your each Lobiani. Then you roll each dough and put the filling in the center of it. You will make some pleats and you should put those pleats together and seal them on the top. Then you roll the Lobiani over and roll it a little so that it is about 2 centimetres thick.

You can either bake Lobiani in a pan or in an oven. There’s this clay thing called “Ketsi” in Georgian and they like to bake Lobianis in them, too. It resembles a pan pretty much. In addition, they don’t use oil when baking Lobiani, but I usually use it on pan. Instead, they spread some butter on Lobiani when it’s already baked.

Simple Lobiani

If you are in a hurry or just want to prepare simple Lobiani without all the lard and pork and butter and stuff, you can use this recipe. It is used in most of the fast food bakeries and grocery store bakeries and it’s not that hard to do it.

Ingredients:

• 500 grams beans
• 1 kilogramme all-purpose flour
• 100 grams oil
• 1 tsp dry yeast
• 1 tsp sugar
• Salt to taste
• Black pepper to taste

Preparing the dough

Put the flour in a bowl, add some salt to it. In another small bowl pour some warm water, add the sugar and yeast and wait a couple of minutes for the yeast to get ready. Then stir and pour this mixture into the bowl with the flour. Then make some dough. It should be soft and not very hard. Spread some oil on the dough making it like a ball. Put it in a bowl and wrap the bowl with that transparent wrapping thing and wait for it to get bigger in size.

Preparing the filling

You can wash the beans and soak them in a water for a night. Then cook them the next day. That’s easier, because it takes less time. But you can cook them without soaking, too. That’s what I usually do, because usually I don’t plan to make Lobiani a day earlier. So, you just wash the beans and cook them. And when the water boils, you change it with new water and continue cooking. Then, when the beans are ready, you will put them into a bowl, add some salt and black pepper and just make some kind of a puree from it. You can even add some other things, if you’d like. I’m saying this because I like some spices in my Lobiani and I usually add some ground coriander, thyme and yellow flower in it.

So, when everything’s ready, you’ll divide the dough into small pieces, roll them and put small amounts of the filling in the middle of each dough - it all depends on the size of the dough how much filling you will put in it. Then you seal the pleats, turn them over and roll them a little.

Then you just put them in a pan. Some people also cut up the dough in the middle a little bit before baking it.

If you don’t want to prepare the dough, you can easily buy itin grocery stores - they have them in the refrigerators, or you can buy them in many bakeries here in Georgia, mostly where they make bread, such as Shoti and Lavashi and stuff like that.

Lobiani with onions

Well, this recipe is more delicious than the previous one, if you ask me, because bay leaves and onions make the beans taste better. Moreover, it’s known that onions make dishes taste more delicious than without them.

Ingredients:

• 1 kilogramme beans
• 4 onions
• 100 grams oil
• 2 bay leaves
• 2 kilogrammes all-purpose flour
• 1 tsp dry yeast
• 50 grams oil
• Salt to taste
• Black pepper to taste
• 1 tsp white granulated sugar
• Some butter or margarine
• Thyme to taste
• Ground coriander to taste

Preparing the dough

Preparing the dough is pretty much the same here too. You pour some warm water and add sugar and yeast to it, then after a couple of minutes you stir it and add this mixture to the flour that you have in another bowl. Add them 50 grams oil and some salt. You make a soft dough and put it aside to rise, about 1-2 hours.

Preparing the filling

You wash the beans thoroughly and put them in a saucepan with water. When the water boils, you change its water. Then you continue cooking the beans. When the water boils again, you add some bay leaves. Then I usually add just a little salt and some spices, such as thyme and ground coriander. When the beans are cooked, you take them out of the water and put them in a bowl. Well, you can either make it like a puree by yourself or you can put them in a grinding machine and grind them.

Take the onions, chop them into small pieces and cook them in a pan with oil until they become a little brownish. You can add some salt and black pepper and other spices to it while cooking. Then you add this onion mixture to the beans and mix them. The filling is ready!

Now, you just have to divide the dough, roll them, put the filling into them, seal them, turn them over and roll them a little. Then put them in a pan and bake them.

Lobiani is a great dish and I recommend tasting it, then you will understand why I love it so much!

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