Simple and delicious soup recipes for every day

If you like experimenting with first courses, you love Georgian cuisine, the recipe for making kharcho soup at home will become a fixture in the family menu.

2 hours

75 kcal

4.9/5 (10)

True gourmets should definitely try the Georgian meat dish - kharcho soup. It is thick like a stew. It is prepared with rice and walnuts. All products are simple and affordable. As with many Georgian dishes, the highlight here is in the seasonings and the mood in which you cook. Dozens of variants of kharcho are known. The peculiarities of their preparation depend on the locality of Georgia to which the recipe belongs.

If soups are regularly present on your home menu, kharcho will diversify it. Men will especially like it. A Georgian dish must be meaty and peppery. And the right food must contain rice.

Ingredients for kharcho soup with rice

Traditional Georgian soup is made with beef. We will follow this custom too. So, put on an apron and take out the following ingredients from the refrigerator, cabinets, jars:

How to cook beef kharcho soup step by step - classic recipe with photos

We begin to conjure our gastronomic set.

Cooking meat

1. Wash the beef, remove the film, cut into small pieces.
2. Pour 2 liters of water into a saucepan and immerse the meat, bay leaf, and allspice into it.
3. Preparing broth for kharcho 1,5 hour. Don’t forget to check it periodically, skim off the foam, and don’t let it boil too much.
4. The aroma of meat broth spreads throughout the kitchen, and we remove the pan from the stove. We take out the meat and strain the broth.

Cooking rice

1. Wash the rice thoroughly and place it in a saucepan with broth. Return the boiled meat to the container.
2. While the rice is cooking and saturated with meat broth, preparing the dressing.

Preparing the dressing

Combining the ingredients

The most attentive housewives have already calculated that it takes approximately two hours. This is because beef likes to cook for a long time. In order not to waste time, we advise you to immediately prepare the dressing as soon as you send the meat to cook.
All products can be bought at the market or supermarket. If there are no components from the greens, it’s okay. You can also do without walnuts.

• Real kharcho is prepared with tklapi sauce. It adds a spicy taste to the dish. It is almost impossible to find it in our stores. It can be adequately replaced with tkemali sauce or pomegranate juice. Instead of tkemali, sometimes they use tomato paste - it’s also delicious.
• Suitable for making kharcho round or long grain rice, but not steamed.
• It is better to remove the skin from tomatoes. In cooking it's called blanching. A cross-shaped cut is made on the tomato. Then the boiling water will do its job. The skin is easily removed and will not bother you in the soup and spoil its consistency.
• The amount of spices can be adjusted. If you don't like it too spicy, reduce the amount of pepper and garlic.
• Can be used instead of beef any other meat. But this will be a variation on the theme, and not a truly Georgian dish.

2016-11-28

Hello my dear readers! Remember the Georgian grandfather from the story of Grigory Gorin, who, despite all the tricks of the waiter, firmly stood his ground and politely demanded: “I want some kharcho!”? So, since the morning of this rainy, gloomy day, I have been repeating this simple phrase. Then she “freaked out”, turned to His Majesty Google for help and typed into the keyboard the phrase “how to cook kharcho soup, a simple recipe” that only he could understand.

To my great shame, to this day I haven’t bothered to cook any food! By God! Our mother traditionally cooks this soup for my son’s arrival. She puts rice in the soup when her grandson drives up to her house so that it doesn’t get overcooked. What kind of kharcho with overcooked rice?

After Googling a little, I decided to contact my mother - it was more reliable. My mother got the recipe from Aunt Nino, well known to readers of my blog (she was scattered all over the Internet like carrier pigeons). The recipe for making kharcho is really simple. You need to stock up on the necessary products, and cooking will not be difficult.

Many culinary blogs are passionately arguing about how to properly cook kharcho soup: from beef or lamb, with or without nuts, with tomato or tklapi? Aunt Nino could even cook it from chicken and pork. And I didn’t see anything in this that would diverge from the canons of classical Georgian cuisine.

I kindly ask connoisseurs of Georgian cuisine not to throw rotten tomatoes at me. I don’t insist that my recipe is the most authentic, correct, purebred, etc. Kharcho soup is no less varied than borscht. And authenticity can be discussed up to the Turkish Spas, to the Greek Kalends and to the carrot ritual.

A simple recipe for kharcho soup

Ingredients

How to cook

Cut the meat into small cubes, chop the bones and cartilage, put it in a saucepan (with a displacement of at least 4 liters), fill it with about 2.5 liters of cold water. Place on medium heat, bring almost to a boil, reduce the heat to very low, skim off the foam. Now we are free for 2.5-3 hours.

Cut the tomatoes in half, grate them, and discard the skins. Simmer the tomatoes in a heated frying pan over low heat for 10-15 minutes (time depends on the moisture content of the tomatoes). Add Imeretian saffron to the finished sauce.

If by some miracle you managed to get real tklapi for your kharcho soup,
then tear it into pieces, add water (150 ml), simmer for 10 minutes over low heat.

You can strain the finished broth, separate the meat from the bones, put the meat in a saucepan, pour in the strained broth, and add a finely chopped peeled onion. You can skip all these operations with straining - we really want to cook kharcho soup according to the simplest recipe? After 5 minutes, add the contents of the frying pan, bring almost to a boil, add washed rice, hot peppers cut in half, and bay leaf. Cook for 10 minutes over low heat, add tklapi or tkemali, stir.

Season the kharcho soup with finely chopped crushed garlic, crushed black pepper, season with salt, add the rest of the spices, chopped cilantro, turn off the heat.

My comments

1. Use khmeli-suneli for kharcho soup instead of the indicated spices if you are confident in the quality of the product.
2. Hot pepper pods can be replaced with ground red pepper to taste. The soup should be very spicy, but not everyone likes it.
3. Which rice is better? I take the round Krasnodar one. Take any short rice that cooks well, but does not turn into porridge.
4. If all acidic ingredients are missing, use good quality tomato paste (3-4 tablespoons).
5. Similarly, we cook pork kharcho soup (lean brisket with cartilage, shoulder on the bone) and with home-made Balzac-aged chicken (not to be confused with the old one).
6. Should I add walnuts? Aunt Nino put in either rice or nuts. I like the rice option better.
7. Fresh shotis puri goes well with kharcho soup; khachapuri in a frying pan (recipe) is also quite good.

How to cook lamb kharcho soup

This wonderful simple recipe was provided by my friend and blog co-author Vera Ramazova.

Ingredients

• 1 kg of lamb on the bone (breast, shoulder). This amount will yield approximately 400 g of pure meat.
• 3 handfuls of round rice.
• 1 large onion.
• 1 tablespoon of tomato paste.
• 2 heaping tablespoons of ground walnuts.
• 4-6 large cloves of garlic.
• 1 teaspoon ground coriander.
• 1 bunch of fresh cilantro.
• Ground red hot pepper (fresh or dry)
• Salt.

Cooking method

Cut the lamb into cubes, add 2.5-3 liters of water, and cook the broth as in the previous recipe. If the meat is too fatty, then let it simmer for 3-4 minutes, drain the water, pour in again and cook, strain, remove the meat from the bone.

Aromatic, satisfying and rich, kharcho soup is good for winter lunches, when it’s frosty outside and you want to warm up. A popular Georgian dish, a cross between meat soup and stew, has long taken root in Russian cuisine. It's hard to resist, especially if the kharcho is prepared according to all the rules. But in order to enjoy this dish, you don’t have to go to a Caucasian restaurant. Let's talk about how to properly prepare delicious kharcho soup at home in compliance with Georgian traditions.

What is kharcho

Nobody knows when the recipe first appeared in Georgian cuisine. It is known that once the word “kharcho” was used to describe beef in a sauce made from walnuts and thin slices of dried tklapi plum puree. A little later, rice began to be added to kharcho, and now in the Caucasus it is believed that real kharcho is cooked from beef, tklapi, walnuts and rice. In the summer months, plum puree is replaced with fresh plums or tkemali sauce. It is also possible to add other products to the dish, because in different regions of Georgia, kharcho is prepared in its own way, and each recipe claims to be a classic. The delicious beef broth with its piquant plum sourness, delicate flavor of walnuts and spicy aroma of spices and herbs remains unchanged. Sometimes plums are replaced with prunes, tomatoes, tomato paste or pomegranate juice.

Cooking kharcho soup correctly: preparing the meat

Classic kharcho soup is usually prepared from beef, but since there are many different recipes for this dish, it is acceptable to use lamb, pork and chicken. The meat must be the freshest and highest quality. It is best to take beef with a bone, pork ribs or fillet, lamb brisket, shoulder or neck, and if you decide to cook chicken kharcho, both thighs and breast will do. The meat is washed well, cleaned of films and tendons, but whether it is worth removing bones and fat is a personal matter for each housewife. Some cooks believe that bones add richness and flavor to the broth. If you cook a dietary version of kharcho, then fat, of course, will be superfluous, although it makes the soup much tastier. The meat is removed from the finished broth, the broth is filtered, the meat is separated from the bones, cut into pieces and returned to the broth. The basis for Georgian kharcho is ready!

Secrets of cooking kharcho

Well-washed rice of any kind, except crushed and steamed, is placed in the finished broth. Round rice is ideal for this dish, as it looks very appetizing when cooked. While the rice is cooking, add onion sautéed until golden brown, bay leaf, slightly mashed black peppercorns, crushed walnuts, cherry plum pieces or fresh plum puree (prunes, tkemali, pomegranate juice). In some recipes you can also find tomatoes - they are usually used without skin in crushed form. But it is best to take cherry tomatoes, which give the soup originality. Towards the end of cooking, spices are introduced into the kharcho - suneli hops, red capsicum, saffron, coriander, adjika and any tasty spices. If you are cooking for children, do not add hot spices to the dish. After the soup is ready, add finely chopped garlic, chopped parsley, cilantro, rosemary and celery greens to the pan.

The sequence of adding products and cooking time may vary depending on the recipe. Sometimes kharcho is prepared with bell peppers, carrots and potatoes, Italians generously add olives and basil to the dish, and the French prepare kharcho with cheese and cashew nuts. The soup is steeped for 20 minutes to make it more piquant, spicy and rich.

Cooking classic beef kharcho at home

The classic soup is cooked in beef broth without onions, carrots, potatoes and tomatoes. Cook broth from 400 g of beef on the bones and 2 liters of water - this will take about 2 hours. Strain the broth, separate the meat from the bones, cut it into pieces and put it back into the pan. Add 4 tbsp to the broth. l. rice, a few sprigs of parsley and cilantro (then do not forget to take them out), and when the rice becomes soft, add half a glass of roasted crushed walnuts to the soup. At the very end of cooking, add a finely chopped head of garlic, the remaining chopped herbs, salt, 1 tsp. hops-suneli, tklapi plate or 3 tbsp. l. tkemali. A pleasant sourness is a must in kharcho - it is this that gives the dish a unique Georgian flavor.

If you want to learn more about how to cook kharcho, take a look at our catalog with recipes and photographs, experiment and surprise your guests. Kharcho soup is served with fragrant homemade bread or lavash. This dish is not only appetizing, but also healthy - maybe that’s why there are so many long-livers in the Caucasus?

The world-famous Georgian dish - kharcho - is a bright, very satisfying, rich dish with a specific taste and aroma that everyone, without exception, likes.

Today there are so many recipes for kharcho soup that everyone can prepare this aromatic dish in a matter of minutes from the products available at home. Let's look at the simplest and fastest recipes.

Kharcho soup: simple recipes - general principles of preparation

They take any meat to prepare kharcho, the main thing is that the pieces are fatty enough: lamb, chicken, pork, beef. Initially, a saturated broth is boiled, then washed rice is added.

In addition to rice and meat, kharcho includes tomatoes (fresh or canned) or tomato-based paste, onions, garlic, spices, herbs, sometimes walnuts, carrots, and other products. Hearty vegetables, such as potatoes, are usually not added to kharcho; it already turns out quite rich.

Ideal spices include suneli hops, utskho, adjika, a mixture of peppers, and cherry plum-based sauces. For greens, cilantro is most often used, parsley is used less often.

1. Kharcho soup: a simple recipe with pumpkin

Ingredients:

Five hundred grams of beef meat;

A glass of white rice;

300 grams of pumpkin;

Two liters of water for broth;

Onion;

Three medium-sized tomatoes;

Tomato juice;

Vegetable oil;

Spices (utskho and suneli hops);

Fresh herbs;

Cooking process:

1. Cook meat broth. Salt according to taste.

2. Add white rice to the rich broth. Cook for twenty minutes.

3. Cut the onion into transparent half rings and fry in a frying pan.

4. Add pumpkin cut into small cubes to the sauté.

5. Pour a couple of ladles of broth into the pan. Simmer until the pumpkin is soft.

6. Add pumpkin with onions and chopped tomatoes to the cooked rice. Mix well. Salt and pepper. Cook for five minutes. Turn off the heat.

7. Add greens with garlic to the soup, stir.

8. Let the soup sit for no more than half an hour.

2. Kharcho soup: a simple recipe in Georgian

Ingredients:

Beef brisket (500 grams);

Two and a half liters of water;

Half a glass of rice;

Onion;

One bell pepper;

Several medium-sized tomatoes (for natural tomato paste);

Oil for frying;

A tablespoon of salt;

A pinch of pepper;

Several bay leaves;

A small amount of suneli hops;

Tkemali;

Favorite greens.

Cooking process:

1. Start preparing regular beef broth. Skim off foam regularly to improve flavor. Reduce heat to low. Cook for about half an hour.

2. Rinse the rice and leave to swell in cold water.

3. Peel, wash the onion, cut into small cubes.

4. Wash, peel and chop the sweet bell pepper.

5. Wash and peel tomatoes, cut as finely as possible.

6. Heat a frying pan or a small cauldron, pour vegetable oil into it, add the onion and lightly fry.

7. Add bell peppers and tomatoes or tomato paste. Simmer, stirring, for a couple of minutes.

8. Add soaked rice and frying to the meat. Cook the soup until ready for about twenty minutes over low heat, covered.

9. Wash the greens and chop finely.

10. Peel the garlic and chop with a press.

11. A few minutes before the soup is ready, add salt and pepper. Add bay leaf, finely chopped garlic, tkemali sauce, suneli hops, and herbs.

3. Kharcho soup: a simple recipe of beef with tomatoes

Ingredients:

Beef meat;

White rice;

Half a kilogram of tomatoes;

A couple of cloves of garlic;

Allspice black peppercorns;

A couple of teaspoons of khmeli-suneli;

Half a red capsicum or a teaspoon of ground red pepper;

One and a half teaspoons of salt;

Parsley, cilantro and dill.

Cooking process:

1. Cut the beef into small portions. Remove bones and veins. Wash the meat, cover with cold water, place on the stove, turning on medium heat. Skim the foam from the water. Cook until the beef is half cooked for a little over half an hour.

2. Scald fresh tomatoes with boiled water and peel. Finely chop the tomatoes or grind them to a puree.

3. Peel the onion and chop finely.

4. Place chopped onions in the pan. Toast.

5. Remove the beef from the meat broth. Transfer the meat to the onions. Simmer, covered, for about fifteen minutes.

6. Strain the broth.

7. Add prepared tomatoes to the meat and onions. Cook for about ten minutes. Pour in the strained meat broth.

8. Place rice in boiling broth. Cook for 20 minutes.

9. Wash and chop the herbs and garlic.

10. At the very end of cooking, add crushed garlic, suneli hops, chopped herbs, hot pepper, allspice, bay leaf into the dish. Add some salt.

4. Kharcho soup: a simple recipe for chicken with nuts

Ingredients:

Onion;

One and a half tablespoons of wheat flour;

130 grams of walnuts;

Four cloves of garlic;

A couple of tablespoons of cilantro;

Khmeli-suneli;

Ground black pepper, salt.

Cooking process:

1. Prepare and rinse the chicken. Cut off the tail, the outer part of the wings, and cut the rest into small pieces. Fill with 2-2.5 liters of cold water. Boil the bird until done.

2. In a saucepan, simmer the chopped onion with the fat skimmed from the meat broth. Add cooked chicken. Simmer for fifteen minutes, remembering to stir occasionally.

3. Add wheat flour.

4. After five minutes, pour in the broth. Cook for ten, maybe a little more, minutes.

5. Add tkemali or tomatoes. Bring to a boil.

6. Season the soup with crushed nuts, chopped garlic, bay leaf, suneli hops, cilantro, and salt. Kharcho is ready.

5. Kharcho soup: a simple recipe with prunes

Ingredients:

Ground black pepper (you can also use red);

200 grams of tomato paste;

Onion;

0.3 cups rice;

Prunes;

Meat (beef and pork are ideal);

Garlic (you can safely take up to ten cloves);

Khmeli-suneli;

Cooking process:

1. Cut the meat into small pieces. Place in cold water. Cook the meat for an hour over low heat, skimming off the foam regularly.

2. Cut the prunes into small slices.

3. Chop the onion as finely as possible. Fry it in vegetable or other oil until golden.

4. Add tomato paste. Fry, stirring, the already browned onion in the tomato paste.

5. After an hour, add prunes to the meat. Cook for about twenty minutes.

6. Add a third of a glass of rice to the soup. Cook.

7. Finely chop the garlic and onion.

8. After 15 minutes, add onion, garlic, black and red pepper, adjika, herbs, and salt. Stir.

9. Boil the soup for five minutes. Re-add salt if necessary.

10. Let the soup brew for about half an hour.

6. Kharcho soup: a simple recipe with white wine

Ingredients:

100 grams of rice;

500 grams of lamb;

Two potatoes;

Onion;

One carrot;

Five cloves of garlic;

100 grams of tomatoes in their own juice;

A tablespoon of vegetable oil;

Two tablespoons of dry white wine;

Red hot pepper;

Freshly ground pepper mixture;

Ground coriander;

Cooking process:

1. Rinse the lamb well and dry. Coarsely chop the meat. Fry in vegetable oil on all sides over high heat for five minutes.

2. Peel the onions and carrots and chop finely. Add to meat. Fry for about five minutes.

3. Pour dry white wine, stir.

4. Add a mixture of peppers, red hot pepper, coriander.

5. Add salt and spices to the meat.

6. Place the tomatoes in their own juice.

7. Mix all ingredients and simmer for about 10 minutes.

8. Pour in a couple of liters of boiled water. Simmer the soup over low heat for half an hour.

9. Take one hundred grams of rice. Rinse. Soak for half an hour.

10. After 30 minutes, peel and cut the potatoes. Add to broth.

11. Next add the soaked rice.

12. Cook for about half an hour. The rice should be boiled.

13. Finely chop the cilantro and garlic. Add to kharcho.

14. Turn off the heat. Infuse the kharcho for about 10 minutes. Serve hot.

Cilantro is a green that must be present in traditional kharcho soup. But because of its specific taste and smell, not everyone likes it. Therefore, it is not at all necessary to put this ingredient in the dish. You can replace the cilantro with any other greens to your taste, and serve it separately, for example, chopped in a bowl.

The spices in the kharcho will reveal themselves better if the kharcho is left to sit for 15-17 minutes after cooking. There is no point in cooking longer, otherwise the rice may become soggy.

Also, due to the swelling property of rice, you should not cook kharcho for future use; this dish is tasty when freshly prepared.

If you do not like spicy dishes or if you are going to treat children to soup, you should not put garlic and chili in the kharcho. Feel free to replace these spices with paprika, curry, and herbs. You can serve adjika or garlic cut into slices separately.

Boiled garlic is not very tasty, and the aroma of the dish is specific, so do not cook this ingredient for a long time, it is better to add it at the end of cooking or to an already prepared dish.

Choose round or long varieties of rice. Steamed and crushed cereals are not suitable for kharcho.

Due to the fact that preparing kharcho soup does not involve pre-sauteing, it is better to use non-lean varieties of meat. For example, tenderloin with layers of fat, homemade chicken, meat on the bone.

The Georgian dish kharcho has been known for a long time and has also long been loved by the inhabitants of our country. Today we will present a simple recipe for kharcho, which you can prepare yourself from traditional products.

By the way, according to all the rules, kharcho is prepared exclusively from beef on the bone with the obligatory addition of tklapi - dried plum puree. It is unlikely to get tklapi in Russia today, unless someone makes it themselves at home specifically for kharcho. A suitable alternative is tkemali, a plum sauce that can be found in large hypermarkets.

In addition to beef and tkemali, finely chopped walnuts are always added to kharcho. To make the recipe really simple and you don’t have to go to a distant hypermarket for tkemali, we will offer you kharcho with a simplified composition.

Ingredients

To prepare the recipe you will need the following ingredients:

Beef on the bone – 300 g.

Short grain rice – 100 g.

Tomatoes – 3 pcs.

Onions – 1 pc.

Carrots – 1 pc.

Garlic – 3 cloves.

Hot pepper - to taste.

Khmeli-suneli - to taste.

Tomato paste – 50 g.

Greens (dill, parsley) - to taste.

Vegetable oil – 20 g.

Let us clarify that if there is no butcher shop with fresh beef in your immediate environment, pork will also do, but preferably on the bone too. Another great recipe option with pork ribs. The aroma will be excellent!

If you don’t have tomato paste at home, don’t run headlong to the store, only tomatoes will do, but if you don’t have any tomatoes, then as a last resort, ketchup, but preferably without seasonings, otherwise the taste won’t be the same.

There are no carrots in the traditional recipe, so you don’t have to add them. This ingredient is optional.

Number of servings – 5.

Cooking time – 40 minutes (+ meat cooking time 2-3 hours).

Accessories

Cooking soup will be easy if you prepare a simple set of utensils in advance:

3 liter saucepan

Frying pan.

Knife for cutting.

With a short list of cooking supplies identified, you are ready to start making soup.

Recipe

1. Rinse the meat thoroughly and place in a saucepan. After boiling, skim off any foam that appears. Cook the meat until done, about 3 hours, depending on the size of the piece.

2. Cool the cooked meat a little and cut it into small pieces.

3. Place the washed rice in the pan.

4. In a frying pan with butter, first fry the onion until golden brown. Remove the skins from the tomatoes, pour boiling water over them, chop them finely and add to the onions. If you do add carrots, peel them and grate them on a coarse grater. Next, add tomato paste and crushed or finely chopped garlic.

5. If you are using hot pepper, add it to the vegetable mixture; if you are using pepper as a seasoning, add it a little later.

6. The vegetables are ready, and feel free to add them to the pan with the meat and rice.

7. As soon as the rice is cooked, and this depends on the rice itself (taste it), add seasonings and herbs.

8. Close the lid, boil for another 5 minutes, no more, and turn off. The kharcho will brew and after 15 minutes you can serve the dish on the dinner table.

Following the traditional recipe for kharcho, you should prepare flat cakes for serving, but you can also offer regular bread. By the way, it’s wrong to say kharcho soup, it’s just as wrong as saying cabbage soup or borscht soup. Kharcho is the same individual name for the dish.

Notes

In terms of thickness, kharcho should be thicker than regular soup, but also not have the consistency of porridge, so it is important not to overdo it with rice.

Kharcho is a spicy dish, but if you have gastritis, ulcers or other stomach problems, make the soup without adding hot seasonings - you will invent a new recipe.

Now you know how to prepare a simplified version of kharcho, without gourmet products that cannot always be found in the supermarket near your home. This fragrant and rich dish will undoubtedly receive approving reviews from your household and a wish to see this Georgian soup on the table more often.

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