How to cook churchkhela. Useful properties of churchkhela, its possible harm to the body Churchkhela recipe with corn flour

Everyone has tried sweet churchkhela. This wonderful oriental dessert is not only tasty, but also healthy, and since its shelf life is about six months, you can stock up on it for future use. And you don't have to buy it! I want to tell you how to make this sweetness with your own hands. Believe me, churchkhela at home is not difficult.

The recipe for the oldest delicacy, which in Armenia is called fruit sujukh, and in Georgia - churchkhela, is carefully passed down from generation to generation. Since this is a rather time-consuming process, you need to be patient. Almost every region of Armenia and Georgia has its own variety of fruit sujukh or churchkhela. They may differ significantly in the set of ingredients, but the cooking technology is basically the same.

This recipe with walnuts and grape juice can be taken as a basis to understand the principle. In general, there are so many cooking options that the concept of “real” simply does not exist.

Recipe Information

Kitchen : Armenian, Georgian.

Ingredients:

grapes - 3 kg
walnut kernels - 300-350 g
wheat flour of the 2nd grade - 100 g
cornmeal - 100 g
cloves - 4-5 pcs.
cinnamon - 1/3 tsp
granulated sugar - 1 tbsp. l.

How to cook:

Peel the walnuts from the shell. In this case, you need to try not to damage the yard. Only halves or, in extreme cases, large quarters of nuts are suitable for churchkhela.
Then you should take a thick white thread for darning 90 cm long. It must be folded in half and threaded through a clean needle. A match must be tied to one end of the thread. The head with sulfur should be broken off. The photo shows how it is done correctly.
We string halves of walnuts on a thread. We do this very carefully so that the cores do not break. The bottom edge of the walnut sausage should rest against the match.
Make a loop at the end of the thread. We hang bundles of nuts in the fresh air to dry for 2-3 days.
When the nuts are dry, you can start boiling the wort. To do this, the grapes are separated from the branches and washed thoroughly.
We squeeze the juice from the berries using a juicer or through several layers of gauze.
Mix 100 ml of grape juice with flour. To prepare the wort, it is best to use a mixture of wheat and corn flour.
You should get a homogeneous mass without lumps.
Add crushed clove flowers and ground cinnamon to this mixture.
The remaining grape juice must be brought to a boil and the resulting foam removed.
Let the liquid boil for 15 minutes. Then pour the flour mass into it in a very thin stream. In this case, the wort must be vigorously stirred. It turns out fudge, the consistency resembling jelly. In order to get rid of lumps, it should be rubbed through a sieve and brought to a boil again. At the end of cooking, add granulated sugar and mix.
In the hot wort, alternately immerse all bundles with nuts.
Then they must be suspended and allowed to drain excess liquid. After 30 minutes, the nuts should be dipped again in the wort and hung to dry. A container should be placed under the bundles of churchkhela so that the wort dripping from them is collected in it.
You can dry it outdoors in the shade or near the battery. After 5-7 days, it should be wrapped in a delicacy in cling film or a plastic bag. You can store it at home for up to 6 months at room temperature.
Churchkhela is served by removing the thread and cutting into small pieces.

Before boiling the wort, consider how and where the bunches of nuts will hang after they are dipped into the liquid. You need to prepare the hooks in advance. You can hang nuts on the cabinet door. Ligaments must not touch each other. It will not be superfluous to pre-prepare the dishes into which the wort from the bundles flows. In general, how to cook, how to store and where, it is better to think carefully before starting the whole process.
Fudge can be prepared not only from freshly squeezed grape juice, but also from packaged. From dark grapes, dark churchkhela is obtained, from light grapes, light. You can use the juice of figs, apricots, apples.
To prepare this sweet dish, you can use not only walnuts, but also hazelnuts,

Churchkhela is one of the most famous oriental sweets. It is made from strung nuts and grape juice. Traditionally, churchkhela is made in the Caucasus according to ancient recipes created by Caucasian winemakers. But you can easily make churchkhela at home. This sweet and very healthy delicacy will surely appeal to children, becoming one of their favorite treats.

Georgian churchkhela

There are many varieties of churchkhela - Abkhaz, Georgian, Gurian, Racha, Imereti and Migrelian. All of them are slightly different in taste, size and appearance. But the principle of preparing this sweetness is the same everywhere. The simplest and most traditional is the Georgian churchkhela. We will describe the process of its manufacture in more detail.

First, the “core” of the churchkhela is made. To do this, take a mixture of nuts - walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts and sultanas. Whole nuts are carefully strung on a thread 25-45 cm long. After that, syrup is prepared. Flour is added to the grape juice and boiled until thick. A thread with nuts is repeatedly dipped into the resulting mass. After each dipping, the thread is hung up for several hours so that the juice adhering to the nuts dries up. This is repeated until a two-centimeter layer of fragrant sweet mass is formed on the nuts. The finished churchkhela is hung out in the bright sun so that the top layer hardens well. This takes approximately 2 weeks. Then the churchkhela needs to be sugared. To do this, it is placed for 2-3 months in a paper box. If there are a lot of goodies, you can lay them out in layers, laying parchment paper. As a result, churchkhela is cooked at home for about three months. And after this period of time, this oriental sweetness acquires its characteristic look and taste.

How to cook churchkhela

If you want to make this popular oriental delicacy at home, we will reveal a few secrets for you on how to make churchkhela more tasty and fragrant.

Along with almonds, hazelnuts and other nuts, you can use the middle of apricot and peach pits, as well as dried raisins and pumpkin seeds.
Before cooking churchkhela, it is advisable to peel the nuts. To do this, they can be soaked for a couple of hours.
Nuts can also be boiled in sugar syrup.
Before stringing the nuts on a thread, they are lightly fried in a dry frying pan.
With the help of a large needle, they can be easily strung on a dense thread, at the ends of which you need to tie knots.
To make a gentle sweet syrup, fresh grape juice should be brought to a boil and boiled for 10-15 minutes. Then part of the juice must be poured into a bowl or large mug to cool. It will be convenient to thoroughly dissolve the flour in it, in order to then pour the flour solution into the boiling juice.
You can take wheat flour. But it will be tastier to mix wheat and corn flour. It must be sifted, and the smaller, the better.
To avoid lumps in the juice, use a whisk to beat. And boil the juice until it thickens, stirring it constantly.
During the drying of churchkhela, it must be hung in a well-ventilated area.
Churchkhela is best made in autumn, during the harvest season for grapes and nuts.
The finished delicacy can be stored for a whole year until next autumn.

Be sure to connect your imagination and create your own recipe for churchkhela, which will be enjoyed by your loved ones. You can use different varieties of grapes to make treats. It will be delicious to mix white and red grapes. You can add honey to the juice. Between the nuts on a thread, you can string various dried fruits, and even pieces of chocolate. Experiment! And let your branded churchkhela be the most delicious.

Resting in the south, many heard peddlers on the beach or traders in the bazaar shouting loudly: “Churchkhela!” Someone tried this delicacy, but someone did not dare to taste Georgian sweets, not knowing what churchkhela is. Meanwhile, this is a very healthy dessert made from nuts and fruit juice, however, the high calorie content still makes you count the number of churchkhela sticks eaten.

General principles

If you have not seen how this dessert is prepared in the Caucasus, and do not know how and from what to make churchkhela at home, just follow a few simple rules.

First: the base of the delicacy is nuts. The classic version uses either walnuts or hazelnuts. However, cooking always gives room for imagination, so you can experiment, taking peanuts, hazelnuts, and other varieties of nuts as a basis, alternate them with each other and even “dilute” with dried fruits: dried apricots, prunes, apricots.

Second: the necessary ingredient is juice, originally grape. However, grapes do not grow everywhere, so you can cook churchkhela from any juice. The main thing is that it should be freshly squeezed and thick enough. If the juice is not very sweet, you can add sugar or honey, but remember that sugar is put in boiling juice, and honey is cooled down.

The third the required ingredient is flour. Traditionally, fine wheat flour is used, sifted and without impurities, but you can take oatmeal, corn, and rye - most importantly, it must be ground very, very finely.

The recipe is traditional, the easiest

The easiest way is the traditional Georgian churchkhela, the recipe for which includes a minimum of ingredients.

Ingredients:

juice from white table grapes - 3 l;
white wheat flour - 3 cups (a cup - about 150 g);
peeled halves - 1 kg.

Cooking

The most difficult thing in cooking churchkhela is to string the nuts on a string so that they do not crumble. This should be done with a needle, into which a strong thread made of natural fiber is threaded - linen or cotton. Of course, we use only undyed thread. When the nuts are strung on strings (20-25 for each), we leave a free tail on each string, long enough to hang the churchkhela to dry. We split the juice in half. We set half to boil on fire, in the second we carefully dissolve the flour, and so that lumps do not work out, stir with a whisk. As half of the juice boiled, slowly, stirring, pour in the second part - with flour. The mixture boils and thickens quickly, so in no case do we move away from the stove and do not stop stirring. Turn off the thickened mixture and cool. Now the most interesting thing is how to cook churchkhela so that it turns out to be dense and smooth. To do this, we dip the thread with nuts into our juice, raise it, wait for the rest to drain, and hang it for a couple of hours. Then we repeat bathing the nuts in the juice. Drying churchkhela lasts 3-4 days. The place should be cool, well ventilated, it should not be accessible to animals and insects. After a few days, we remove the treat and enjoy the viscous sweetness of the fruit concentrate and crunchy nuts. If you have cooked a lot of churchkhela, the question will arise how to store churchkhela at home. If you leave it in the fresh air, the sticks can stick together, so we wrap each with parchment or cling film and put it in the refrigerator.

Turn on fantasy

An unusual delicacy - churchkhela with hazelnuts - is prepared in the same way, but you can dream up a little and make such a dessert that guests will simply swallow their tongues.

Churchkhela is a delicious national Georgian and Armenian delicacy made on a string. It turns out that the recipe for making churchkhela is quite simple, and you can make it yourself at home. It is usually made with walnuts, but almonds or hazelnuts are also allowed. The grape starchy jelly-like mass, which is called Tatars, always remains unchanged in this dish. It is brewed from grape juice, sugar and flour. Making churchkhela is a simple and very interesting procedure, however, you will have to wait about a couple of weeks for the result. Let's take a look at the recipes for cooking churchkhela with you.

Churchkhela at home

Ingredients:

grape juice - 2 l;
peeled walnuts - 1.5 tbsp.;
wheat flour - 250 g;
honey - 0.5 tbsp.

Cooking

How to make churchkhela at home? To begin with, we carefully string hazelnuts and walnut halves with a large needle onto a strong thick thread about 25 cm long. Leave 6 cm of free thread on top and make a loop, for which we will then hang our delicacy.

Pour the remaining juice into a saucepan and, over low heat, begin to boil it to a boil. After boiling, add, pouring gently in a thin stream, juice with flour, stirring constantly. Next, without stopping stirring, add honey. Boil the mass to a state of consistency resembling a very thick jelly. Then remove the tatar from the fire and, stirring, cool to 50 degrees.

Now we take the threads with nuts and completely lower them into the prepared mass for about 2 minutes, so that the whole thread is covered with thick juice.

We dry the churchkhela in a dry, well-ventilated area. Be sure to lay paper under the sweetness, because at first the juice will drip. Determine the degree of readiness as the top layer dries, and inside the churchkhela should remain soft. After drying, we shift the delicacy into a box, alternating with parchment paper. Full readiness of sweetness is achieved after about 2-3 months, when the delicacy is completely dried out.

Armenian churchkhela

Ingredients:

apple or apricot juice - 1 l;
corn or wheat flour - 0.5 tbsp.;
almonds, walnuts, hazelnuts, dried fruits - to taste.

Cooking

How to cook churchkhela? Before cooking churchkhela, we thread nuts with any dried fruits (hazelnuts with pineapple or walnuts with kiwi).

Now we turn to the preparation of a decoction of juice. Pour the selected juice into a saucepan, put it on medium heat and, as soon as it boils, slowly pour in the pre-sifted flour, stirring everything lightly with a spoon. You can add a little cinnamon to taste or a vanilla pod to the juice before boiling. As soon as our mixture takes on the consistency of a thick jelly, carefully remove from heat and cool.

Dip dried fruits and nuts strung on threads into the cooled mixture for about a minute. Next, take out and dry the churchkhela for 5 minutes, and then repeat this procedure two or three times to get a thick layer.

We carefully fasten the churchkhela on a thread and hang it to dry for about two weeks in a dry, well-ventilated place. Be sure to lay paper under the sweetness.

In the meantime, while your churchkhela is drying, you can treat yourself to other delicacies, for example, or.

There are few tasty and healthy desserts that can keep their taste qualities for months. Churchkhela or " sujuk from walnuts ”contains ingredients available almost at any time of the year, can compete with other recipes in ease of manufacture. A curiosity from the east, proven for centuries, was often used by warriors on long campaigns to reinforce their forces. It is an integral part of the local feasts and feasts.

How to make churchkhela - the necessary ingredients

Fresh grapes - 1.5 - 3 kg. Sweet varieties with the lowest seed content are suitable, such as Isabella, Moldova out of season, you can use store-bought or homemade canned juice 1 - 2 liters.
Nuts - in the classic version, walnuts and hazelnuts are used, there are different ratios, for example, 70% to 30%, nothing prevents changing the proportions. With a total weight of 150 - 200 g per liter of juice.
Wheat flour or sifted corn - 100 - 125 g per 1 liter of juice.
A thick needle and several meters of strong cotton thread, a thimble.

How to make churchkhela - cooking

nuts

If you want to deviate from the canonical recipe, you can add pumpkin seeds, raisins, apricot kernels or small prunes to the nuts. Also, pomegranate juice will give the sweets a red color, apple - amber, apricot - yellow.
The cooking process itself begins with preparing a place for drying churchkhela. The average length of the threads is 30 - 40 cm. Do not forget that at first the juice will drip, so baking paper or baking sheets are prepared so as not to spoil the lower surfaces. If it is placed on the street, you will need gauze covers to protect against insects.
The next stage begins with a light roasting of nuts in an empty pan for 3-5 minutes. The walnut is divided into halves and if it is very large, then into quarters.
Now you need to string the nuts on a thread, piercing them with a needle, a row is created 15–25 cm long. An indent is also left from each edge of the sausage by 5–10 cm. A knot is tied from one edge or a toothpick is tied so that the nuts do not move out. On the other is a loop for attaching threads in a vertical position.

Cooking pelamushi

The grapes are washed, put in a juicer. If this technique is not available, a blender is useful, after which the pulp is rubbed through a sieve or squeezed through cheesecloth. All juice, except for 200 - 300 g of a glass, is poured into a saucepan and simmered for 15-25 minutes. The remaining portion goes into the bowl along with flour, mixed to a homogeneous consistency.
After the juice boils, you can cook for a couple more minutes. The contents of the liquid with flour are added in a small stream, not forgetting to actively stir with a wooden spoon. Do not rush, this is one of the most important stages. Haste or lack of stirring will lead to the presence of lumps, which can adversely affect the result.
The juice is boiled for 15 - 20 minutes. to a mushy state. Stir every couple of minutes. It is also worth trying the juice for sweetness, if it is sour, add honey or sugar. If the juice thickens enough and stays on a spoon, then it is cooled on the stove to 50 ° C.

Churchkhela - the final stage

Prepared threads with nuts are dipped in pelamos with a spoon for 3-5 minutes. This is done so that the ends of the threads do not fall into the dishes. Sweets are held over the pan so that the excess drains. If the nuts are completely exposed, then the jelly was not thick enough and the next time you need to add flour. Then the sweets are hung out to dry for 20 minutes. The procedure is repeated until the nuts are covered by 2 cm (or a little more) pelamush.
The remains of jelly and nuts can be mixed, and then poured into small molds and put in the oven for 10-20 minutes. You will get delicious sweets. herself pelamos in the apartment it dries for 4-7 days. You can speed up the process and expose it to the sun for 2 days, but this will dry out the product more.
Churchkhela is almost ready to eat. According to tradition, they are laid out in boxes and hidden in dark, dry places for several months for the final impregnation of nuts.

As you can see from the example above, Oriental curiosities are not always difficult to prepare, or not available in terms of ingredients. But they certainly diversify the dessert range in everyday life. Also in the future, you can experiment with stuffing and spices, which will finally add originality to the product.