Azu is a traditional dish of Tatar cuisine. This recipe appears in various variations on many cooking sites and cookbooks. It is certainly offered by restaurants of national cuisine. More about the basics …
Recipe content:
- Ingredients
- Step by step cooking
- Video recipe
It is an azu stew made from vegetables and fried pieces of meat, which are stewed with carrots, tomatoes, onions, potatoes, and, as a rule, with slices of pickled cucumber. It is preferable to cook it over a fire in a cauldron, cauldron or cast iron. However, in a city apartment, this amazing dish can be made no worse. For this, modern equipment is suitable, such as glass refractory pots, cauldrons of various alloys and Teflon pans. The food can also be made in clay pots, where it tastes best. The azu is supposed to be a little spicy, although you can always make it to your liking.
Azu in Tatar has a long tradition of centuries-old Tatar cuisine, from which it has been overgrown with numerous editions. This folk dish exists in many versions, but the main set of products always remains unchanged, which is combined into a single whole: meat, potatoes, tomato sauce and pickles.
- Caloric content per 100 g - 152 kcal.
- Servings - 4
- Cooking time - 2 hours
Ingredients:
- Pork - 1 kg (in the original version, lamb or beef)
- Potatoes - 3 pcs.
- Carrots - 1 pc.
- Pickled cucumbers - 2 pcs.
- Onions - 1 pc.
- Garlic - head
- Tomato paste - 3-4 tablespoons
- Bay leaf - 4 pcs.
- Allspice peas - 4 pcs.
- Salt - 1 tsp or to taste
- Ground black pepper - pinch or to taste
- Vegetable oil - for frying
Step-by-step cooking azu in Tatar
1. Prepare all foods. Peel the meat from the film, veins and cut across the fibers into strips 1 cm thick and 3-4 cm long. If there is a lot of fat, then remove it, although this can be done as desired. If you like fatty foods, then you can leave it.
Regarding the meat used, the situation is ambiguous: some insist that any is suitable, incl. and tough, because thanks to long-term heat treatment, it still softens, while others argue that the meat must be necessarily young and tender. Therefore, it is up to you to decide which option to choose, in any case the meat will be very tender.
Peel and cut carrots into elongated sticks, and peeled potatoes into coarse cubes. Cut the pickled cucumbers into rings about 5 mm thick, and chop the peeled onions into half rings. Peel the garlic and cut into strips.
2. Pour oil into a frying pan and add meat to fry. Set the heat to high and cook for about 5-7 minutes until a characteristic crust forms. To ensure that the meat is browned and does not start stewing, make sure that it is located at the bottom of the pan in one row, and there is a distance between the pieces.
3. Then add the carrots and onions to the pan.
4. Reduce heat and broil until vegetables are browned.
5. Next, put the pickles, garlic and tomato paste into the pan.
6. Stir and simmer over medium heat for 5-7 minutes.
7. Fry the potatoes in a separate skillet in oil until golden brown. If this is not done, then during the stewing of the dish, it can fall apart and turn into porridge.
8. Add fried potatoes to the skillet with all foods. Pour in some drinking water or broth so that the food is completely covered in liquid.
nine. Add salt, black pepper, bay leaf, allspice and boil. Reduce the temperature to the minimum and simmer the food covered for about 1.5 hours. Add salt with care as it is found in pickles and the dish may be too salty.
Serve the finished meal hot. It turns out it has a special consistency, tender and appetizing.
Advice:
- All vegetables, according to the original cooking technology, must be pre-fried, however, to make the food easier for the stomach, you do not need to fry them.
- If tomatoes are used in the recipe, then they are laid only 5 minutes before the dish is ready.
- Instead of frying the potatoes, they can be boiled until half cooked.
See also the video recipe on how to cook the basics in Tatar.
[media =
