Georgian · Soup

Kharcho

Intermediate
40 min
roughly 3 of 4 for cost

earthy · nutty-toasted · rich · aromatic Leads with an earthy, grounding base, toasted, nutty warmth throughout, opening aromatic and staying there.

Ingredients

800 g beef shin, in 3 cm pieces
2.5 litres water
1 bay leaf
300 g onions, chopped fine
100 g long grain rice
60 g tklapi (sour plum leather), or 80 ml tkemali
150 g shelled walnuts
6 garlic cloves
5 g ground blue fenugreek (utskho suneli)
3 g ground dried marigold (kviteli kvavili)
3 g ground coriander seed
3 g dried red chilli flakes
40 g coriander leaf, chopped
15 g salt

The skills inside

The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth

The words inside

Fenugreek: Seed, Leaf & Blue

Allergen screen

Found: nuts

Screened for: gluten, dairy, egg, nuts, peanuts, fish, shellfish, molluscs, soy, sesame, celery, mustard, lupin, alcohol. Not screened: sulphites.

Screened by keyword from the ingredient list, not reviewed by a person; check every label for what the list cannot show.

Method

Cover the beef with cold water, bring it up slowly to a bare simmer and skim the grey foam until the surface runs clear, then add the bay and cook until a piece crushes against the side of the pan, about 90 minutes. 90 min
Add the onions and rice and simmer 15 minutes, until the grains are soft and starting to blur at the edges. 15 min
Tear the tklapi into a ladle of hot broth on its own and whisk until it has completely dissolved, then stir it back into the pan and add more until the soup makes you blink.
Grind the walnuts with the garlic, salt and dried spices to a paste and let it down with another ladle of hot broth to a smooth cream.
Drop the heat until the surface is still, stir the walnut cream in and hold it there 10 minutes without a single bubble, then kill the heat, add the whole handful of coriander and cover for 5 minutes. 10 min

How to tell it is going right

This dish has no standard of its own yet. It is judged on the techniques it exercises: checked at the pan, while there is still something to be done about it.

Skimming: foam, fat and a clear broth 73 recipes

It is held below a rolling boil for the whole time. Agitation drives fat and fine protein into the liquid as an emulsion, and nothing skimmed afterwards will take them back out.
The grey foam that rises in the first minutes is lifted off and discarded rather than stirred back in.
Fat is taken from the surface where it gathers, the pot moved off the centre of the heat if that is what it takes to collect it in one place.
The liquid is visibly clearer at the end than it was at the start: it is possible to see down into it.
Nothing lifted off goes back in. What was skimmed is discarded, not tipped back once the ladle is full.

Where it goes wrong The pot was allowed to boil, usually while something else was being attended to. Fat and protein emulsify into the liquid under agitation and cannot be lifted off afterwards, so the finished broth stays cloudy and greasy however patiently it is skimmed from then on.

The bare simmer: holding liquid below the boil 183 recipes

The surface is read rather than assumed: bubbles break slowly in one or two places, or the surface merely shivers, and it does not reach a rolling boil at any point.
It was held there: the pot was watched and the heat adjusted rather than set once and left, and there is no tide mark up the pot wall from a boil-over.
The liquid stayed as clear as it should be: no clouding from agitation, and no fat churned into an emulsion through it.
Whatever is in the liquid is still intact: nothing shredded, broken up, or worried apart by movement.
The level is roughly where the elapsed time should have left it; a large drop is the evidence that it ran hotter than this while nobody was looking.

Where it goes wrong It was brought to a boil and then left on the same heat, so it churned for the whole cook: the liquid clouded, the fat emulsified into it, and the solids broke apart into the broth.

At the Table

The Pour: Cabernet Sauvignon or Malbec
Also Right: Tempranillo (Rioja Reserva)
From the Taps: Amber ale
Zero-Proof: Sparkling water, make room

Tannin binds to seared protein and fat: each bite softens the wine, each sip resets the palate: the steakhouse equation.

Family notes

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Film school

This dish, cooked on camera Search films of Kharcho The cuisine, deeper Technique films from the Georgian kitchen