A method of preparing azu in Tatar. Azu in Tatar with pork - recipe
Azu is a Tatar dish, which is a stew with tomatoes, carrots and onions, spiced with pickled cucumber slices and spicy sauce. In ancient Persian, azu meant small pieces of fried meat with gravy, and only later they began to be mixed with vegetables. In the 18th century, potatoes began to be added to the dish, although they are absent in classic recipes. Today, every housewife can cook, this does not require any special products and culinary techniques, but you still have to get acquainted with some secrets.
How to cook azu at home
To prepare azu, beef, lamb or young horse meat are usually taken, although there are recipes with chicken, turkey, rabbit and even pork. If there is no time, you can take beef stew. The meat is preliminarily cut into pieces and fried, then stewed with tomatoes, thinly sliced carrots, onions, bell peppers and potatoes. Sometimes potatoes are replaced with rice or buckwheat. By the way, all vegetables, except for potatoes, are first fried, together or separately, but tomatoes are sometimes replaced with tomato paste. Meat for azu is taken only chilled, the peel is removed from the tomatoes, and pickles are chosen strong, hard and crispy so that they do not turn into porridge during stewing.
In some modern versions of azu, even offal, fish or squid are used as the main ingredient, and along with vegetables, mushrooms and various spices are sometimes added to the dish, in addition to traditional garlic, pepper and bay leaf. If you use tomato paste instead of tomatoes, you can sweeten it slightly with sugar. By the way, it is best to use a cauldron to prepare this dish.
Classic Azu: a recipe for cooking at home
In Tatar - a holiday for a true gourmet, besides, this dish is prepared very simply. Take 0.7 kg of beef, 8-10 medium-sized potatoes, 3 pickles, 3 onions, 3-4 cloves of garlic, 3 tbsp. l. tomato paste, a few bay leaves, black pepper, salt and vegetable oil - by eye and to taste. So let's get started!
Cooking method:
1. Cut the meat into small sticks.
2. Heat vegetable oil in a cauldron and fry the beef until golden brown.
3. Chop the onion into thin half rings.
4. Fry the onion in a pan until golden brown.
5. Add tomato sauce to the onion and simmer for another 3 minutes with constant stirring.
6. Cut the potatoes into cubes.
7. Pour the potatoes to the meat, add a little broth or water and simmer until the potatoes are ready.
8. While the potatoes are fried, cut the pickles into strips.
9. Fry the cucumbers separately in a pan in vegetable oil.
10. Once the potatoes are ready, add the cucumbers, fried onions, chopped garlic and bay leaf to the pan.
11. Salt and pepper the azu, then let it sweat over low heat for 15 minutes.
12. Serve a dish with fragrant greens and fat sour cream!
Azu with mackerel
Fish azu is non-standard, but incredibly tasty! Boil the broth of 3 chopped mackerels with the addition of carrots, onions and various aromatic spices. It takes 20 minutes to prepare fish broth. While the mackerel is cooking, cut 3 potatoes into cubes, the head of the onion into half rings, and then stew the vegetables in a small amount of water for 15 minutes. 3 minutes before readiness, add 1 large carrot, grated on a coarse grater, to potatoes and onions. Pour boiling water over 2 tomatoes, remove the skin from them and cut into small cubes.
Add tomatoes and fish fillets to the pan, simmer for 10 minutes, add 4 pickled cucumbers cut into cubes, pour in 100 ml of fish broth and simmer again for 5 minutes. After 3-5 minutes, an appetizing and tasty dish is ready - it remains to let it brew and decorate with fresh herbs, as well as olives.
Azu from pork in pots
Azu in a pot turns out to be fantastically fragrant, tender and tasty, especially if you cook it with pork. Cut into cubes 0.5 kg of meat and stew it in a pan in vegetable oil along with 1 tbsp. l. hops-suneli. The meat will give juice, in which it should be stewed for about 10 minutes, then put the pork on a plate, and pour 5 diced potatoes into the remaining broth. Simmer the potatoes for 10 minutes until the water has completely evaporated, then remove the ceramic pot. Lay a bay leaf on the bottom, put a layer of pork, on top - a head of finely chopped onion, a layer of diced salted zucchini, which can be replaced with pickles, and sprinkle 4 cloves of chopped garlic on top.
Mix a glass of hot water, 2 tbsp. l. sour cream and 1 tbsp. l. tomato paste, pour meat with vegetables with this sauce and put the pot in the oven for 40 minutes. Azu from a pot melts in your mouth and is eaten in one evening!
Azu with mushrooms
Mushrooms and oyster mushrooms give the aza a delicate aroma, to which it is impossible to remain indifferent. And in order to really surprise your loved ones, fry 0.5 kg of mushrooms in vegetable oil for 10 minutes, add 750 g of pickled cucumbers, cut into strips, and fry until the cucumbers become soft. Mix mushrooms and cucumbers with 4 peeled tomatoes and simmer all the ingredients a little more.
Cut 1 kg of pork into strips and fry it in a cauldron in vegetable oil. When the pieces of meat are fried, add the prepared frying to them and simmer for another 10 minutes. At this time, chop 1 carrot on a coarse grater, chop 2 onions and pour the vegetables into the cauldron to the meat. Pour pork, mushrooms and vegetables with 1.5 liters of strong chicken broth, after boiling add black pepper, zira and any mixture of Abkhazian herbs to taste. Reduce the heat and cook the azu for about half an hour, until the meat is completely soft. Serve with fresh herbs and sour cream.
Azu is served with dill, parsley, cilantro, pickled mushrooms and fresh vegetables. You can boil rice, buckwheat, pasta and potatoes to it, if it is not among the vegetables. You will find many basic recipes with photos for cooking at home on the Eat at Home website. Cook the basics with new ingredients and do not be afraid of new discoveries, because the combination of meat and vegetables gives a guaranteed delicious result!
Good meat food is valued in every national culture. Azu is a dish of the Tatar menu, which is small meat pieces in tomato sauce with spices and various additives. Tatar goulash is a spicy dish seasoned with hot spices and oriental herbs, popular throughout the post-Soviet space.
How to cook aza in Tatar style from beef
Classical Tatar food is prepared from lamb, beef (veal), horse meat and served with potatoes, rice, pasta, buckwheat, vegetable garnish. Traditionally, preference is given to potatoes and rice: they emphasize the taste of meat, wonderfully complement it. Cooking azu from beef is a simple matter. Choose a quality piece of beef, find the best step-by-step recipe with a photo and get started.
Azu from beef in a slow cooker
Suitable for this dish is the pressure cooking technology. Especially tasty is meat with pickles in a slow cooker with a pressure cooker function. You do not have to choose a recipe adapted to kitchen appliances - any will do. In a modern electronic multicooker, meat pieces will cook much faster, retain their wonderful taste and aroma to the maximum extent.
Azu from beef in the oven
Good news for those who like to cook in ceramic dishes: the beef azu in the oven turns out to be incredibly tasty if you use portioned pots. The option with potatoes is especially good, which, when baked, is soaked in spicy meat sauce. When baking, cover the clay containers with a lid. Serve the spicy meat dish directly in a serving dish for baking or transfer to individual plates.
Azu recipe in Tatar
From the fried pieces of meat in a spicy sauce, a hearty, tasty, rich dish is obtained. Each beef azu recipe is similar to all the others, because they are based on the centuries-old traditions of the Tatar people, carefully preserved by today's housewives. And yet any option is original, unique, worthy of attention. Recipes differ according to the method of preparation (in a frying pan, oven, slow cooker), they use a variety of side dishes, vegetable additives, and spicy herbs. Try, choose, delight your loved ones with delicious Tatar azu.
Recipe for beef azu with pickles
- Cooking time: approximately 50-60 minutes.
- Servings Per Container: 4.
- Calorie content of the dish: 115 kcal.
- Purpose: lunch, hot second course.
- Cuisine: Tatar.
The traditional description of azu can be found in encyclopedias of Tatar cuisine. For a colorful national meat dish, high-quality beef with pickles, tomato sauce, onions, and spices is used. Meat pieces prepared in this way are served with mashed potatoes, boiled rice, and pasta. Any garnish will do.
Ingredients:
- beef pulp - 400 g;
- garlic - 2 cloves;
- canned cucumber - 2 pcs.;
- onion - 1 pc.;
- tomato paste - 1 tbsp. l.;
- vegetable oil - 50 ml;
- beef broth - 0.3 l;
- flour - 3 tbsp. l.;
- salt pepper.
Cooking method:
- Finely chopped onion fry with a little oil.
- Cut the pulp into thin sticks measuring two by five to six centimeters. They need to be fried in corn, olive or other oil until a beautiful golden brown appears.
- Add onion, a glass of broth, tomato paste to the meat sticks, simmer the mixture over low heat for twenty minutes.
- Finely chop the cucumbers or grate on a coarse grater. Season the meat with slices of pickled cucumber, mix. Add salt, generously season with pepper, add crushed garlic.
- Pour the remaining 100 ml of broth into flour, mix, bring to a liquid and homogeneous state. Pour the flour into the pan, stirring the contents until thickened. Simmer for about a quarter of an hour.
Azu in Tatar classic recipe
- Cooking time: 50-60 minutes.
- Servings: for 4-5 people.
- Calorie content of the dish: 107 kcal.
- Cuisine: Tatar.
- Difficulty of preparation: easy.
It is difficult to say which of the recipes for this dish can be called real, classic, traditional. They say that in the old recipe they did not put fried vegetables in it, but onion or carrot frying is very suitable for meat, complements its taste, saturates the sauce with aromas. But tomato paste (even worse if ketchup) was not added to the classic Tatar aza with beef. The stew was prepared with crushed tomatoes of large, fleshy, sweet varieties. The dish was seasoned with black ground and hot red pepper, garlic.
Ingredients:
- beef pulp - 400 g;
- onion (large) - 1 pc.;
- carrots (medium) - 1 pc.;
- tomato (large) - 2-3 pcs.;
- garlic - 3 cloves;
- canned cucumber - 2-3 pcs.;
- beef broth (water) - 150 ml;
- flour - 3 tbsp. l.;
- vegetable oil - 50 ml;
- salt, pepper, bay leaf.
Cooking method:
- Before you cook the meat, you need to make a frying. Fry chopped onions and carrots in vegetable oil. Carrots can be grated or cut into strips, onions look good chopped into half rings.
- Fry small meat sticks (as in beef stroganoff or slightly larger) in a pan in oil. Add fried vegetables, peeled and chopped tomatoes, chopped garlic to them. Simmer the mixture for about a quarter of an hour. The sauce with tomatoes will be liquid due to the abundance of juice, you do not need to add water to it unless absolutely necessary.
- Grind cucumbers, put them in meat sauce. Mix flour with water or broth. Pour the mixture into the pan in a thin stream, continuing to stir the gravy until it thickens.
- Add salt, add seasonings and simmer until tender, about fifteen minutes.
Azu in Tatar style with potatoes
- Servings Per Container: 5-6.
- Calorie content of the dish: 149 kcal.
- Purpose: hot meat dish.
- Cuisine: Tatar.
- Difficulty of preparation: easy.
Very often on sites dedicated to cooking, there are recipes for azu from beef with potatoes. In this case, the potatoes are not just a side dish, but are cooked along with other ingredients in the same pan. For you - a few secrets on how to cook a delicious meat dish, characterized by an abundance of spicy tomato sauce, in which pieces of beef pulp and potatoes literally float.
Ingredients:
- beef pulp - 500 g;
- garlic - 3 cloves or more;
- canned cucumber - 2-4 pcs.;
- onions - 2 pcs.;
- tomato (paste) - 2 tbsp. l.;
- potatoes (medium) - 10 pcs.;
- vegetable oil - 50 ml;
- broth (water) - 250 ml;
- salt, pepper, bay leaf.
Cooking method:
- Cut the pulp into long sticks, fry in oil. After five to seven minutes, add the onion. Saute until the onion rings are soft.
- Grate cucumbers or cut into small cubes. Add them to meat, put tomato paste, fill with broth or water. Add salt to taste, add pepper, garlic, bay leaves. Simmer for at least 45 minutes.
- Peel and cut the potatoes, fry them in a separate frying pan in oil until almost ready. Put the potato slices in a container with meat, simmer for ten minutes.
- Already in the plate, a portion can be sprinkled with herbs.
Azu in Tatar style in pots
- Cooking time: 1 hour 20 minutes.
- Servings Per Container: 5-6.
- Calorie content of the dish: 107 kcal.
- Purpose: lunch, second course.
- Cuisine: Tatar.
- Difficulty of preparation: easy.
Azu with beef in pots is distinguished not only by a beautiful portion serving. This is inexplicable, but the products not only retain, but also increase the natural aroma and rich taste, if cooked in ceramic containers. Just do not forget to cover the pots with a lid and make sure that the dishes have the required amount of liquid. The last condition is easy to follow: azu in Tatar style is cooked in a large amount of gravy.
Ingredients:
- beef pulp - 350-400 g;
- canned cucumber - 2 pcs.;
- potatoes - 6 pcs.;
- garlic - 2 cloves;
- onion - 1 pc.;
- tomato (large) - 2 pcs.;
- broth (water) - 0.3 l;
- vegetable oil - 2 tbsp. l.;
- a mixture of peppers, salt, herbs.
Cooking method:
- Fry the meat, cut into cubes, over high heat until golden brown. Add finely chopped onions, cucumbers, keep on fire for a couple of minutes. Divide the contents of the pan into two pots.
- Cut the potatoes into slices, stack on top of the beef. Do not forget to add salt, but remember that cucumbers contain a lot of salt. Season with pepper mixture.
- Add crushed garlic, chopped tomatoes and 150ml liquid per pot. Cover the pots and put them in the oven (180 degrees) for 45-50 minutes.
- Serve the dish sprinkled with herbs.
How to cook beef azu with gravy
- Cooking time: approximately 1 hour 10 minutes.
- Servings Per Container: 2-3..
- Calorie content of the dish: 144 kcal.
- Purpose: meat dish.
- Cuisine: Tatar.
- Difficulty of preparation: easy.
The abundance of liquid sauce is a distinctive feature of this Tatar dish. Azu of beef with gravy, described below, cannot be called dietary. It does not claim to be a classic, although it has a lot of fans. As part of the gravy, vegetables (onions with carrots), mushrooms, ketchup, mayonnaise. The sauce formed during the preparation of Tatar goulash turns any side dish, even the simplest, into a culinary masterpiece.
Ingredients:
- beef pulp - 400 g;
- pickled cucumber - 3-4 pcs.;
- champignons - 100 g;
- onions - 2 pcs.;
- carrots - 1 pc.;
- ketchup - 3 tbsp. l.;
- tomato paste - 2 tsp;
- mayonnaise - 3 tbsp. l.;
- water or broth - 100 ml;
- vegetable oil - 50 ml;
- salt, pepper, bay leaf.
Cooking method:
- Fry miniature portioned meat sticks until golden brown, add a little salt, add pepper, put the beef in a heat-resistant deep form.
- Place a layer of sliced (grated) cucumbers on top.
- Make a frying of mushrooms, carrots and onions, lay them in a third layer.
- Mix mayonnaise and ketchup, add sauce to meat and vegetables. Dilute tomato paste in water or broth, pour into a heat-resistant container. Cover the dish with foil, leaving a small hole for steam to escape. Bake for three quarters of an hour at an oven temperature of about 200 degrees.
Azu with beef and rice
- Cooking time: 1 hour 20 minutes.
- Number of servings: for 2-3 persons.
- Calorie content of the dish: 144 kcal.
- Purpose: hot second course, dinner.
- Cuisine: Tatar.
- Difficulty of preparation: easy.
Azu with rice and pickles is prepared in two different ways. Boil rice separately, serve with meat and generously pour sauce - it's easier. Option two involves adding almost ready-made rice cereal at the last stage of stewing a meat dish. In this case, the grains of rice are quickly soaked in the sauce, taking some of the gravy into themselves. You need to try both options to choose yours.
Ingredients:
- beef pulp - 400 g;
- carrots - 1 pc.;
- garlic - 3 cloves;
- onion - 1 pc.;
- pickled cucumber - 2-3 pcs.;
- tomato (paste) - 1-2 tbsp. l.;
- broth (water) - 150 ml;
- vegetable oil - 50 ml;
- rice - 300 g;
- salt, spices.
Cooking method:
- Fry chopped meat over high heat. Add onions, carrots, chopped cucumbers to the fried beef cubes. Simmer for about a quarter of an hour.
- Add a tomato diluted with broth or water. Chop garlic, add to meat. Add salt and season with spices, keep on low heat for ten minutes.
- Boil rice until half cooked, put in gravy and simmer for about fifteen minutes.
Azu from beef with sour cream
- Cooking time: 1 hour 20 minutes.
- Servings Per Container: 2-3.
- Calorie content of the dish: 144 kcal.
- Purpose: meat dish, lunch, dinner.
- Cuisine: Tatar.
- Difficulty of preparation: easy.
This recipe for beef azu with sour cream is fundamentally different from other recipes. There are no canned cucumbers or tomato sauce in it. Fried pieces of beef are poured with tkemali sauce with sour cream or cream. Homemade tkemali is preferable to store-bought sauce. The meat is tender, perfectly harmonizes with any side dish.
Ingredients:
- beef pulp - 0.5 kg;
- butter - 1 tbsp. l.;
- sour cream - 3 tbsp. l.;
- "Tkemali" sauce - 2 tbsp. l.;
- processed cheese - 100 g;
- salt, herbs.
Cooking method:
- Cut the pulp into sticks, fry them in oil over low heat. Cover the skillet with a lid. The frying time is three quarters of an hour. You may need to add water.
- Mix "Tkemali" with sour cream, add to the meat, keep on fire for another seven minutes.
- Add chopped or grated processed cheese, herbs, mix and remove from the stove. Allow cooked to cool slightly, serve with any side dish.
Azu with vegetables and beef
- Cooking time: approximately 1 hour.
- Servings Per Container: 2-3.
- Calorie content of the dish: 96 kcal.
- Purpose: lunch, dinner, meat dish.
- Cuisine: Tatar.
- Difficulty of preparation: easy.
People who follow a diet and the principles of separate nutrition will definitely fall in love with the basics with vegetables and beef. In addition to the usual onions, carrots, tomatoes, you can use sweet peppers, cauliflower, Brussels sprouts, broccoli, asparagus beans. These vegetables and meat will make a balanced lunch or dinner, moderately satisfying and quite dietary. Feel free to use frozen vegetables, the dish will not get worse from this.
Ingredients:
- beef pulp - 400 g;
- carrots - 1 pc.;
- onion - 1 pc.;
- garlic - 3 cloves;
- tomato (large) - 2 pcs.;
- Bulgarian pepper - 1 pc.;
- canned cucumber - 2-3 pcs.;
- vegetable oil - 50 ml;
- Brussels sprouts - 400 g;
- salt, spices.
Cooking method:
- Fry the beef sticks in oil over high heat, add onions, carrots, cucumbers, garlic, chopped finely. Stew for half an hour, add salt and season with spices.
- Boil Brussels sprouts for 15 minutes, cut in half.
- Add chopped tomatoes, sweet peppers, Brussels sprout halves to the dish. Simmer for about a quarter of an hour. Serve warm.
Beef azu with pasta
- Cooking time: 1 hour.
- Servings Per Container: 3-4.
- Calorie content of the dish: 112 kcal.
- Purpose: meat dish for lunch or dinner.
- Cuisine: Tatar.
- Difficulty of preparation: easy.
Pasta is a great side dish for a meat dish. As in the case of rice, the beef azu with pasta is prepared in two versions. Boil pasta, vermicelli or horns, rinse them with cold water and use as a generous side dish with meat dipped in gravy. The second method involves stewing pasta in the gravy of a pre-prepared dish. The quality of pasta is very important, they must be made from durum wheat.
Ingredients:
- beef pulp - 300 g;
- onion - 1 pc.;
- garlic - 2 cloves;
- pickled cucumber - 2 pcs.;
- tomato (paste) - 1 tbsp. l.;
- beef broth - 0.3 l;
- vegetable oil - 50 ml;
- pasta - 300 g;
- salt pepper.
Cooking method:
- Fry onion, beef in oil, combine them in one container.
- Add chopped pickled cucumbers, garlic, tomato diluted in broth. Stew meat pieces in gravy for about forty minutes.
- Separately, boil the pasta until half cooked, recline in a colander and rinse them.
- Mix pasta with meat, keep on fire for three to five minutes after boiling. The dish is ready.
Azu from beef with buckwheat
- Cooking time: about an hour.
- Servings Per Container: 3-4.
- Calorie content of the dish: 109 kcal.
- Purpose: hot dish, lunch.
- Cuisine: Tatar.
- Difficulty of preparation: easy.
By the same principle, azu is prepared from beef with buckwheat - the favorite porridge of Russian children and adults. Buckwheat looks more interesting with meat with white sauce, so try cooking it with meat with sour cream and Tkemali sauce. Boil buckwheat separately, serve it to the meat, pouring plenty of gravy.
Ingredients:
- beef - 0.3 kg;
- sour cream - 2 tbsp. l.;
- butter - 1/2 tbsp. l.;
- "Tkemali" sauce - 2 tbsp. l.;
- processed cheese - 70 g;
- buckwheat - 300 g;
- salt, herbs.
Cooking method:
- Fry meatballs in oil for 40-45 minutes. The fire must be small.
- Mix sour cream and "Tkemali", add to the meat.
- After five minutes, add chopped cheese, herbs, salt to taste.
- Boil buckwheat separately. Serve with meat and gravy.
Even a novice hostess can cook delicious basics with beef. The main components of the dish are beef pulp, pickles, spicy tomato sauce. Azu with white sauce is less common, but also has fans among gourmets. Do not overcook the meat, stew it well and make sure that there is plenty of liquid in the gravy.
Video: Tatar beef
This is a very easy to prepare, but very tasty multi-component dish. According to classic recipes, the Tatar dish azu is cooked in two dishes at once. A cauldron is the main container where languishing and bringing to readiness products fried in a separate pan take place. Since you have to fry more than one or two components, then every time, a significant part of the vegetable oil goes into the cauldron along with the product, making the finished dish heavy, fatty and unnecessarily high in calories. Recently, healthy eating trends have taken over, so the recipe for basics has been somewhat modified and simplified. Perhaps this affected its taste properties, but not much. But the excess fat with this approach is gone. The taste of the products that make up the basics played brighter. We offer you a classic Tatar azu recipe with beef, pickles and potatoes, we cook the dish in a cauldron.
Taste Info Second potato dishes / Stewed potatoes
Ingredients
- lean beef 300 grams;
- one large pickled cucumber;
- half a large carrot;
- one large onion;
- potatoes, about 500 grams;
- vegetable oil, 100 grams;
- tomato paste, about a third of a glass or 3 large tomatoes;
- salt, hot red pepper, bay leaf - to taste.
How to cook azu from beef and pickles in Tatar style
Cooking azu in Tatar from beef in a cauldron will require you to strictly follow the procedure:
1. Prepare the beef, remove the tendons and fat, cut into small pieces like in the photo. 
2. Pour a little vegetable oil into a cauldron or deep frying pan and fry the beef until a crust forms. In our recipe, we add water and chopped tomatoes, which can be replaced with tomato paste. Stew the meat with water and tomatoes over low heat. Salt to taste.
3. Cooking vegetables, peeling onions, carrots. 
4. Finely chop our vegetables, onions, carrots and pickled cucumbers, cut into approximately equal fractions. Add the remaining vegetable oil to a separate pan and simmer our cuts. If you follow the classic recipe for beef basics, then each of the components must be fried separately, in vegetable oil and put in a cauldron. 
5. The tips of the carrots and onions should darken slightly. When the dressing is ready, add it to the cauldron and continue to simmer over low heat. 
6. While the meat was stewed and the dressing was fried, let's not waste time! Thoroughly wash and clean the potatoes. 
7. Cut it into small pieces and add to the cauldron. According to the classic recipe for preparing a real Tatar azu, potatoes must be fried separately and placed in a cauldron. These processes greatly increase the fat content of the finished dish. Continue simmering until potatoes are cooked. 5 minutes before the end of the process, add bay leaf, garlic, some greens. Azu in Tatar how to cook 
8. The finished dish can have two variations - slightly liquid, with rich gravy, then it is used with a spoon. The second option is azu - the dish is dried and, like any second course, it is served with a knife and fork. In this recipe, we told you how to cook Tatar azu with beef meat, try it, as you can see, cooking this dish is not so difficult.
Azu is a traditional Tatar dish: fried pieces of meat stewed with tomatoes, onions, potatoes and pickles. And since it is Tatar, then there should not be any pork in the recipe. Beef, lamb, horse meat - please, but not pork!
The origin of the word "azu" is explained in different ways. Translated from Persian, "azu" means small pieces of meat in a spicy sauce. In Tatarstan, it is believed that the name of the dish comes from the word "azdyk" - food, food. And some researchers believe that the word "azu" is onomatopoeic, symbolizing the whistle of a sharp chopping tool at the moment of chopping off a piece of meat. Be that as it may, azu is delicious, and in this article we will talk about how a real Tatar azu is prepared, as well as about the basics from the most unexpected ingredients.
Classic azu
Ingredients:
700 g beef or lamb,
3 large tomatoes
1 large onion
3 medium cucumbers
1 tbsp tomato paste,
5-6 potatoes,
100-150 g of broth or water,
salt, pepper, parsley, bay leaf, garlic.
Cooking:
Cut the meat into 2 × 4 cm cubes, trying to cut across the fibers. Cut the tomatoes crosswise, dip in boiling water for 1 minute, then pour over with cold water and remove the skin and also cut into cubes. Cut cucumbers into cubes, onions - into half rings. Quickly fry the meat in a very hot frying pan until golden brown, spreading it in parts so that it does not have time to give juice. Put the meat in a cast iron pan, season with a little salt and pepper. Also fry the onion and add to the meat. Pour in water or broth so as to just cover the meat, put the tomatoes on top and simmer with the lid closed for 30 minutes. Then add bay leaf, pickles, tomato paste, mix and simmer for another 15 minutes. Taste it, sometimes you need to add a little sugar to reduce the acidity of the tomatoes. Peel potatoes and fry until tender. Mix in chopped parsley and garlic. Put potatoes on a plate, top with stew. Sprinkle with parsley and garlic.
Ingredients:
500 g of meat,
2-3 bulbs
2-3 carrots
3-4 pickled cucumbers,
500 g potatoes
salt, ground black pepper, bay leaf and spices - to taste.
Cooking:
Chop the onion and carrot and fry in a small amount of vegetable oil, add the meat cut into small pieces and simmer for about 15 minutes. Then pour in some water, add all the spices and simmer until the meat is half cooked. Peel the potatoes, cut into cubes, add to the meat and fill with water so that it only covers the potatoes. Simmer over medium heat until fully cooked, then add diced or grated cucumbers and bay leaf. Stir, leave on fire for 5 minutes.
Ingredients:
1 kg beef,
2 pickled cucumbers,
2 onion heads
3 potatoes
cream or sour cream, spicy ketchup, salt, pepper to taste.
Cooking:
We cut the meat into thin strips, the onion into small cubes, put it in a pan with oil and a little water. Pour ketchup (you can be spicier and more), salt and fry this whole mixture until all the water has evaporated. We spread the meat in pots, fall asleep with cucumbers, cut into small cubes, put potatoes on top, also cut into cubes (or straws) and fill with water to half. Salt and pepper - to taste. Pour cream (sour cream), cover with herbs and put the pots in the oven, heated to 180-200ºС for 1 hour.
Ingredients:
500 g beef,
200 g onion
150 g tomato paste,
250 g pickled cucumbers,
40 g flour
100 g melted fat,
salt, pepper, bay leaf, garlic to taste.
Cooking:
Cut the meat into cubes and fry in lard until golden brown, pour hot broth. Add the onion sautéed until transparent, tomato paste and simmer until the meat is cooked. Drain the broth and prepare the sauce: the flour fried to a light yellow color is diluted with broth, stirred well so that there are no lumps. In the finished sauce, put the meat, minced cucumbers and crushed garlic. The garnish is served with potatoes, previously boiled in their skins, and then peeled and fried until golden brown.
Ingredients:
1 chicken
5-6 tomatoes,
2 pickled cucumbers,
2 carrots
2 bulbs
herbs, spices, bay leaf.
Cooking:
We cut the prepared chicken into large pieces, salt, pepper and fry over medium heat until golden brown. We cut onion and carrot into large pieces, mix with pieces of chicken, peeled tomatoes are also cut into cubes and also sent to the pan. Add bay leaf, spices, pour in one and a half glasses of water and simmer over low heat for 40-50 minutes. Then add finely chopped cucumbers, simmer for another 10 minutes, sprinkle with herbs. Ready!
Azu is prepared not only from meat, but also from completely unexpected products.
Ingredients:
500 g boiled giblets,
1 onion
1 tbsp flour,
1 tbsp peace or vegetable oil,
1 pickled cucumber.
Cooking:
Boiled giblets cut into strips, mix with fried onions, fry a little. Toast the flour in a clean, dry frying pan until creamy. Dilute with hot broth from giblets, stirring constantly so that there are no lumps, boil. Add finely chopped cucumber, fried giblets, spices, salt and boil for 10-15 minutes. Serve with boiled rice.
Azu from squid
Ingredients:
500 g squid fillet,
2 pickles,
2-3 bulbs
1 tbsp tomato paste,
1 tbsp flour,
80 g butter,
parsley, bay leaf, allspice, salt.
Cooking:
Cut the onion into strips and sauté until translucent. Add tomato paste diluted with a little water and simmer for 5 minutes. Peel cucumbers, cut into slices, stew in ½ stack. water. Squid fillet cut into strips, salt, breaded in flour and fry in oil until golden brown. Combine all ingredients, add bay leaf, pepper, simmer for 10 minutes. Serve with mashed potatoes, sprinkle with herbs.
Ingredients:
1.5 kg of horse meat,
3-4 bulbs
5 barrel pickled cucumbers,
2-3 pcs. tomatoes,
1 kg of oyster mushrooms or champignons,
50 g butter,
sour cream, salt, pepper, bay leaf, herbs.
Cooking:
Prepare the meat: cut into 2×4 cm sticks, separating the fat and veins along the way. Put the scraps in a cauldron and melt the fat, put a piece of hot pepper in it, fry a little and take it out. In the prepared fat, fry the meat in small portions until golden brown, laying it in a separate bowl. Then, in the same fat, fry the onion, cut into half rings, until transparent. Cut the tomatoes crosswise, scald with boiling water and dip in cold water. Peel off the skin, remove the seeds, cut into cubes. Mix meat, onion, tomato pulp, simmer over low heat, add salt, pepper and seasonings to taste. Simmer for 40 minutes over medium heat with a lid on. In the meantime, sauté the onion in butter until transparent, add finely chopped mushrooms to it, simmer for 3 minutes, add sour cream and leave on medium heat under the lid for 5-7 minutes. Peel cucumbers, cut into cubes, put in a small amount of water until soft. Mix with meat and stew for about 5 minutes. Add flour to the mushrooms, mix, add water or broth, boil a little until the desired density. Serve with rice or mashed potatoes, put azu on top, put mushroom sauce on the side and sprinkle all this splendor with herbs and garlic.
As you can see, azu, cooked in any way, both traditional and innovative, is hearty, high-calorie and quite far from the concept of “light”. But there are also azu recipes that are devoid of the usual long stewing, and their composition is very far from the classic recipe. But the authors of such recipes still call them azu for some reason, probably because of the way the meat is cut. Here, for example, is an azu recipe that is perfect for a romantic dinner.
Marinade Ingredients:
100-150 ml olive oil,
2 tbsp ground sweet paprika,
1 tsp ground coriander,
½ tsp salt or 2 tbsp. soy sauce,
a mixture of peppers, coarsely ground.
Cooking:
Cut 1-1.5 kg of turkey meat into long pieces, marinate for 2-4 hours. Remove spices, quickly fry over high heat. For a side dish, you can cook leek: cut it into washers obliquely, fry in olive oil, add 1 glass of white wine. Put the side dish on a plate, lay the pieces of turkey on top, sprinkle with herbs.
In general, create, invent, try! After all, a real culinary specialist does not calculate the grams required by the recipe, but brings something of his own. This is how masterpieces are obtained even from a simple basics!
Larisa Shuftaykina
Azu in Tatar is one of the most popular recipes. Supermarkets even sell ready-made cold cuts for him. To cook a real Tatar basics, and not a distant variation of it, you need to follow a simple but fairly strict recipe. Real basics are made in Tatar style with pickles, a recipe with a photo is simply necessary for such dishes so as not to get confused and not miss anything, because several operations are performed during cooking (cutting, frying, mixing, stewing). One of the secrets to making a delicious azu is using melted butter. It must be of good quality. If you don’t have it, then fry the meat in vegetable oil, and the potatoes in butter.
- Beef - 500 g,
- Bulb - 1 large,
- Fresh tomatoes - 3 large,
- Meat broth or hot water - half a glass,
- Pickled cucumbers - 2-3 pieces,
- Potato - 500 g,
- Melted butter or vegetable oil - 80 g,
- Salt - 2/3 teaspoon,
- Tomato paste - 1 tablespoon
- Bay leaf - 1 piece,
- Pepper - to taste (I have a mixture of peppers in the grinder)
How to cook aza in Tatar style with pickles
Cooking azu has a few simple rules, thanks to which you will prepare a delicious azu. And it will be really basic, and not a nameless stew with meat.
Rule 1. Meat for azu is first fried and then stewed.
Moreover, you need to fry the meat in a hot frying pan so that not a drop of juice flows out of the meat. You need to fry the meat quickly enough so that only a crispy crust forms. If you do not have ghee, then use vegetable. On the usual creamy meat will burn.
In practice, it looks like this. First, the meat must be cut across the grain. Thin long pieces. You can, of course, take a ready-made chopped azu in the store. But we are not looking for easy ways. Personally, I have dealt with very, very stringy cheap beef. But even from it it is quite possible to cut such neat pieces. This, by the way, is the beauty of dishes like basics, that you don’t have to bother with the choice of meat.
Next, take a frying pan. It is better that it was without a non-stick coating. Because Teflon pans cannot be heated to too high temperatures - the coating deteriorates. Put on high heat. Pour the oil, after a minute we spread the meat. In one layer! That is, we will fry in several steps. It is important that there is not a mountain of meat in the pan, otherwise it will not be able to warm up evenly and will begin to release juice. And for the preparation of azu, this is unacceptable.
The meat immediately starts to sizzle. Let cook for a minute and a half, flip over. If it sticks somewhere, scrape it off. Another minute and a half and that's it.
We spread the meat in a saucepan and a cauldron, where the azu will be prepared. Pour more oil into the pan, lay out the second portion of meat and do with it in the same way as with the first batch.
Rule 2. The onion is fried in the same pan where the meat was fried.
This trick will make the taste of azu more intense. Nothing needs to be washed. Roasts do not need to be scraped off. We cut the onion into four parts and then thinly into quarters of the rings. And put it directly on the same frying pan where the meat was just fried.
Put on medium heat and fry, stirring occasionally. Gradually, the burnt plaque becomes less and less in the pan, it combines with the onion. And now all the fat remaining from the meat is absorbed into the onion. Should get what you see in the photo.
Put the onion into the pot with the meat.
Let's move on to tomatoes. There are no clear rules here. Someone takes a jar of chopped in their own juice, someone breeds additional tomato paste. I prefer fresh tomatoes. To quickly grind them, I use a coarse grater. I cut the tomatoes in half and rub them with a cut on a grater until only the skin remains in the palm of my hand. Literally in three minutes, you get a whole plate of grated tomatoes without skins (the grater simply does not take them).
Add broth or hot water to the pot. Little liquid is needed. Only to completely cover the meat.
Rule 3. Fried meat is stewed with onions, broth and tomatoes until soft.
You need to stew the meat under the lid, on a very slow fire, so that the azu only gurgles slightly. And there are no clear indications of time here, because meat is different for everyone. Young beef can be stewed until tender for half an hour. My meat was stewed for 1 hour and 10 minutes.
Rule 4. Potatoes are fried in melted butter.
Slicing potatoes can be arbitrary. I like straws most of all, in the form of meat.
If you don't have ghee, just use butter. Gram 80, no less. Potatoes are great for absorbing it. Her taste will be amazing. Crispy, bright crust. You do not need to fry the potatoes until soft. Blushed - and enough. Be sure to stir it several times during the frying process.
The potatoes are laid out in a saucepan with already completely stewed meat, pickles are added. And here, too, there is a rule.
Rule 5. Cucumbers should be pickled, not pickled.
Yes, I understand that not everyone has the opportunity to harvest pickles for the winter - after all, they must be stored in the cellar or in the refrigerator. And if you take pickled ones, then this is not fatal. But according to the rules, salty ones are needed.
You can cut them again, however you like. I cut them finely-finely so that they are perceived as a flavor additive, without dominating the dish.
Next, we add tomato paste, pepper the dish and salt. Yes, we salt only at the very end. Why? Because pickles come in different degrees of salting. And by salting meat and potatoes before you put them all together, you run the risk of getting too salty azu. And this is definitely not included in our plans.
I ended up adding 2/3 teaspoons of salt. I mixed everything and put it under the lid for exactly 10 minutes. Heating of a plate - minimum. During this time, all the ingredients will have time to combine into a single composition, but the potatoes will not have time to fall apart.
1. Meat for azu is first fried over high heat until a crust forms, and then stewed until soft.
2. Onions are fried in the same pan where the meat was cooked in order to “pick up” the remnants of the aroma and taste of the meat.
3. The time of stewing meat depends on its quality. On average, it takes from 30 minutes to an hour and a half.
4. The potatoes are fried in ghee (can be replaced with butter).
5. Cucumbers should be pickled, not pickled.
I hope now you will cope with the preparation of azu in Tatar perfectly well.
Loading...
