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Beef kharcho soup with rice

Beef and Rice Kharcho Soup

The tastiest, distinctive, wholesome — lunch for the family! Beef and rice kharcho is one of the best soups in Georgian cuisine. It's thick, rich, hearty, fragrant, and full of spices. You could eat it forever, and it couldn't be easier to make — any beginner will nail it on the first try!

Maria

Recipe author

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Composition / ingredients

Servings:

Water

Beef

400

Short-grain rice

100

Tkemali sauce

120

Walnuts

100

Garlic

Onion

Adjika

Khmeli-suneli

Fresh cilantro

Salt

Translation table of volumetric measures

Nutrients and energy value of the composition of the recipe

By weight of the composition:

Proteins 31 % 4 g

Fats 38 % 5 g

Carbohydrates 31 % 4 g

77 kcal

GI: 25 / 75 / 0

Cooking method

Step 1:

How do you make beef and rice kharcho? Gather your ingredients. Short-grain rice is best — it looks better in the soup and doesn't fall apart. Use bottled or filtered water. You can swap the beef for another meat if you like. Wash the vegetables and herbs and pat them dry with paper towels.
Step 2:

Wash the beef and cut it into medium pieces. Transfer the cut meat to the pot you'll cook the soup in.
Step 3:

Peel the onion and add it to the pot with the meat, whole. Add salt and pepper.
Step 4:

Pour 2 liters of water into the pot. Set it over the heat, bring the water to a boil, and cook the meat for about 1 hour, skimming off the foam from time to time. Judge the exact cooking time by your own stove.
Step 5:

While the meat cooks, rinse the rice thoroughly in cold water.
Step 6:

Finely chop the walnuts.
Step 7:

Peel the garlic and finely chop it as well.
Step 8:

Wash the cilantro, pat it dry, and chop it finely.
Step 9:

When the meat is cooked, add the rice to the broth and cook for about 7 minutes over medium heat. If the broth boils too hard, turn the heat down a little.
Step 10:

Then add the tkemali, the chopped nuts, the chopped garlic, the adjika, the khmeli-suneli, and ground black pepper to the soup. Taste the soup and add more salt if needed. Stir, bring to a boil, and cook for a couple more minutes. You can leave out the adjika altogether if your tkemali is already spicy. Mine was barely spicy, so I added adjika.
Step 11:

At the very end, add the chopped cilantro to the kharcho.
Step 12:

Take the pot off the stove, cover it, and let the soup rest for about 15 minutes. Enjoy!

What sets this national Georgian dish apart from other meat soups is that it's made with beef only (in Georgian "dzrokhis khortsi kharsho" means "beef soup"), tkemali plums, and grated walnuts. By the "classic" recipe, these three components can't be left out or swapped for others. And although kharcho recipes are often specified by the region of Georgia they come from (there's Georgian-style kharcho, Mingrelian-style, and so on), these three components stay the same — they're the foundation. The tkemali sauce may be replaced with fresh cherry plum. In Russia there's something of a myth that Georgian dishes are above all spicy-hot, and kharcho is sometimes served excessively hot in canteens and cafés. But that's not quite right: the finished soup should be aromatic, not fiery-hot. Georgians generally prefer dishes with a wealth of flavor nuances, so you can't recreate the taste of a Georgian dish just by throwing more hot pepper into the pot. You have to use fragrant herbs and ready-made seasoning blends, such as khmeli-suneli.
For cooking it's best to use neutral-tasting filtered or bottled water. If you use tap water, keep in mind it can give the dish an unpleasant characteristic aftertaste.
You can reduce or increase the amount of water given in the recipe as you wish, depending on whether you want a thicker or thinner soup.