Tasty and useful barberry sauce

Caucasian cuisine can not be imagined without delicious, aromatic, spicy sauces, prepared not on the familiar tomato base, but sweetish fruit and berry. One of the Abkhazian variations of this gravy is barberry sauce. Sour-sweet, moderately spicy seasoning will bring a zest to the usual dishes of meat, it will be appropriate with rice and pasta, improve the taste of the roast from the bird.

Features of sauces with fruit and berry base

In traditional Georgian cuisine, there is a whole group of sauces that are prepared from sour, dried fruits, including barberry. The product is known to us under the names of satsebeli, tkemali, quatsarachi, variations in the preparation - mass. They depend on the basis( cherry plum, pomegranate, dogwood, barberry, grapes) and a set of seasonings, the main of which are garlic and adzhika. How to prepare a real Georgian Adzhika, you can see in this article a little later.

Such sauces are not only delicious, but also useful. Fruit base enriches the body with vitamins and fiber. Sharp seasonings improve appetite and digestive processes. Sauce from barberry is sweeter than cornelian, tomato, plum, so it is served to poultry meat. What are the useful properties of the product?

• Like any sour berry, barberry contains many pectins that purify the body of toxic compounds, salts of heavy metals, other harmful substances.
• Puree is rich in ascorbic acid, it increases the resistance of the body to catarrhal and viral diseases.
• Unlike other acid sauces, it does not irritate the mucous membrane of the stomach and duodenum, on the contrary, it helps to heal ulcers and erosions.
• Barberry has a lot of berberina, a substance that normalizes blood pressure and heart function.
• The product has a laxative effect, improves intestinal peristalsis.

Technology of preparation and recipes of sauce

Let's stop on how to prepare real Abkhazian sauce from barberry and experiment with the recipe, adding or removing those or other condiments and spices.

Preparation of the berry base

Regardless of the combination of the sauce ingredients, its basis is berry puree. To cook it, you need fresh berries of edible varieties of barberry. They are cleared from the pedicels, washed, poured into a basin or a pan and poured a small volume of cold water - for 1 kg approximately 1.5-2 cup. For flavor recommend adding here when cooking 2-3 leaves of mint or a stick of cinnamon. After boiling, set the minimum temperature and in this mode, cook for no more than 10-15 minutes - until softening, so that the berries can be wiped.

The cooked barberry is poured onto a sieve and grinded. The liquid in which it was cooked in whole or in part is added to the puree - this depends on what type of sauce you prefer.

Please note! For sauce, jam, marmalade from barberry, the species ordinary and Amur are best. They have a large berry without seeds, which increases the yield of puree and juice. The fruits of most decorative varieties for consumption and processing are not suitable.

Varieties of sauce with various spices

When the base is ready, you can start preparing the sauce by combining various spices to give it a more pungent or, on the contrary, mild taste. Let's consider some traditional and alternative recipes.

With Adzhika

In puree, prepared from a kilo of berries, add 1.5-2 tablespoons of pasty or dry adzhiki. It is an oriental seasoning, spicy and fragrant on the basis of red( hot) pepper, with the addition of garlic, salt, various herbs.

If the sauce made from barberry is sour, you can sweeten it with 1-2 tbsp.tablespoons of sugar. To obtain a thicker consistency, it is recommended to boil with constant stirring, but at the same time to ensure that the product does not darken.

With cloves and ginger

For this recipe, when cooking berries, add 150-200 g of sugar and 1-2 cinnamon sticks. Its smell perfectly combines with other oriental spices and gives the sauce a unique flavor. In the prepared puree put cloves, grated ginger, red pepper. Spices can be added directly to the puree, or folded into a gauze pouch and lowered when re-cooking - 3-5 minutes over low heat after boiling.

The original recipe with masala and olive oil

The peculiarity of this seasoning is that the barberry is not boiled, but is crushed and wiped fresh. To the mass obtained from 1 kg of fruit, add:

• 2 tbsp.spoons of cane sugar;
• 3-4 cloves of garlic;
• 0,5 tsp spice mixture masala( spicy Asian seasoning);
• 1-2 g of a mixture of peppers;
• 75 g of olive oil

Salt barberry sauce to taste, the consistency can be adjusted with cold boiled water.

With sweet pepper and greens

On a puree from a kilogram of berries you will need an average head of garlic, 2-3 pieces of Bulgarian pepper, along a bunch of parsley, dill, cilantro, green onion. Garlic with greens should be finely chopped or chopped in a blender, add to the previously prepared barberry mass, salt. This sauce is served raw, in order to preserve a rich vitamin composition.

You can experiment with spices and spices. Of herbs, except the above, you can add marjoram, basil, a mixture of hops-suneli.

Recipe for the winter

To prepare sauce from barberry for the winter, use recipes with adzhika and spices. Cooked with seasonings fruit puree hot packed in jars and hermetically sealed. In a refrigerator, such a product can be stored without pasteurization, as in berries there is a lot of acid( pectin), which plays the role of preservative. If you prefer sweeter options and add sugar to the preform, it's better to pasteurize it for reliability. For a half-liter jar - 10 minutes in boiling water.

How to cook Adzhika at home?

The real Caucasian adzhika has nothing to do with tomatoes. This is a very spicy seasoning, 25-50% consisting of red pepper with the addition of various spices. It can be bought ready-made or made by yourself.

150 grams of ground red pepper will be needed:

• 1 tbsp.a spoon of coriander;
• 2 teaspoons of hops-suneli;
• 2 teaspoons of ground fennel seeds;Pinch of large salt, you can sea.

Tip! If instead of ground pepper, you take a fresh chili pepper and grind it in a blender, you will get pasty adzhika. As a rule, garlic is added to it.

What should I serve?

Barberry sauce is a universal gravy to meat. Especially good its sour-sweet-tart taste combines with turkey, chicken, duck, emphasizing the aroma of spices and contrasting with the salty taste of freshly prepared meat. Some gourmets mix barberry pasta with meat juice before serving, which is released during baking. The product is very economical - a couple of tablespoons of sweet toothpaste is enough to season the roast for the whole family.

How to cook an Abkhazian Adzhika: