Georgian cuisine – Try the taste of Georgia!

What is Georgia? Georgia is a unique nature with a variety of landscapes. Here you can see the bright blue sea against the backdrop of snowy peaks, enjoy the coolness of mountain rivers and the noise of ancient forests. Georgia is a historical and spiritual wealth, skillfully expressed in architecture and temples. Georgia is a divine polyphony, a magnificently singing nation, and Georgia is also a delightful cuisine, known throughout the world. A multi-hour feast with dozens of toasts and an endless flow of dishes is the main goal of a trip to Georgia for many tourists.

What is so unique about Georgian cuisine? What is it and what are its thoughts (forgive the pun), we will try to tell in this article. But what material about Georgia without legends? They say that once upon a time, God needed to cross the high Caucasian mountain range. The path was very long and thorny, and during the journey God did not notice how bread and meat fell out of his bag onto the ground. The place where the divine products fell became known as Georgia. Knowing how Georgians love and know how to cook, there is absolutely no reason to doubt this origin of this proud and beautiful country.

We will tell you about the most popular dishes of Georgian cuisine, in which an inexperienced tourist can get confused.

Georgian cuisine dishes

Khachapuri

In a completely understandable language, one can say that it is a flatbread with cheese. But it is such a divine, painful creation that such a simple description of it does not allow insulting any self-respecting Georgian. The word khachapuri consists of two bases: khacho, which means cottage cheese and puri, which means bread.

Khachapuri is a national treasure of Georgia, each country prepares this dish in its own way. The famous travel writer Roger Rosen claimed that if America had flooded not Italians but Georgians, then khachapuri would have been as widespread in the world as pizza. Khachapuri is usually prepared from dough without adding yeast, here they are replaced with fermented milk matsoni or kefir. But this recipe is not standard either, the dough is kneaded with mineral water, milk or whey. In Georgia, you can also find khachapuri from filled dough.

• Khachapuri boat owes its origin to a cozy and sunny corner of Georgia – Adjara. Hence their second name – Adjarian khachapuri. The cook or housewife rolls the dough in a special way in the shape of a boat, and in the middle they add a filling of different types of cheese, butter and, at the guest’s request, an egg (one or more, chicken or quail). Khachapuri is eaten by breaking off pieces of dough from the edges and dipping them into a thick, juicy filling. The taste is simply divine. This is the only type of khachapuri in the form of an open pie. All other types are baked in the form of a regular closed pie.

Read also: The best Adjarian khachapuri in Batumi. Establishment rating

• Imeruli or Imeretian khachapuri. This khachapuri is prepared in the form of a flatbread, inside which a large amount of grated cheese of different types is baked. This is a very filling dish, which an unprepared person should not pounce on at the very beginning of a meal. It is served as an appetizer, but there is a big risk of getting full right away, and there is still so much deliciousness ahead.

• Megrelian khachapuri differs from Imeretian khachapuri in that the cheese filling is added not only inside the dough, but also placed on top. There is a lot of cheese both inside and outside, for cheese lovers it is a holiday.
• Achma is a festive or royal khachapuri, which often takes half a day to prepare. It comes from the Adjara region. It is a lush layered pie, each layer of which is strewn with cheese and spread with butter. Girls, beware, it is very satisfying, high in calories and incredibly delicious.

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Bread in Georgian cuisine

It would seem, what kind of bread is needed with such a variety of khachapuri? No way – Georgian bread is a wonder of the world. Just like in the case of khachapuri, a competition for the most delicious bread is held in each region of Georgia. So, we present to you all the variety of bread:

• Mrgvali (round), a regular bread made from wheat flour, is soft and airy.

• Shoti is a sweet bread with an elongated shape, slightly reminiscent of a tricorn. This type of bread is baked exclusively in a tone (which means a well-shaped oven).

  

• Lavash is a Georgian bread, also baked in a tonne, has a denser consistency and a round shape.

• Nazuki is a sweet bread made from wheat flour. It is more like a bun, as it contains a lot of spices and raisins.

  

Nazuki is sold on the Tbilisi-Batumi highway. An entire village lives on it.

Coordinates

• Mchadi is a corn flatbread fried in vegetable oil, which has a wonderful crispy crust.

  

• And there are also mchadi in ketsi, which are baked in a special clay dish on coals. Here the product is cooked without oil. Therefore, such bread is healthy and low in calories.

Meat, meat and more meat

Do you think that the fantasy of Georgian cuisine ends with flour dishes? Don’t be so deeply mistaken. Meat is what is cooked in Georgia better than in any other country in the world. And they have been doing it in hundreds of ways since time immemorial. Let’s try to figure out what’s what and advise vegetarians to skip this chapter of our story, otherwise you have a real chance to part with the conviction – not to eat meat. Well, we will begin the list of meat dishes with a dish that combines dough and meat.

• Khinkali is not just a tasty culinary attraction. Khinkali is a whole religion in Georgia. The dish is a kind of dough bags with minced meat inside. What is the difference between manti and khinkali? For starters, purely in visual design, as well as in the method of preparation. Khinkali are made from fairly dense dough and boiled in boiling water or even broth. Manti are steamed and very often, in addition to meat, vegetables are added as a filling.

  

There is one correct answer to the question – what do you eat khinkali with? With nothing! Usually there is nothing on the table on the day when khinkali is served, because nothing is needed with khinkali! But you need to eat khinkali correctly, and correctly this is with your hands, without using cutlery. After biting into the khinkali on one side, you first need to drink the delicious juice that is inside, and only then you can enjoy the chopped meat itself, with lots of spices.

The khinkali cap, which consists of twisted dough, is most often not eaten, but simply put on a plate – this is how at the end of the feast they count the khinkali eaten. Often, guests compete in eating more, because no one has canceled the element of competition at the Georgian table. Eating khinkali, drinking wine, listening to numerous toasts and Georgian drinking songs – this is why numerous tourists come to this country.

• Furthermore, a separate cult in Georgian cuisine is dishes cooked on an open fire. One of such dishes is kupaty, which is minced or chopped meat (usually entrails and giblets) with spices and hot peppers in a natural casing. Kupaty is cooked on coals.

  

• Shashlik in Georgia is the dish that completes the feast, as it is served last. The recipe is simple to the point of ugliness: you need to take fresh meat, cut it into portions and marinate it properly. Each cook keeps his own method of marinating the meat a secret. Well, then it’s a matter of technique: the meat is skewered, fried directly on the coals and served hot..

  

• Satsivi in ​​Georgia is made from chicken, turkey or even goose. The whole “salt” of the dish is in its walnut-based sauce. The bird is first boiled, sometimes baked in the oven or stove, and only then covered with a sauce of crushed walnuts and spices. Satsivi is served cold.

  

• Chicken tapaka or tabaka is also considered a Georgian dish, although some neighboring countries “encroach” on it. The chicken is cooked with various spices and kept under a press for several hours. Today, anything can be used as a press, but in the old days, only heavy flat cast-iron frying pans were used. The name of the dish itself comes from their name.

  

• Chakhokhbili is a very common chicken dish in Georgia, although the recipe is slightly different in different regions. Portioned pieces of chicken are fried, lots of onions, tomatoes and greens are added, resulting in a fantastically aromatic dish. In the old days, chakhokhbili was prepared exclusively from pheasant, but today it is impossible to find this bird to satisfy your culinary hunger.

  

Soups in Georgian cuisine

• Chikhirtma is a fragrant and thick chicken soup with lots of spices and herbs. Flour is used to thicken it and give it a characteristic consistency.

• Khash is a unique soup that is eaten in the morning. And all because it is preferred to eat it when hungover, because that is when you can thoroughly enjoy its garlic aroma and at the same time relieve a terrible headache. Khash is prepared from meat and offal.

  

• Khashlama is prepared from young meat with the addition of greens. No vegetables are added to this rich soup. Some gourmets eat khashlama and wash it down with broth from the same khashlama, served in a glass and a bowl.

• Chakapuli is an unusual soup made from young meat with the addition of herbs, spices and sour green tkemali, which gives the soup a very piquant taste.

  

• Kharcho. Kharcho soup can be found in any Georgian restaurant, even far beyond Georgia itself. Traditionally prepared from beef, rice with the addition of nuts, which turns this soup into an amazing first course.

  

• Lobio is the healthiest of Georgian soups. It is cooked from red beans and its consistency resembles a moderately thick porridge. Lots of greens and onions are added to lobio, as well as garlic and nuts.

Cheese

Cheese is an integral part of the Georgian table. It is eaten for breakfast, lunch and dinner. No feast is complete without cheese.

• Suluguni is an exquisite cheese that is placed an order of magnitude higher than the usual one. Fresh suluguni is soft, looks as if it is woven from thin sheets of cheese, and when you press on a cut head of cheese, milk flows out of it.

  

• A common Imeretian cheese, it is a young cheese. The cheese is eaten with mchadi and bread, various khachapuri are baked from it and added to ghomi.

  

• Twisted (braided) cheese is made only in the highland Adjara. Its uniqueness lies in the fact that it is completely fat-free and has a slight specific smell.

Georgian sauces

• Where any person is accustomed to using ketchup or mayonnaise as a sauce, a real Georgian uses tkemali. The basis of this sauce is tkemali (sour plum), garlic, pepper and herbs.

• Classic Georgian adjika is prepared without tomatoes and does not spoil in an open form for years. Although there are varieties of adjika with the addition of tomatoes, which makes its taste somewhat softer. After all, real adjika is prepared from sweet red pepper and hot chili pepper.

  

• Bazhe sauce is made from nuts with garlic and spices. This sauce is served with chicken, turkey and fish.

  

Desserts in Georgia

Perhaps the most famous Georgian dessert is churchkhela. Churchkhela is prepared from natural products during the harvest. Nuts are strung on a thread and dipped in papa (porridge cooked from pure grape juice and corn or wheat flour). There are as many varieties of churchkhela as there are grape varieties in Georgia.

The papa itself, cooked from grape juice and mixed with corn flour, is called pelamushi. It is served cold and looks like jelly, but has nothing in common with the taste of jelly.

Our beloved kozinaki also came from Georgia, where they are also called gozinaki. These are nuts or peeled seeds covered in thick honey. Gozinaki are usually prepared for Christmas, placing the entire mass between two layers of wafers.

It is worth mentioning the pastila called tklapi. Its unusual sour taste is very popular with both adults and children. The main difference between tklapi and pastila is that the mass for the dessert is laid in a very thin layer and carefully dried.

Well, you already know the main delicacies and surprises of Georgian cuisine. It’s time to go to this unique country and taste all the above-described delicacies and dishes.

Tips for tourists:

Best hotels in the mountains of Georgia

Walking tour of old Batumi

Souvenirs – what to bring from Georgia as a gift

Borjomi

How to get from Tbilisi to Batumi – all options

Vitaliy Kibitlevskiy

My name is Vitaly Kibitlevsky, I am a tour guide and creator of unique quests in Batumi. If you want to walk around the city with a fascinating storyteller or plunge into an exciting adventure, write to the mail: vitkibit@gmail.com

Find out more about me and my projects here