How is churchkhela made? How to make churchkhela at home Making churchkhela

Churchkhela is an eastern Georgian sweet made from grape juice and consisting of nuts strung on a string in thickened syrup.

Traditionally, churchkhela is made from walnuts, but you can also use almonds or hazelnuts. The main thing in churchkhela is properly prepared pelamushi - a grape jelly-like mass that is cooked from sugar, flour and grape juice.

It’s not difficult to prepare oriental sweets at home, although you will have to wait several weeks for the finished result.

Recipe for homemade churchkhela

A big plus in the recipe of this homemade sweet is the minimum number of ingredients required for its production.

We will need:

Grape juice (2 liters);
Nuts (350 grams);
Wheat flour (200 grams);
Durable cotton thread;
Thick needle;
Baking paper.

Preparation:

We break the prepared nuts into quarters or halves, but not less than 3-5 cm, otherwise it will be impossible to string them on a thread. Divide the thread into pieces approximately 30-40 cm long.
Using a needle, make holes in the middle of the nuts and string them onto a thread. You need to leave about 5-10 cm of free thread at both ends of the thread so that you can make a loop for hanging the churchkhela.
Pour 1 glass from the prepared juice, pour the rest into a saucepan and place on the stove. Bring the juice to a boil and boil for 5-7 minutes.
In a glass of juice, dilute the flour until smooth (so that there are no lumps). Gradually pour the diluted flour into the boiling juice, stirring constantly.
Boil the juice for another 5-10 minutes until the consistency of thick jelly. Remove the resulting mass from the heat and let it cool to about 45-50 degrees.
We decide on a place to dry the churchkhela. It is best to hang churchkhela in a warm place somewhere close to a baking sheet or stove. Be sure to place baking paper in the place where you hang it, as the churchkhela will drain for some time.
We lower the threads with strung nuts one by one into the pelamushi (flour-like jelly) we have prepared, helping the nuts to completely submerge into the mass using a wooden spoon.
Keep the thread with nuts in the pelamushi for about 5 minutes. Then we raise it above the pan, wait for the excess liquid to drain, and lower it into the juice again.
We do this procedure 3 times so that the nuts are eventually covered with a layer of juice of at least 1.5-2 cm.
We hang the churchkhela in a warm place for several days. Traditionally, churchkhela is dried until it stops sticking to your hands.
Then the churchkhela is wrapped in a linen towel and left for another 2-3 months to fully ripen.

If you can’t bear to taste the exquisite Georgian delicacy as quickly as possible, then you can try churchkhela already 5 days after drying.

A real churchkhela should be soft on the inside and candied on the outside. That is, with secrets of homemade churchkhela— in the correct preparation of pelamushi and maintaining the drying time.

To make churchkhela, you can use not only grape juice, but also the juice of other fruits or berries. It is advisable to use freshly squeezed juice, but in extreme cases, packaged juice will do. Churchkhela made from grape juice will have a pleasant chocolate hue, from pomegranate - a rich red color, from apple - amber, from apricot - golden color.
If the juice used as the basis for churchkhela is not sweet enough, you can add sugar or honey (about ½ cup) to the mass.
You can take different varieties of nuts for churchkhela - a little of each type. Experiment with other fillings (candied fruits, dried fruits) - perhaps you will have your own ideas on this matter, which you will share with us.
To hang churchkhela to dry, you can use an ordinary wooden hanger (“hanger”) or an ordinary rolling pin, hanging loops on it.
If after preparing churchkhela there is still pelamushi (jelly), do not rush to throw it away. You can chop the nuts into a mass, place them in candy molds, and within two hours you will have a tasty and quick treat.

The recipe for making homemade churchkhela is simple, however, somewhat labor-intensive due to the stringing of nuts on a thread. Therefore, be patient, and a decent result will not take long to arrive.

This exotic sweet with an unpronounceable name is easy to prepare at home: a minimum of available products and you have “sweet greetings from Georgia” on your table.

The first thing you need are nuts for the filling. Traditionally, hazelnuts, almonds and are used. The filling of churchkhela can be either homogeneous - one type of nut is used, or mixed - a nut mix, to which you can also add raisins, pumpkin seeds, and prunes. Prepare a strong cotton thread on which you will string the nuts and a thick needle. The thread for a churchkhela measuring 25 cm should be 10 - 15 cm longer; at the remaining end of the thread you need to make a loop, on which the churchkhela will later be hung to dry. Decide in advance where to dry the churchkhela until it is completely ready (you will have to wait 5-7 days). You can adapt a rolling pin for these purposes, put loops on it and fix it so that the “walnut threads” hang freely. Make sure you have baking paper (or a paper towel) on which the dripping juice will drip.

Now you can start preparing grape jelly - pelamushi or tatara, into which the nut threads will be dipped. Typically, natural white or red grape juice and corn flour are used to prepare pelamushi, but the original ingredients can be replaced, for example, using wheat flour instead of corn flour. It’s easy to get freshly squeezed grape juice at home: buy it and run it through a juicer or puree the berries in a blender and squeeze. In extreme cases, natural juice can be replaced with packaged juice.

Churchkhela cooked with grape juice has a pleasant chocolate color. Departing from the “canonical” recipe, you can use juices from other fruits and berries. Churchkhela made from pomegranate juice is red, from apple juice it is amber, and from apricot juice it is golden.

For pelamushi for 350 g of nuts you will need 2 liters of grape juice, 200 g of flour. If the grape juice is not very sweet, add honey.

Preparation. Pour off half the grape juice and set aside. Bring the remaining grape juice to a boil and cook for 10-15 minutes. Add flour to the reserved half of the juice and mix thoroughly so that there are no lumps. Pour the flour mixture little by little into the boiling grape juice, cook over low heat for 15 - 20 minutes, remembering to stir.

Dip the thread with nuts into grape jelly, using a wooden spatula, thoroughly soak the churchkhela. Hang the sausages to dry with baking paper underneath them. Once they are a little dry (after about 20 minutes), dip them in the pelamushi again. Repeat the procedure until the churchkhela reaches the desired thickness. Hang the churchkhela to dry.

Advice! If you have prepared churchkhela, and you still have “jelly” (pelamushi), do not rush to throw it away! “Kissel” is a completely independent dish, to which you can add nut crumbs and serve for dessert.

Churchkhela is a Georgian patented national delicacy, without which not a single feast is complete in Georgia. Moreover, this dessert is also loved in Armenia and Turkey. Armenia even tried to prove that it was the discoverer of churchkhela in wide circles. But still, whatever one may say, the debate stopped, because churchkhela, an original Georgian delicacy, there is even historical evidence for this. Sources talk about how Georgian warriors, when fighting with the enemy, took churchkhela with them and could continue the campaign for a long period, eating this nourishing product. In dark clothes, they hid under the cover of darkness and ambushed the enemy as soon as he lit a fire and revealed himself. The Georgian warriors themselves did without a fire and hot food.

But let's not go too far into history. In our time, Slavic people fell in love with churchkhela when they met on sea beaches and markets. This oriental sweet is most often found in the resort towns of the Black Sea coast.

Having tried it once, no one remains indifferent. And when there is demand, then supply increases. Therefore, churchkhela today can no longer be called a curiosity; you can even buy it in large supermarkets. Consequently, unscrupulous sellers also make their presence felt by using not pure grape juice as the basis for delicacies, but various artificial impurities, adding flavorings, flavor enhancers and chemical thickeners. Therefore, it is very correct that you wondered how to cook churchkhela at home.

Let’s first figure out what juices this so-called “Georgian Snickers” is made from. You have already noticed that the color of churchkhela can be different, from white, yellow, green to red, burgundy and even black. It depends on the grape variety. It is the variety and color of the grape that gives churchkhela its distinctive color and taste. At the origins of this national dish, only ripe and sweet grapes were always used. Nowadays, pomegranate and other juices are often added to churchkhela. First, we will look at the primitive recipe for churchkhela, which Georgian housewives have been preparing for centuries.

Traditional Georgian churchkhela

So, how to make churchkhela at home, touching the origins of its appearance, having tried a truly traditional recipe? It is worth knowing that for this it is better to plan the preparation of churchkhela two days in advance and step by step. On the first day, Georgians always cook badagi. Badagi is a grape juice concentrate that is obtained by boiling the juice. And Georgians cook it over low heat for 5-6 hours, until the liquid boils down to half its original volume. Badagi becomes concentrated and sickly sweet. To prepare badaga, you can take any grapes, after squeezing or grinding the berries and straining the juice through cheesecloth or a fine sieve. Traditionally, churchkhela was always prepared in September, when the harvest season arrived. It is also important to prepare a “working area” at home where the finished churchkhelas will be dried. This could be a hanging bar or just a hanger on which we will soon hang Georgian Snickers.

When we have a ready-made grape decoction, we can start preparing the churchkhela itself. To do this, take a thread, preferably nylon, if not, you can use a regular one, but then fold it in half. We decide on the length of the thread, taking into account that the length of the churchkhela itself is approximately 20-25 cm + reserve for the loop, from which we will later hang the treat to dry. We thread the thread into a thin needle and string nuts on it like beads.

Walnuts are mainly used for the filling, but you can also opt for hazelnuts, hazelnuts, almonds, raisins and even peach or apricot kernels. The latter, however, must first be soaked in water until the skin comes off and boiled for several minutes in sugar syrup. Walnuts for preparing churchkhela must be well dried, otherwise the product will quickly begin to deteriorate. You should not fry the nuts in a frying pan, otherwise the kernels will become brittle and you simply will not be able to stick them onto the thread. It is enough to lightly dry the nuts in the oven at a temperature of 20-30 degrees.

While you are making the preparations, threading the nuts onto the thread, put the previously prepared badagi on the fire. When the grape syrup begins to boil, you need to add flour to it. In western Georgia, corn flour was always used, while eastern Georgia preferred to prepare churchkhela from wheat flour. It doesn’t matter what flour you choose, the main thing is the proportions - for 3 liters of badaga, about 1 kg of flour. Add the flour mixture little by little, stirring constantly to avoid lumps forming. Adding sugar if the grapes are not sweet is considered bad manners in Georgia, and it is also worth considering that badagi becomes even sweeter as it cools. The grape jelly-like mass should be simmered over low heat for about 15-20 minutes. Next, dip the nut “beads” into the grape “jelly”, helping yourself with a wooden spatula, so that each nut is covered with the mixture.

How to cook churchkhela so that it turns out thick (“meaty”)? In fact, all the flavor of churchkhela is in the grape shell, so the rougher it is, the tastier it is. To do this, you need to re-dip the “beads” into the broth, after giving the first layer time to dry a little. Hanging churchkhelas should dry in a well-ventilated, dry place for about 5-7 days. Don’t worry if it seems to you that the dessert turned out not as glossy as you saw it on the shelves. The fact is that, after drying, the churchkhela will acquire the shine you desire, and the finished Georgian Snickers should stop sticking to your hands. That's the whole trick, now you can enjoy perhaps the most healthy and nutritious delicacy, which contains many organic acids, proteins, vitamins, vegetable fats and fructose. Moreover, churchkhela can be stored in a cool place for a very long time, since Georgians can’t do a single New Year’s feast without it.

Modern churchkhela

The churchkhela recipe involves natural juice in its composition, but today not everyone has the opportunity to prepare it from natural grape juice, and there’s also the fear of wanting to make Georgian Snickers outside of the grape harvest season. Don't be discouraged, this is not a problem. You can make churchkhela from purchased packaged juice, and the choice of flavors is huge.

So, you may be surprised, but churchkhela prepared at home from packaged juice is no different from store-bought. To prepare, we will need all the same ingredients that were indicated in the previous recipe, only in different proportions and using a different technology. Place 1 liter of juice on gas and boil for 5-7 minutes. At this time, carefully dissolve 1 glass of flour in a glass of cold juice so that lumps do not form until it becomes liquid sour cream. Next, gradually pour the flour mixture into the hot juice in a thin stream, stirring constantly. Cook for 7-10 minutes until the mixture loses its floury taste. Add sugar to taste (store-bought juices are not as sweet as natural ones), if desired, you can add more vanillin, cinnamon or cardamom. Subsequently, the technology for dipping and “drying” churchkhela does not differ from the previous recipe; everything should work out for you. A few days of patience and you can enjoy a delicious and healthy dessert.

Video on how to cook churchkhela at home

All sweet tooths sooner or later wonder about the degree of harm of their favorite sweets. Calories, sugar levels and other artificial ingredients often haunt sweet lovers. Especially when they have a desire to lose weight or switch to a healthy lifestyle. Are all sweets really harmful and should be excluded from the diet? We hasten to please you - you don’t have to deprive yourself of all the joys in life in order to minimize the effect of chocolate on your waist and hips. It is enough to give preference to fruits and nuts so that the pleasure of eating does not fade, and the waist remains in one pore. So, what can you prepare that will suit both daily tea drinking and the festive table for any holiday? Try churchkhela - a national Georgian dish that is easy to prepare and replaces candy and candy bars from the store.

How to cook churchkhela at home?

To prepare a classic dish we will need:

Nuts (walnuts, hazelnuts, hazelnuts - can be individually or mixed) - 350 g

Grapes or grape juice - 2 l

Sugar or honey (if the grapes are not sweet enough) - to taste

Flour (corn or wheat) - 200 g

Undyed cotton thread (you don't want to try Bridget Jones and end up with an unnaturally blue or green color)

Medium size needle.

Having prepared the necessary ingredients and utensils, let's proceed:

1. Dry the shelled nuts in a dry frying pan, stirring constantly - otherwise they will burn. Roll the nuts covered with husk between your hands - this will make it easier to separate.

2. Cut the thread into 50 cm pieces. Their quantity is proportional to the amount of ingredients. If you are not sure you will match correctly, cut the thread as you go.

3. We thread the cut thread into a needle, tie the opposite end with a double knot or tie a match or a piece of paper - this is necessary so that the strung nuts do not slide down under the pressure of the total mass and do not slip off the thread.

4. We begin to string the nuts. They can be of different sizes - whole, broken in half or quarter. The main thing to keep in mind is that if you chop it too much, they may not be strung together - they will break and crumble.

5. We string the nuts, not reaching 5 cm from the upper end of the thread - it will need to be tied with a loop so that the thread can be hung.

6. Having strung all the prepared nuts, put the resulting garlands aside and prepare the syrup. For this we need grape juice, which can be obtained using a juicer. There is no such device - grind the berries using a blender or meat grinder. The resulting mass must be rubbed through a sieve or squeezed through several layers of gauze. There is no way to buy grapes - juice from a bag will do.

7. We divide the juice into two parts: pour one into a regular glass, it will be 250 ml, and the second into a saucepan. We put most of it on the fire and bring it to a boil. Make sure that the juice does not burn, and cook over low heat until thickened, stirring. If the juice is not sweet enough, add sugar or honey.

8. Pour a smaller part of the juice into a wide bowl and gradually add the sifted flour, stirring with a whisk until the lumps disappear.

9. Pour the mixture of flour and juice in a thin stream into the thickened grape juice, also stirring. Simmer over low heat for another 5-7 minutes. The resulting syrup should be thick, sweet and viscous, like caramel, otherwise the dish will not be prepared correctly.

10. Decide on a place where you will hang your walnut necklaces to dry. This could be a clothesline - if you still have such an anachronism in your kitchen, a cabinet handle, a clothes hanger, etc.

11. Having decided on a place, cover the bottom (countertop, floor) with culinary parchment - washing off frozen syrup is not the greatest pleasure.

12. When the drying area is prepared, let's get to the fun part. Take a layer of nuts and dip into the condensed juice, if necessary, press down with a spoon to cover the entire surface with syrup. We take it out and hold the thread over the pan so that the excess juice drains and the remaining juice dries. To speed up the process, you can heat the layers with a hairdryer.

13. When the juice stops flowing from the nuts and sets slightly, dip them into the pan again, make sure that the surface is completely covered, take it out, wait until the excess drains, etc. We repeat this procedure with each thread 3-4 times.

14. When the last layer of syrup hardens on the nuts, hang the thread by the loop in the designated place. When all the threads are ready, hang them up and leave them to dry completely.

As for drying time, everyone has their own taste. According to the rules, churchkhela should dry completely within 5-10 days, after which it should be wrapped in a linen towel and left for 2-3 months. Only after sugar appears on the surface is the delicacy considered ready.

However, not everyone has the patience to wait that long, so some prefer to take samples after the syrup has completely dried, while others prefer to take samples a few hours after hanging.

If, at the end of cooking, you have excess syrup left, use that too: mix with chopped nuts and dried fruits, place in molds - you will get natural candies. Spread the surface of the sponge cake - an excellent decoration for the pie. Pour the resulting sauce over any dessert - ice cream, cream, jelly. In general, there are a lot of ways to use it!

When preparing churchkhela, you can show your imagination and add raisins, prunes, dried apricots and other dried fruits, including pineapples, to the nuts. And grape juice can be replaced with apple, apricot or pomegranate juice. This way the dessert will have a different color, taste and will not get boring even if consumed frequently.

Video. How to cook churchkhela?

Churchkhela is one of the most famous oriental sweets. It is prepared from nuts strung on a string and grape juice. Traditionally, churchkhela is made in the Caucasus according to ancient recipes created by Caucasian winemakers. But you can easily make churchkhela at home. This sweet and very healthy delicacy will surely appeal to children, becoming one of their favorites.

Georgian churchkhela

There are many varieties of churchkhela - Abkhazian, Georgian, Gurian, Racha, Imeretian and Migrelian. They all differ slightly in taste, size and appearance. But the principle of preparing this sweetness is the same everywhere. The simplest and most traditional is the Georgian churchkhela. We will describe the process of its manufacture in more detail.

First, the “core” of the churchkhela is made. To do this, take a mixture of nuts - walnuts, almonds, hazelnuts and sultanas. Whole nuts are carefully strung on a thread 25-45 cm long. After this, syrup is prepared. Flour is added to grape juice and boiled until thick. A thread with nuts is repeatedly dipped into the resulting mass. After each dipping, the thread is hung for several hours to dry the juice adhering to the nuts. This is repeated until a two-centimeter layer of aromatic sweet mass is formed on the nuts. The finished churchkhela is hung in the bright sun so that the top layer hardens thoroughly. This takes approximately 2 weeks. Then the churchkhela needs to be dried. To do this, it is placed in a paper box for 2-3 months. If there are a lot of treats, you can lay out everything in layers, lining with parchment paper. As a result, churchkhela takes about three months to prepare at home. And after this period of time, this oriental sweetness acquires its characteristic appearance and taste.

How to cook churchkhela

If you want to make this popular oriental delicacy at home, we will reveal for you a few secrets on how to make churchkhela more tasty and aromatic.

Along with almonds, hazelnuts and other nuts, you can use the centers of apricot and peach kernels, as well as dried sultanas and pumpkin seeds.
Before preparing churchkhela, it is advisable to peel the nuts. To do this, you can soak them for a couple of hours.
You can also boil nuts in sugar syrup.
Before stringing the nuts onto a thread, lightly fry them in a dry frying pan.
Using a large needle, they can be easily strung on a thick thread, at the ends of which you need to tie knots.
To make a delicate sweet syrup, fresh grape juice should be brought to a boil and simmered for 10-15 minutes. Then you need to pour some of the juice into a bowl or large mug to cool. It will be convenient to thoroughly dissolve the flour in it, then pour the flour solution into the boiling juice.
You can use wheat flour. But it will be tastier if you mix wheat and corn flour. It must be sifted, and the finer the better.
To prevent lumps in the juice, use a whisk. And cook the juice until it thickens, stirring it constantly.
While drying the churchkhela, it should be hung in a well-ventilated area.
Churchkhela is best made in the fall during the grape and nut harvest season.
The finished delicacy can be stored for a whole year until next autumn.

Be sure to use your imagination and create your own churchkhela recipe that your loved ones will love. You can use different varieties of grapes to prepare this treat. It will be delicious to mix white and red grapes. You can add honey to the juice. Between the nuts, you can string various dried fruits, and even pieces of chocolate, onto a thread. Experiment! And let your signature churchkhela be the most delicious.