Cherry plum grows wild in the countries of Central Asia and southern Europe. In Russia, it is successfully grown in household plots, tolerates frost and produces a rich harvest. This small sweet and sour cream contains healthy amino acids, vitamins and microelements. Cherry plums are used to make desserts and sauces.

The famous Tkemali sauce is prepared from different varieties of cherry plum with the addition of herbs and aromatic spices. Every Georgian housewife has her own recipe for this delicious sauce. Its preparation takes a lot of time, but as a result you will be provided with delicious homemade cherry plum tkemali for the whole winter, which cannot be compared with store-bought sauces.

Classic tkemali from cherry plum

Classic tkemali sauce is made from red cherry plum with the addition of hot pepper and garlic.

Ingredients:

• cherry plum – 2 kg;
• water – 1.5 l.;
• sugar – 100 gr.;
• salt – 50 gr.;
• garlic – 1-2 pcs.;
• spices;
• pepper.

Preparation:

1. Place the berries in boiling water and wait a little until the skin bursts.
2. Remove the cherry plum and let cool slightly. Separate the seeds with your hands and grind the pulp using a blender or rub through a fine sieve.
3. If the mass turns out to be too thick, add the water in which the berries were cooked.
4. Add chopped garlic, dried basil, and hot pepper to the sauce.
5. Salt and sugar should be added gradually and tasted so as not to make it too sweet.
6. Let the sauce boil and immediately pour into prepared bottles or jars.
7. It is better to store the finished tkemali in the refrigerator.

Red cherry plum tkemali is an excellent addition to poultry, beef, pork and lamb dishes. It can be added to meat during stewing if the recipe calls for a sweet and sour, and at the same time, spicy taste.

Georgian cherry plum tkemali recipe

Georgian cuisine is distinguished by a large amount of greens and the obligatory presence of the famous seasoning khmeli-suneli.

Ingredients:

• cherry plum – 1 kg;
• water – 1 l.;
• sugar – 3 tbsp;
• salt – 1 tbsp;
• garlic – 1-2 pcs.;
• greens – 1 bunch;
• spices;
• red pepper.

Ingredients:

• cherry plum – 1 kg;
• sugar – 1 tbsp;
• salt – 1 tbsp;
• garlic – 1-2 pcs.;
• greens – 1 bunch;
• spices;
• red pepper.

Preparation:

1. The cherry plum must be washed and, by cutting on one side, remove the seed from each berry.
2. Place the fruit pulp in a saucepan and add salt so that the cherry plum releases juice.
3. Place on the lowest heat possible and add chopped mint, cilantro, dill and garlic.
4. Cook until thickened for about half an hour, five minutes before readiness add chopped hot red pepper and spices.
5. Pour the prepared sauce into small jars and close the lids.

Tkemali made from yellow cherry plum goes well with both meat and fish dishes. Yellow cherry plum varieties are the sweetest, so you don’t need to add sugar to the sauce at all.

Red cherry plum tkemali with tomato

Tomatoes or tomato paste are sometimes added to red cherry plum sauce.

Ingredients:

• cherry plum – 1 kg;
• ripe tomatoes – 0.5 kg;
• sugar – 3 tbsp;
• salt – 1 tbsp;
• garlic – 1-2 pcs.;
• greens – 1 bunch;
• spices;
• red pepper.

Preparation:

1. Blanch the cherry plums in boiling water until the skin begins to burst.
2. Press through a sieve to remove the pits and skin.
3. Add a little water in which you blanched the fruit to the pan with the pureed pulp.
4. Grind dill, mint, cilantro and garlic in a blender. Add to the pan and set to simmer on low heat. Salt and add sugar.
5. Ripe tomatoes also need to be peeled and pureed.
6. Add tomato puree and chopped red hot pepper to the pan.
7. Before ready, add suneli hops and ground coriander, and taste.
8. Pour hot sauce into small containers and cover with lids.

Sweet and sour cherry plum sauce is one of the most popular sauces for meat. In first place, probably, only tomato sauce. By the way, some dishes include this sauce, for example, the popular kharcho. It is the cherry plum sauce (usually tkemali) that adds that very piquant and sour note. If the cherry plum is sweet and ripe, then it is better to make compote or jam. Well, if it’s sour, then it’s definitely a sauce. The list of spices that can be added to cherry plum is incredibly long. This option can be called basic - the sauce is spicy, moderately piquant. If you want to shift the flavor in one direction or another, experiment with spices.

Ingredients

• 1 kg cherry plum
• 150 g sugar
• 1 tbsp. l. salt
• 4 tbsp. l. apple cider vinegar
• 1/2 tsp. ground cloves
• 1/5 tsp. ground coriander
• 1/5 tsp. ground black pepper

Preparation

1. Wash the cherry plum thoroughly and tear off the tails. Using a small sharp knife, cut the cherry plum and remove the seeds.

2. Place the prepared seedless cherry plum into a bowl or bowl, using a blender to give the cherry plum the appearance of a more homogeneous mass, similar to jam.

3. Add salt and sugar, ground cloves, coriander and ground black pepper to the bowl. Ideally, all the spices will be whole, and you will grind them immediately before adding them to the sauce - using a rolling pin or in a mortar. It will turn out much more flavorful.

4. Stir and place the sauce on low heat. When it boils, stir it and keep it on the fire for 4-5 minutes.

5. Remove the cherry plum sauce from the heat and add natural apple cider vinegar - it is much more aromatic than regular table vinegar.

Not a single dish in the Caucasus, fish or meat, can do without the famous tkemali sauce, famous throughout the world. It is prepared from cherry plum, which is a type of plum that has different colors, on which the color of tkemali depends. The aromatic and tart sauce perfectly enhances the taste of various meat dishes, and also complements potato and pasta dishes. You can add pepper, garlic and a large amount of herbs to the sauce. Usually it's cilantro and dill. Let's take a closer look at the most popular recipes.

Subtleties of cooking

For the sauce, cherry plum of any color is usually used: red, yellow, green. Since such a plum is boiled, and as a result of heat treatment it is reduced by four times, you should take care of its sufficient quantity.

Spices and herbs should be added to the sauce, focusing on the variety of cherry plum. Yellow can be combined well with fresh herbs; red sauce should preferably be flavored with dried herbs and spices. Green plum goes well with both dry spices and fresh herbs.

Since cherry plum contains citric acid in large quantities, tkemali is therefore well stored in a cool place. If such conditions cannot be created, then the sauce must be poured hot into dry jars immediately after cooking, which are then hermetically sealed.

In addition to citric acid, they usually add a lot of pepper, salt and garlic. All ingredients are boiled, thus undergoing heat treatment, so tkemali does not need to be sterilized. If all preparation rules are followed, the finished product can be stored for quite a long time.

Recipe for tkemali sauce from yellow cherry plum for the winter

For this recipe, take the following components:

• 1 kg yellow cherry plum;
• 5 g red pepper;
• 50 g salt;
• 125 g garlic;
• 150 g of dill and cilantro.

The yellow cherry plum fruits are sorted, removing spoiled ones, and washed in cold water. The fruit is cut on one side and take out the bones. The fruits are placed in a pan, covered with salt and left until the cherry plum gives juice. Place the pan on low heat and after boiling, cook the plum until completely softened. After this, it is placed in a sieve along with the broth and rubbed into a saucepan. All the pulp ends up in the bowl, but the skin remains on the sieve. Boil the puree over low heat until it becomes thick like sour cream.

Chop the garlic and herbs and add along with the pepper at the very end of cooking, mix and cook for 4 – 5 minutes. Remove the pan from the heat and pack it into heated jars, sealing it tightly with sterile lids. The jars are wrapped in a blanket and cooled.

Green cherry plum tkemali sauce recipe

For this Georgian recipe for the winter use:

• 5 kg of green cherry plum;
• 3 tsp. cilantro seeds;
• 2 bunches of fresh mint;
• 5 heads of garlic;
• 2 tbsp. l. salt;
• glass of water;
• 2 bunches of fresh cilantro;
• a bunch of fresh fennel;
• 2 bunches of dill;
• hot red pepper to taste.

The cherry plum needs to be sorted, removing low-quality fruits. After this, they are washed in cold water. Place the plums in a saucepan and pour in water, place it on low heat and cook until soft. Then it is transferred to a colander and left to cool. They begin to grind through a colander until only bones remain in it.

Grind fennel, dill, cilantro, mint, and cilantro seeds. The garlic is peeled and divided into cloves. Place the herbs and garlic in a blender and turn them into a homogeneous mass. Bring the pan with cherry plum puree to a boil over low heat. Add ground garlic and herbs, as well as sugar, salt and pepper. Cook for about 30 minutes. After this, the boiling sauce is poured into hot jars, otherwise they will burst due to temperature changes, sealed hermetically and cooled under a blanket.

Red cherry plum tkemali sauce recipe

To prepare tkemali from cherry plum, the recipe includes: t use of the following components:

The red cherry plum is sorted and washed, the seeds are removed, put in a pan, salted and left until the juice begins to stand out. Place the pan on low heat and cook until the plums are soft. Slightly cooled mass put in a blender and grind to a puree. After this, it is again transferred to the container and brought to a boil over low heat.

Garlic cloves are peeled and passed through a press. Chopped greens are combined with plums, and suneli hops, pepper, and sugar are also added. Stir and cook for 15 minutes. The hot sauce is poured into jars, sealed tightly, the jars are turned over, wrapped in a blanket and cooled.

Thus, Georgian cherry plum sauce is a wonderful product for various meat dishes. It is prepared in various ways and is quite simple to do, you just need to follow the necessary recommendations. Only in this case can you get an excellent sauce with excellent taste.

Tkemali is a tasty and healthy sauce that Georgian and Bulgarian housewives prepare from cherry plum. Due to the large amount of pectin in fruits, it helps stimulate appetite, better digestion of food and even remove harmful substances from the body.

Cherry plum ripens in July-September. Yellow contains more acids, sugars and less pectin than red or almost black. And throughout the summer, while there are unripe fruits, sour green tkemali is cooked from them.

Cherry plum also grows in some regions of Russia, and where it does not exist, many housewives, based on the traditional recipe, come up with different variations from other sour berries (strawberries, cherries, gooseberries), adding a large amount of garlic and spices to the sauce. It's really delicious and doesn't take much time.

Any dish, especially meat, benefits from a duet with this sauce. Tkemali can be consumed all year round. Closed in jars, it thickens even more during storage, which only improves the original properties.

Tkemali's own calorie content is low, since the seasoning is prepared without the use of any fat, it is only 65 kcal per 100 g of product.

Tkemali from yellow cherry plum for the winter

A thick, hot sauce, not without a pleasant sweetened sourness and prepared on the basis of yellow cherry plum puree - a real favorite among many spicy seasonings.

Cooking time: 40 minutes

Quantity: 1 serving

Ingredients

• Yellow cherry plum: 1 kg
• Water: 50 ml
• Salt: 1 tsp.
• Parsley: 35 g
• Garlic: 25 g
• Sugar: 1 tsp. l.
• Coriander: 2 tsp.
• Hot pepper: 30 g

Cooking instructions

Place the cherry plum in a saucepan, immediately pour in water and turn on the heat. Heat the plums under the lid.



When the water boils, wait a few minutes until the fruit softens.



Using a colander, separate the liquid.



Transfer the cherry plum in a colander to another saucepan and grind, separating the seeds and skin.



Add 50 ml of previously strained liquid to the resulting puree. Put everything on low heat.



Chop the parsley.



Grind the pepper, leaving the grains for added heat.



Add pepper to fruit puree. Send parsley there too.



Add chopped garlic and spices. Boil everything for 7 minutes.



Taste for salt and sugar.



And now, tkemali is ready. If desired, it can be placed in sterile jars for long-term storage.



Or you can immediately serve it with your favorite meat or fish dish. Even with one side dish, the sauce will go perfectly together.



Red cherry plum tkemali recipe

The seasoning prepared according to the following recipe has a sweeter taste, because fully ripened fruits are used for its preparation. The proportions are approximate, on average per 1 kg of cherry plum:

• 4 tsp. salt;
• 1 pod of pepper;
• a small bunch of cilantro and dill;
• 1 tsp each spices;
• 1 head of garlic.

How to prepare:

1. The seeds are removed from the fruit.
2. The pulp is crushed into puree.
3. Add salt, crushed hot peppers, herbs (cilantro, dill), ground dry mint leaves, coriander, hops-suneli, utskho-suneli.
4. Then cook, stirring constantly, over low heat until sour cream thickens.
5. Shortly before the end of cooking, add garlic minced in a meat grinder.

Red tkemali is served with fish and used to prepare kharcho soups, legumes, and zucchini puree soups.

From green

In the spring, tkemali of the same color is prepared from unripe green cherry plums and the most sour sauce of all types is obtained. Modern housewives, in order to neutralize the very sour taste, add an increased amount of granulated sugar.

The ingredients are classic, the proportions are selected experimentally.

What they do:

1. Green cherry plum is boiled with its seeds, adding a small amount of water until the fruits become soft.
2. Then they are ground through a colander to separate the pulp from the skin and seeds.
3. If the mass is very thick, add a little liquid remaining after boiling the cherry plum.
4. Salt and spices are added to the grated pulp, the obligatory ones being mint and coriander, as well as chopped hot pepper.
5. Boil a little more, stirring constantly.
6. At the end of cooking, chopped garlic cloves and herbs are mixed into the creamy mixture.

Green tkemali is usually served with lobio.

Recipe for real Georgian cherry plum tkemali sauce

Every Georgian housewife always has her own recipe for tkemali, but there is a basic composition of products without which it is impossible to prepare this sauce:

• Cherry plum.
• Garlic.
• Capsicum hot pepper.
• Ombalo.
• Cilantro in the flowering stage.
• Coriander with inflorescences.

Other herbs and spices are added based on your own preferences.

The resulting sauce has a sour and rich spicy taste.

Process description:

1. The leaves of green cilantro, dill and blue basil are torn off, and the remaining stems are placed in the bottom of a large saucepan in which the sauce will be cooked. This is done to prevent the fruits from burning.
2. The washed cherry plum along with the seeds are poured on top. Carrions are never used for tkemali; fruits must be picked from the tree by hand.
3. Add a little water and cook until the fruits soften, about a quarter of an hour.
4. Then they are ground through a fine sieve using a wooden spoon.
5. Finely chopped hot pepper pods and dry spices are added to the crushed pulp (the classic recipe includes ombalo or mint and coriander).
6. Mix everything and bring to a boil. Since the mass burns quite often, it is constantly stirred and rather simmered over low heat.
7. At the end of cooking, add peeled garlic cloves, crushed in a large mortar, as well as finely chopped coriander leaves, dill and blue basil.

Salt and sugar are not included in the canonical Georgian recipe.

• To prepare tkemali, it is better to use a stainless steel pan with a thick bottom. If the pan has a regular bottom, then it would be a good idea to place a flame divider above the burner, which will protect the boiled mass from burning.
• Often, cherry plum fruits have a hard-to-separate pit, so they are boiled whole. But if possible, remove the bones before cooking.
• You can make puree from cherry plum using a blender and then cook the sauce from it - this will greatly reduce the cooking time.
• Traditionally, garlic is ground in a large mortar. Nowadays it is convenient to use an electric meat grinder for this, especially when preparing a large amount of product. Its taste does not suffer at all.
• The authentic recipe uses ombalo (mint), which acts as a preservative. It grows in abundance in Georgia; in our conditions, it can be replaced with peppermint or even field mint.
• To obtain a spicier tkemali, capsicums are added to the sauce along with the seeds. For a softer one, the grains and partitions must be cleaned, and only the chopped pulp is added to the sauce.
• By the way, when working with pepper you need to be extra careful, as it can cause irritation to the skin of your fingers. Some even cut it with gloves.
• If tkemali is prepared for future use, more salt is added to it.

The finished sauce is poured into sterilized small jars or bottles, immediately closed with lids and wrapped in a cotton blanket. After cooling, the containers with the contents must be stored in a cool place.