Beef azu - general principles and methods of preparation
Historically, Tatar cuisine has undergone many changes over the past centuries. Original at its core, it was enriched with new knowledge and food from its neighbors. The lifestyle and conditions of this people led to the fact that the exchange of products also brought new recipes for dishes. Tatar cuisine offered its neighbors its recipes, which were instantly picked up and mastered due to practicality, rationality and accessibility.
Fried meat with a lot of fat is not typical for the cuisine of this people; hot dishes are replete with boiled and stewed meat. One of these dishes is beef azu. Don't let its name and distant origin scare you, real azu is just stewed beef, horse meat or lamb with the addition of pickled cucumber. Tatars add potatoes and vegetables, everything to taste, as desired, and always with spices. It’s a pity that words don’t convey the taste of the dish, otherwise you would already be rushing to the market for meat, tomatoes and cucumbers in order to cook it just for dinner.
Beef azu - food preparation
To prepare beef basics, take the meat of the leg or shoulder blade and remove the tendons and membranes. It is cut across the grain, then cut into small pieces lengthwise. The result is a straw 3-4 cm long and 1 cm thick. As a rule, this dish is almost lean, it is separated from the fat and fried in vegetable oil.
Beef azu - preparing dishes
Traditionally, the preparation of Tatar food involved boiling or frying in a cauldron. Aza was also cooked in a cauldron, cast iron or pot. In some places, folk traditions have been preserved to this day, but the technological 21st century has supplanted ancient equipment and has been replaced by new Teflon frying pans, alloy cauldrons and fireproof glass pans. The technology for preparing the dish has remained virtually unchanged.
Beef azu - the best recipes
Recipe 1: Beef azu in pots
This dish is easily accepted by the body, not greasy, but quite filling. In addition, portioned pots will save you from the need to use large saucepans or a cauldron. It is enough to cook the basics of beef in pots once for this recipe to become a permanent fixture in your kitchen.
Ingredients: beef (1 kg), pickles (2 pcs.), onions (2 pcs.), potatoes (3 large tubers), corn or other vegetable oil, mayonnaise, hot ketchup, pepper, salt.
Cooking method
Cut the beef into small strips and the onion into squares. In a frying pan, mix vegetable oil, water, salt and ketchup. Place the meat and simmer. Place meat in pots, then cucumbers, cut into small cubes, top with potato strips, salt and pepper. Fill half of the contents with water, put mayonnaise and herbs on top. In an hour, the delicious pots are ready!
Recipe 2: Azu with mushrooms and tomato sauce
Traditional Tatar azu is prepared according to almost the same recipe. Mushrooms are a truly Russian addition. The Russian nation consists of avid mushroom pickers, and beef meat goes well with mushrooms; it would be a real crime not to try to add this dietary component to lean beef with pickles.
Ingredients: beef (400g), champignons (200g), onion, kebab sauce (4-5 tbsp.), vegetable oil, salt, parsley, cilantro, flour.
Cooking method
Cut the meat and champignons into slices, and the onion into thin half rings. Heat a frying pan well with oil and place the meat on it. Fry for 10 minutes. Sprinkle flour over meat and stir. You can shake the pan thoroughly so that the flour is distributed evenly. Add the onion, fry a little more and pour over the sauce. Add mushrooms and salt, cover with a lid and simmer over low heat for another 20 minutes. The mushrooms should provide liquid for the sauce, but if it is not enough, add a little water or broth. Simmer a little under the lid, add greens. Hot Tatar-style azu will perfectly quench your appetite, it is rich, but not heavy, you can eat as much of it as you want, fresh vegetables will be just the thing.
Recipe 3: Classic beef azu with tomatoes
The dish is intended for passionate meat eaters who will prefer soft stewed beef with vegetables to heavy roast pork. This is a solid recipe for a large family with traditions that gathers around the dinner table to socialize and eat. Or eat and chat - whichever you prefer.
Ingredients: beef (1 kg), ghee (90g), onion (3 pcs.), tomato puree, pickled cucumbers (300g), potatoes (800g), pepper, bay leaf, garlic, herbs.
Cooking method
Prepare tomato puree - saute it for several minutes. Salt and pepper the meat, fry and add tomato puree and water. Simmer under the lid over low heat. Separately, dry the flour and dilute it with broth from stewing meat. Peel the cucumbers and cut them into strips. Sauté the onion, cut into half rings. Fry the potatoes, add to the onion, and cook over low heat for another 10 minutes. Combine everything with the meat, add pepper, bay leaf and simmer for another 20 minutes. Five minutes before readiness, add chopped tomato slices and chopped garlic. Don't forget to put chopped herbs and sour cream on the table. Hot, aromatic, good quality, a real stronghold for a large family.
Beef azu - useful tips from experienced chefs
— A basic beef recipe for children or those who need dietary nutrition can be simplified - do not fry the potatoes, but boil them separately until half cooked and add to the dish 5 minutes before the end of cooking.
— More vegetables - more nutrients. Peel the sweet pepper and cut into strips. Send it to simmer along with the meat for another 10 minutes.
— The younger the meat, the less time it takes to cook it. If the dish is prepared from veal tenderloin, the meat can be poured with the prepared sauce immediately after frying, add all the ingredients and boil.
— To cook beef in pots, you can replace mayonnaise and ketchup with sour cream and tomato juice. Tasty and healthy.
If you like spicy combinations in dishes, then you should definitely try the traditional Tatar azu with pickles.
This is a national dish of Tatar cuisine, the ingredients of which will please everyone. Meat and vegetables baked in the oven according to a special recipe will remain in your heart forever.
Azu in pots is a very tasty dish. Traditionally in Tatarstan it is prepared from lamb or young horse meat. But I cook the basics from pork. Azu turns out no less tasty and even more tender.
Cooking the basics in a slow cooker - a traditional Tatar dish. The multicooker is great for cooking basics - try it, the ease of preparation and excellent results will not leave you indifferent.
Recipe for a traditional dish of Tatar cuisine.
Azu is a traditional dish of Tatar cuisine, consisting of fried pieces of meat stewed with vegetables in a spicy sauce.
You will find an excellent combination of ingredients with this simple Tatar-style recipe. At the same time we will cook meat, potatoes, and pickled cucumber - it will turn out delicious.
The recipe for cooking the basics in Tatar style in a multicooker is distinguished by its simplicity - you mind your own business while the multicooker prepares an original, satisfying and very tasty dish for you!
Do you know what dish will surprise your family? Try this unique recipe! Beef azu in a slow cooker is a great way to make your dinner unforgettable, and Tatar cuisine will impress even a gourmet.
For lovers of chicken fillet dishes, I offer another amazing option - chicken azu. This is a tasty, very satisfying and most importantly, absolutely complete dish that does not require a side dish.
Housewives adjust almost every traditional recipe to suit their taste preferences. I bring to your attention one of these variations - homemade basics.
Beef azu with pickles is one of the main dishes in Tatarstan, and it must be prepared in accordance with all rules and customs. And this applies not only to the correct selection and preparation of ingredients. So the basics need to be cooked only in a great mood and without any resentment in the soul, otherwise all the anger will pass on to the one who eats this dish.
Azu is an ancient Tatar dish, for the preparation of which they used horse meat, lamb and beef, but not pork, since the Tatars are adherents of Islam. Today there are different options for its preparation and every housewife is ready to show off her signature recipe.
You can prepare the basics in a slow cooker, which will make the dish even more appetizing, because the ingredients will not be stewed in it, but simmered, which will make the meat more tender and soft. If you don’t know how to cook basics in a slow cooker, then write down the recipe.
For the basics, you can take not only any type of meat, but also add other ingredients, for example, potatoes. Azu with potatoes and pickles is not only tasty, but also filling.
Azu in Tatar is a national recipe of oriental cuisine, which was prepared from horse meat and vegetables. Today you can cook the basics from beef, pork, poultry and even rabbit.
Azu can be prepared not only with potatoes, but also with rice. It turns out to be a filling and tasty dinner. It is better to boil rice cereals in advance, so you will save time on preparing the main dish.
Azu can be stewed on the stove, in a slow cooker and in the oven. For the last method, we will take clay pots, which make the dish even richer and more aromatic, and also organize a beautiful presentation.
Another interesting recipe for azu involves the use of mushrooms. For the recipe, you can take any mushrooms, like wild mushrooms, oyster mushrooms or champignons. Azu can be stewed with or without potatoes. You can also use a mixture of Georgian spices, which will give the finished dish a special piquancy.
We hope that now you have been able to get a little closer to oriental cuisine and, with the help of our recipes, appreciate its taste.
Azu in Tatar is one of the most popular recipes. Supermarkets even sell ready-made cuts of meat for it. To prepare a real Tatar basics, and not a distant variation of it, you need to follow a simple but fairly strict recipe. A real Tatar-style azu is made with pickled cucumbers; a recipe with a photo is simply necessary for this kind of dish so as not to get confused and not miss anything, because during the preparation several operations are performed (cutting, frying, mixing, stewing). One of the secrets to preparing delicious basics is using melted butter. It must be of good quality. If you don’t have it, then fry the meat in vegetable oil and the potatoes in butter.
Cooking azu has several simple rules, thanks to which you will prepare a delicious azu. And it will really be a basic dish, and not a nameless stewed potato with meat.
Moreover, you need to fry the meat in a hot frying pan so that not a drop of juice leaks out of the meat. You need to fry the meat quickly enough to form a crispy crust. If you do not have ghee, then use vegetable oil. Regular butter will burn the meat.
In practice it looks like this. First, you need to cut the meat across the grain. Thin long pieces. You can, of course, buy ready-made chopped azu from the store. But we are not looking for easy ways. Personally, I dealt with very, very stringy cheap beef. But even from it it is quite possible to cut such neat pieces. This, by the way, is the beauty of dishes like the basics, that you don’t have to worry too much about choosing meat.
Next, take a frying pan. It is better if it does not have a non-stick coating. Because Teflon frying pans cannot be heated to too high temperatures - the coating will deteriorate. We put it on high heat. Pour in the oil, after a minute add the meat. In one layer! That is, we will fry in several stages. This is important so that there is not a mountain of meat in the pan, otherwise it will not be able to heat up evenly and will begin to release juice. But this is unacceptable for preparing the basics.
The meat immediately begins to sizzle. Let it cook for a minute and a half and turn it over. If it's stuck somewhere, scrape it off. Another minute and a half and that’s it.
Place the meat in a saucepan and cauldron, where the basics will be cooked. Pour more oil into the frying pan, lay out the second portion of meat and treat it in the same way as with the first batch.
This trick will make the taste of the basics more rich. Nothing needs to be washed. Burnt spots do not need to be scraped off. We cut the onion into four parts and then thinly into quarters of rings. And put it directly on the same frying pan where the meat was just fried.
Place on medium heat and fry, stirring occasionally. Gradually, the burnt residue in the pan becomes less and less, it combines with the onion. And now all the fat remaining from the meat is absorbed into the onion. You should get what you see in the photo.
Place the onion in the pan with the meat.
Let's move on to tomatoes. There are no clear rules here. Some take a jar of chopped ones in their own juice, others dilute additional tomato paste. I prefer to use fresh tomatoes. To quickly chop them, I use a coarse grater. I cut the tomatoes in half and rub the cut along a grater until only the skin remains in the palm of my hand. In just three minutes you get a whole plate of grated tomatoes without skins (the grater just won’t take them).
Add broth or hot water to the pan. A little liquid is needed. Just make sure it completely covers the meat.
You need to simmer the meat under the lid, over very low heat, so that the basics only gurgle slightly. And there are no clear instructions on time, because everyone’s meat is different. Young beef can be stewed until tender for half an hour. My meat was stewed for 1 hour and 10 minutes.
The cutting of potatoes can be arbitrary. I like it best in strips, shaped like meat.
If you don't have ghee, just use butter. 80 grams, no less. Potatoes will absorb it perfectly. It will taste amazing. The crust is crispy and bright. There is no need to fry the potatoes until soft. She blushed - and that’s enough. Be sure to stir it several times during frying.
The potatoes are placed in a pan with the meat already completely stewed, and pickles are added. There is a rule here too.
Yes, I understand that not everyone has the opportunity to prepare pickled cucumbers for the winter - after all, they need to be stored in the cellar or in the refrigerator. And if you take pickled ones, it’s not fatal. But according to the rules, you need salty ones.
Again, you can cut them however you like. I chopped them finely so that they were perceived as a flavoring addition without dominating the dish.
Next we add tomato paste, pepper the dish and add salt. Yes, yes, we add salt only at the very end. Why? Because pickles come in varying degrees of salting. And by salting your meat and potatoes before you put everything together, you risk ending up with an over-salted base. But this is definitely not part of our plans.
I ended up adding 2/3 teaspoons of salt. I mixed everything and put it under the lid for exactly 10 minutes. Heating of the stove is minimal. During this time, all the ingredients will have time to combine into a single composition, but the potatoes will not have time to fall apart.
1. Meat for azu is first fried over high heat until a crust forms, and then stewed until soft.
2. Onions are fried in the same frying pan where the meat was cooked in order to “pick up” the remaining aroma and taste of the meat.
3. The time for stewing meat depends on its quality. On average, this takes from 30 minutes to an hour and a half.
4. Potatoes are fried in melted butter (can be replaced with butter).
5. Cucumbers should be salted, not pickled.
I hope you can now cope with preparing the basics in Tatar perfectly.
Only 10 comments on the recipe
Very tasty, I’m making it for the second time. Everything is fine in your Tatar-style azu, but the pickles still need to be cut larger, otherwise you won’t taste them at all. Maybe this is good for some, but we like cucumbers to be noticeable in the dish.
Great recipe! It turned out very tasty. I don't agree about cucumbers. I cut it as finely as yours. My husband said that this is the real basics.
I grate the cucumbers on a coarse grater. Just the thing for the basics!
I cut the meat and potatoes not into strips, but into large pieces... I also cut the cucumbers into fairly large pieces... so that they can be seen and tasted... In general, I cut everything quite coarsely... And if you cut the potatoes into strips, and fry them... and then some more simmer.. it will be puree.
Natalya, in the photo you see, it’s not puree at all)) I took it myself, cooked it myself, so I’m responsible for the recipe :)
Thank you very much for the recipe. I haven’t cooked for a long time and I almost forgot how to do it. The dish really turns out great. The only thing I remember is that you need to remove the seeds from the cucumbers if you cut them larger and blanch them (pour boiling water over them). Along with the cucumbers, peppers, bay leaves and salt, you can also add a couple of finely chopped cloves of garlic.
Sergey, thank you :)
thanks for the recipe! Of all the ones I looked at on the Internet, I liked yours. I'll cook tomorrow
One more small detail, add half a glass of cucumber brine to the fry and simmer. The aromas of herbs and cucumbers will merge and it will turn out even piquant. And the recipe is wonderful. Thank you!
Anatoly, thanks for the advice!
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Azu in Tatar is considered a classic dish of Tatar cuisine. This dish has its roots in Ancient Persia. Naturally, over time the recipe has changed, but its main components have remained the same.
Ingredients:
Cooking method:
First, let's deal with the meat. First you need to rinse it well. After this, the pork needs to be cut into strips. Next, you should send it to the cauldron, where it should be lightly fried with the addition of vegetable oil. Now, while the meat is fried, let's move on to the onions. It must be thinly sliced and added to the meat.
When the onion becomes soft, you can add water. Instead of water, you can use meat broth. Finely chop the pickled cucumbers or grate them on a coarse grater. Along with pickles, add tomato paste to the meat. Simmer the resulting mixture covered until cooked.
In the meantime, let's start cooking the potatoes. First, you need to peel it and cut it into strips. After this, the potatoes should be fried in a separate pan.
When the vegetable is almost ready, it should be added to all previous products. Finally, add spices and finely chopped garlic. Stir carefully and leave to simmer for another 6-7 minutes.
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Finely chop the onion. Cut carrots and cucumbers into strips. Cut the chicken fillet into small pieces. Cut the skin of the tomatoes and pour boiling water over them. Remove the skin and cut the tomatoes into slices. Rinse the buckwheat well.
Pour vegetable oil into the multicooker bowl. Add onions and carrots. Set the “Frying” mode for 10 minutes. Then you need to add chicken fillet, cucumbers, tomatoes, add buckwheat, pour in water, and salt. Next, cook in the “Stew” mode for 40 minutes.
When the basics are ready, place on a dish and garnish with herbs.
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Azu in Tatar is a delicious dish that is rightfully popular.
Having a centuries-old history, it has not lost its attractiveness today. In addition, traditional foods are an important part of the culture of the people, and getting to know the culinary side of this culture can be not only educational, but also enjoyable.