Jamie Makes Khinkali

Time for a recipe! Try it at home! (But don't blame me if it tastes like crap, blame your inferior cooking skills or poor reading comprehension.)

Note: This recipe does not really have measurements. Just go with your gut. Again, I take no blame for bad results.

Khinkali is a very popular Georgian food. They are dumplings that are usually filled with meat, but sometimes with mushrooms. Or probably other things. I'm not sure. I don't get out much. They have them at pretty much every restaurant serving Georgian food, and they're priced individually. Usually people order a giant plate of them for everyone to share. If you're an American who's only been in the country for a day, you might order one, just to try it. (You're on a budget, you can't be ordering entire plates of stuff you don't like.) If you do this, the waiter, already exasperated by having to match whatever item you're pointing at on the English menu to the similarly placed item on the Georgian menu, will look at you like you're an idiot and will walk away. When you get your individual khinkali, there will probably be spit inside. 

A good remedy for this situation is to make spit-free khinkali yourself in your own home.

How to make the dough:

When I've seen this made, it's been in enormous batches. The dough was made with a giant bowl of flour (find the biggest mixing bowl you own, then times that by 2). To the flower was added a couple of eggs, some salt, and I believe a little bit of baking soda. The dough was mixed until it was kind of a stretchy blob. 

On a well floured surface, roll the dough out until it is about 3/4 inch thick. Then take a water glass and cut out circles of dough. The circles will be rolled out until they are very thin. Then they are ready to form the dumplings.

How to make the filling:

Take your choice of ground meat (or veggies). We used pork, but I'm sure you could use whatever you want. Add some onion, fresh cilantro, salt, and pepper. 

Then take your rolled out circle of dough and put in about a spoonful and a half of the meat mixture. Here's the tricky part, folding up the edges. It's the blind leading the blind here. I'm not gonna lie, I wasn't good at this. Basically you lift up the sides and, one fold at a time, you fold the edges up accordion style until the whole top is closed, and then you pinch it to make sure it's sealed well.

When you have made several, put them in a pot of boiling water to cook. Spoon them out and drain them, and they're ready to eat!

Khinkali is usually eaten with pepper on it. This is significant, because normally they don't have pepper at the dinner table, but with khinkali, they bring it out and everyone puts it on their dumplings. They are eaten with your hands and you usually leave the top folded part on your plate and throw it away (or feed it to the pigs) because it is just a giant clump of dough. Khinkali is usually paired with some nice homemade Georgian wine, a giant plastic bottle of beer for the table, or some moonshine. 

If you have me on facebook, I've posted pics of this process if you need a visual. I won't post them on here for now because they will take about 3 years to upload. 

Enjoy your khinkali!