Tkemali is one of those sauces that can turn even the simplest dish into something much more interesting. Its homeland is Sakartvelo, and the basis of traditional tkemali consists of sour plums, which give the sauce its characteristic fruity sourness. Garlic, fresh herbs, spices, and pepper are added to them.
We decided to make our own version of this sauce. However, we must make a small confession right away: our variant cannot be called classic tkemali. In the traditional recipe, cilantro plays an important role. We replaced it with mint, as we couldn't find fresh cilantro at the market. Therefore, this is more of our home interpretation of the Georgian sauce. But it turned out to be quite interesting.
For preparation, we used firm, slightly underripe plums of the "Hungarian" variety. This slightly sour plum seemed to us a good base for the sauce.
Time spent: 2.5 hoursDifficulty: 3 out of 5Cost: low in plum season, above average in off-season
We will need
2 kg of plums
250 ml of water
1 tbsp of salt (can be adjusted to taste)
1 tbsp of sugar (can be adjusted to taste)
1 head of garlic
1 bunch of fresh mint
1 tbsp of khmeli-suneli
1 tsp of cinnamon;
1 hot chili pepper.
The amount of spices and hot pepper can also be adjusted to your taste. Tkemali is just the sauce that allows you to play with the balance of sour, salty, sweet, and spicy.
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Preparation
Preparing the plums
First, we washed the plums well, cut them, and removed the pits.
After that, we transferred the fruits to a pot with a thick bottom, added 250 ml of water, a tablespoon of salt, and a tablespoon of sugar.
We put the pot on low heat and let the plums slowly cook for about an hour.
From time to time, we stir to prevent the plum mass from sticking to the bottom. During this time, the firm plums will completely soften and turn into a thick aromatic base for the future sauce.
Adding spices and herbs
When the plums are well cooked, we add grated garlic, finely chopped mint, khmeli-suneli, cinnamon, and hot chili pepper.
By the way, this is where our recipe finally departs from classic tkemali. Instead of traditional cilantro, we used mint. It gave the sauce a very pleasant fresh aroma and paired well with the sour plums.
Turning the plums into sauce
Now we arm ourselves with an immersion blender and blend the entire mass directly in the pot to a maximum homogeneous consistency.
If your blender is not very powerful, you can cool the mass slightly beforehand or use a sieve to get rid of any remaining skins. We wanted to achieve a maximally smooth sauce, so we blended everything well in the pot over the heat.
After that, we simmer the sauce for about another hour. During this time, it will thicken further, and the spices and herbs will impart their aroma to the plum base.
Pouring into jars
The ready hot sauce is poured into previously sterilized jars and sealed with twist-off lids.
After cooling, we store the jars in a cool place.
What to eat tkemali with?
Here everything is quite simple: tkemali is made for meat.
It works especially well with pork, lamb, beef, and poultry. The sweet-sour plum taste perfectly balances the fattiness of the meat, while the hot pepper, garlic, and spices add character to it.
But it's not necessary to stop at meat. Our version can be used as a sauce for baked potatoes, vegetables, shashlik, or simply served with crispy fresh bread.
And although our sauce is not formally quite tkemali, we enjoyed the experiment. Next time, however, we want to make a version with cilantro – as close to the classic as possible. Then we can compare both versions and decide which one we liked more ;)
