Soup is an important part of the human diet. The first courses are different: vegetable, meat, cheese, lentils. In Azerbaijani cuisine there is a very tasty and healthy Soup Piti. The Internet is replete with variations of the recipe for the national dish, but I dare say that I would hardly call them authentic - these are just pea stews with tomato.
Having lived half of my life in Baku, I can say that I often ate Piti, which was cooked in our family. The fact that the soup is prepared exclusively in pots is not true. Really, if the hostess does not have a special one, she will not be able to please her family with an amazing dish?
Cooking Piti soup in a pot
Soak one and a half cups of nuhut peas in cold water.
We prepare lamb: wash, divide into pieces. The amount of meat - at least 500 grams. In addition to the pulp, we take a couple of lamb knees - the bones must certainly be present. Since the lamb is a bit dry, add a little tail fat - a small 100 gram piece.
Pour all the meat components with water and put on fire. When it boils, be sure to remove the foam.
We spread the washed peas and seven peeled potatoes - not small, medium in size. You do not need to cut the potatoes, they are laid whole.
We throw peppercorns into the pan - 15-20 pieces, salt.
We add cherry plum to the soup at will - it is needed to give sourness.
At the moment of boiling, reduce the fire to a minimum so that active seething stops. Cover the pot tightly with a lid and leave for 3-4 hours.
Attention: The soup should languish, but not boil!
While Petey is getting ready, the hostess can do a lot of housework and even run to the store. This is what makes cooking soup convenient: all urgent matters are redone, and dinner is cooked by itself, just in time for the whole family to gather.
Toward the end of the cooking process, we prepare the greens. Add a little saffron - for a golden hue and aroma. Wash and chop dill, parsley, cilantro. Ten minutes before readiness, put 2-3 leaves of lavrushka and pour chopped greens - there should be a lot of it.
If all the subtleties of cooking are observed, the soup turns out to be transparent. Potatoes do not fall apart, peas triple in size - everything is absolutely whole, but very soft. This is how Piti will be if you do not let him boil.
Pouring soup into bowls, put a potato, a piece of meat and broth with peas. Some add a little garlic, but this is not for everyone.
Note: Lamb broth very tasty and healthy: gelatin, which is boiled into it from meat and bones, has a beneficial effect on health, especially for women.
Of course, in Azerbaijan Soup Piti prepared from lamb and tail fat. However, not everyone likes dryish meat and a specific smell. Therefore, you can cook on any preferred meat base. The main thing is not to forget about the ribs or other bones. And for people who follow the figure, it is enough not to add fat so that the dish becomes dietary. 
Chanaeva Natalia for the magazine "With Your Hands"
Soup piti - popular a traditional dish Azerbaijani cuisine, has a very bright and unusual characteristic taste. Usually, piti soup is made from lamb with the addition of various vegetables, chickpeas, plums, plums, quince, and sometimes chestnuts. To prepare this dish, instead of chickpeas, take ordinary peas, which are boiled in mashed potatoes, and instead of lamb, beef is not worth it: then you just get a completely different dish. traditional recipe cooking piti soup involves the use of ceramic serving pots (although alternatives are possible). Products are laid in pots in layers.
Azerbaijani lamb soup piti - recipe
Ingredients:
- young lamb - 150-180 g;
- potatoes - 3-4 pcs. medium size;
- chickpeas (nagut) - 0.5 tbsp.;
- lamb fat (preferably fat-tailed) - 15-20 g;
- onion - 1 pc.;
- cherry plum (or prunes, or other plums, preferably sour) - 2-4 pieces;
- fresh hot red pepper - 0.5-1 pod;
- hops-suneli - to taste;
- salt;
- tomato paste- 1 tbsp. a spoon;
- garlic - 1 clove;
- fresh herbs are different (parsley, cilantro, tarragon, etc.).
Cooking
The calculation of products is given for 1 serving.
Rinse the chickpeas and soak in cold water for at least 4 hours, and preferably overnight. Rinse the meat thoroughly, dry it with a clean napkin and chop into small pieces (approximate weight of 30-50 grams). Put them in pots, 3-4 pieces each, fill with water, lightly salt, close the pots with lids (if there are no lids, you can cover with foil) and place in the oven, heated to medium temperature, for 40-50 minutes, so that the meat is good boiled. After this time, add finely chopped fat tail fat, peeled and chopped potatoes, chopped onions, cherry plum (or prunes) pitted, peas, tomato puree, spices and pepper to each pot. Mix everything, cover with lids and again place in the oven for 20 minutes. Serve in pots, season with chopped garlic and fragrant fresh herbs.
You can cook piti soup a little differently.
Another recipe for soup piti
Ingredients:
- young lamb - about 600 g;
- onion - 2 pcs.;
- chickpeas (nagut) - 2 tbsp.;
- lamb fat (preferably fat-tailed) - about 80 g;
- potatoes - 4 pcs. medium size;
- cherry plum - 12-16 pieces;
- fresh quince - 1 pc.;
- sweet red pepper - 2 pcs.;
- ripe red tomato - 4 pcs.;
- fresh red hot pepper - 2 pods;
- spices for the broth (pepper-peas, bay leaf, cloves) - to taste;
- salt;
- garlic - 4 cloves;
- fresh herbs (cilantro, parsley, tarragon, etc.).
Cooking
The calculation of products is given for 4 servings.
Put the lamb cut into pieces in a saucepan or stewpan and cook in a small amount of water with onions, bay leaves, cloves and peppercorns until the meat is soft. Carefully remove the foam and fat with a slotted spoon. We extract the meat from the broth, filter the broth. 
Discard the boiled onions and used spices. We put 3-4 pieces of meat in each pot together with chopped potatoes, slices of quince and pitted plums and Bell pepper, chopped into short straws. Tomatoes before laying can be blanched with boiling water, but this is not important. Pour a little broth into each pot, season with spices (optional), close the lids and place the pots in a preheated oven for 20 minutes. This method is, in some way, even more convenient, and the taste will be almost the same. Serve soup piti seasoned with chopped garlic, hot pepper and aromatic herbs.
There are dishes that are so easy to cook that even explaining the culinary side of things is somehow inconvenient.
In the case of piti (emphasis on the last syllable, if anything), just all that is needed is ... to persuade you:
cook piti, it's the season, cook and eat - it's wonderful tasty dish, despite all its simplicity and even some brutality.
I think that almost every culinary-puzzled person somewhere has approximately such non-pour pots gathering dust.
So you don't play the fool, take them, fill them with water and let them stand so that all the bubbles come out of the pores of the ceramics. And then put them on a hot iron stove or in the oven and let them boil. And then pour water into them again to the brim, put any kind of fat into the water, such that you won’t eat, such as kidney fat or internal mutton fat, or you can use any, as long as it’s fresh, odorless, and let it boil, boil away, and when there is no water left, remove all that is left from the pots and wash them. You understand the meaning of what has been done, don't you? Now they are ready to use.
(wh-gee-gee! I recently read from one fefochka "and if you find the right butcher, he will give you internal mutton fat, and not fat-tailed, which is very smelly." Can you imagine what a swindler she got?!)
And now, when you happen to be in a good mood, then take these products:
good meat from a mutton's backside, cleaned of films and veins;
fat tail,
soaked peas,
cherry plum or al-Bukhara,
onion, diced
saffron
and, if in season, fresh chestnuts, which should be trimmed around the edges, boiled for ten minutes and peeled while they are hot.
Well tasty water take, do not skimp on good water.
Put peas in a pot, a hundred-gram pile per serving, a few cubes of meat, a little onion, pour water and cover the top with a finger-thick plate of fat, sprinkle with saffron, salt and put on the stove.
Here's a special thing to say about the plate.
Maybe someone saw good stoves, which used to be in village ovens? Or a restaurant stove? This is the board I'm talking about.
What to do if you have not yet built a normal kitchen near your house, where, in addition to a cauldron, barbecue, stove, there is such a stove?
Take a large cast-iron skillet with low sides, place it on the burner, adjust the heat so that the skillet is hot enough but not overheating. Put the pots in this pan and let them boil, let one small bubble rise at the rate of your pulse. Let them boil for at least eight to twelve hours. But you can also put it in the evening to eat the next day at lunch - nothing bad will happen, your drink will not stop, do not worry.
If there is no such pan, then you can put it in the oven, although this is not quite what we need. Don't understand why? The fact is that when the pot boils on the stove, it heats up, mainly at the bottom. You can hold on to its top for a short time, it does not have a temperature above eighty degrees. Thus, convection does not cover the entire volume, but only the lower part of the pot, the main thing happens there, and the fat blocks the exit of bubbles to the outside, so it does not boil away as much as it could boil away in the oven. In general, if you undertake to cook in the oven, then watch there more often and adjust the temperature, well, it’s unlikely that you will be able to cook for as long as necessary, but here it’s all about the pace and cooking time.
Shortly before the end of the preparation of piti, dip in it one or two chestnuts per serving, and one or two cherry plums or al-bukhara. It all depends on the acid, on the taste of dried fruits. It is important for us to get the right, pleasant taste balance. After the dried fruits and chestnuts have been lowered, it is not worth cooking for longer than thirty minutes - it will become sour and fall apart.
Well, let's say that everything is ready and it's time, time, time to sit down at the table!
There are more difficulties here than when cooking, honestly.
First, serve to piti fresh tomatoes, onion, cut into slices, pickles and, of course, sumac! Of course, one cannot do without a churek - they don’t eat drinks without a churek.
Break the bread into small pieces, place on your plate, sprinkle with sumac and pour over the broth. If you want, put a little fat tail, but if not, just eat this bread and this unusually strong and aromatic broth first. Fifty? One hundred! But be sure to eat with onions, do not care about the smell from the mouth, damn it, on a Sunday?
Now put everything that is left in the pot and mash everything into a smooth puree. Do not forget the sumac, another fifty grams, more onions, well, fresh and salty vegetables - it will be good, proper lunch in the November slush.
Strength, youth and beauty.
How do I prepare this dish:
This dish is prepared in special clay pots, they are portioned or large like a saucepan, they are called piti gaba. If you do not have clay pots, then you can cook in one pan. First, you need to soak the nohud peas overnight at the rate of ½ cup for 2 servings. In the morning, put 1/3 cup of the soaked nokhud on the bottom of the portioned piti gaba, then 3-4 pieces of fat boneless lamb (preferably from the neck) and a piece of guirug (fat tail fat), pour water and put on a large fire, when it boils, remove the foam, reduce the heat and put 1 tbsp here. finely chopped onion, 1 grain of khil (cardamom), salt. Cook on a tiny fire on a piece of iron for a very long time, often remove the foam. Chestnuts at the rate of 2-3 per serving cut clean. When the meat is cooked very well and is quite ready to put here raw chestnuts, saffron, and 2-3 good yellow albukhara (yellow dried plum) or cherry plum, and in season I put pieces of quince. Cook more, and when the hunger swells, the dish is ready. They eat the drink like this: pour the broth separately, and put everything else on a plate, sprinkle with sumac (dried barberry), put an onion divided into 8 parts with dried mint next to it. Amazingly delicious. Be sure to cook.Soup piti is a traditional dish of Azerbaijani cuisine. On the appearance it is similar to a runny mutton and pea sauce. The soup has an unusual characteristic taste. Its main ingredients are lamb, chickpeas and baked chestnuts. You can also add vegetables, cherry plums or quince to the piti.
It is important to know that chickpeas cannot be replaced with ordinary peas, lamb with pork or beef. Otherwise, the resulting dish will have nothing to do with the well-established recipe for Azerbaijani piti soup. But as for chestnuts, then potatoes can be used as an alternative.
To one more important condition proper cooking dishes include the presence of ceramic pots in which ready soup. However, it is not so important to adhere to such a custom. The article tells how to cook piti soup properly.
Original Azerbaijani soup
If you are a fan of centuries-old Caucasian cuisine, then you need to try making piti. You will be able to diversify your table and pleasantly surprise your guests by preparing piti soup according to the recipe below. It is advisable not to replace the ingredients at all and not to show imagination so that the dish is fully consistent with your cuisine.
Ingredients for 5 servings:
- 900 g lamb
- 300 g dried chickpeas
- 100 g onion
- 800 g baked chestnuts
- 50-100 g cherry plum
- saffron and pepper to taste
Chickpeas are cooked for a very long time, but they have a number of useful properties. If you are preparing soup for dinner, then soak it overnight in water, which is drained in the morning. The upper peel peels off during the night, and the lower one is eaten.
- Prepare ceramic pots in which you will lay the ingredients in layers.
- Cut the lamb into small pieces of 50 g each.
- Place 3-4 chopped pieces in each pot.
- Then add the soaked chickpeas, baked chestnuts and place in the oven for an hour.
- After an hour, take out the semi-finished pots and add onion and cherry plum to them.
- Pre-cut the onion into small pieces, and the cherry plum is necessary to give a taste of sourness.
- Instead of cherry plum, lemon juice is also suitable.
- Then pour some water into the pots, salt to taste, and put back in the oven, only for 2-3 hours.
The spices included in the ingredients give Azerbaijani soup drink spicy taste and special flavor. Upon completion of cooking, put saffron and pepper in each portion of the pot, cover the resulting dish with a tight lid and put in the oven for 10-15 minutes. If the soup seems too thick, you can add water to it.
Piti should be served in portioned pots, in which the soup was prepared.
Soup piti in a slow cooker
Thanks to the appearance of multicookers, many girls prefer to cook in them. With their help, it is not only faster, but also much easier. The composition of the ingredients can be left as standard, or it can be slightly modified depending on the availability of products.
Piti cooked in a slow cooker is slightly different from classic soup in pots. But there is a place for such a preparation.
Composition of ingredients:
- 500 g lamb
- 2-3 potatoes
- 300 g chickpeas
- Pepper to taste
Put all the ingredients in a multicooker bowl and fill with water. Turn on the "Extinguishing" mode and leave for 2-3 hours. At the end of cooking, pepper, and serve in portioned pots. If desired, you can decorate with any greens. Mutton piti soup in a slow cooker is ready! Treat yourself and your guests.
Alternative option
As mentioned above, the soup contains a number of basic components that must be present in it. But if you replace the additional ingredients, the soup will not lose the taste benefits. In addition, this method of preparing lamb piti will not take you more than 3 hours.
Required Ingredients:
- 300 g lamb
- 50 g tail fat
- 300 g chickpeas
- 2 onions
- 3 potatoes
- 10 pieces of cherry plum
- Garlic and mint to taste
Boil the meat in water with spices and onions for an hour. Usually this is enough, but you can leave for another half an hour. Remove emerging fat and foam from the broth. Remove the onion, cut the meat into pieces and place in pots. Cut the cherry plums and add there too. Shred the potatoes and put them in the pots in the next layer. Pepper and pour over the broth. Put the pots in the oven for an hour. Before serving, add garlic to it and garnish with mint.
It will not be difficult even for a novice housewife to prepare piti soup in any of the presented options. Experiment, start from more easy way, gradually complicating it and supplementing it with ingredients. Search more detailed recipes soup drink with photo.
Every Azerbaijani family has its own “correct” drink recipe. In addition to meat, chickpeas, chestnuts (baked), onions, black pepper, dried fruits are put in the soup. Today, chestnuts are often replaced with potatoes, and more affordable tomatoes or quince are used instead of dried cherry plums. All products are put in separate pots, poured with boiling water (or broth), tightly covered with fat tail fat (or a lid), and then each serving is cooked on the stove (or in the oven) for at least 3 hours. The soup is certainly served with pita bread and spicy herbs.
Total time: 4 hours | Cooking time: 3 hours
Yield: 2 servings | Calories: 98.34
Ingredients
- lamb or beef on the bone - 500 g
- broth - to cover all products
- chickpeas - 100 g
- large onion - 1 pc. (70 g)
- chestnuts - 4 pcs. or potatoes - 2 pcs.
- salt, freshly ground pepper - to taste
- dried mint - 2 chips.
- dried cherry plum / tomatoes - 4 pcs / 2 pcs.
- saffron - 0.5 g
- sumac, sweet onion, cilantro, pita bread - for serving
Cooking
Large photos Small photos
Chickpeas should first be sorted out and soaked in water overnight. During this time, the grains will swell and cook faster.
Chop the lamb or beef on the bone, if using the pulp, then cut into pieces, like a roast. Place the meat in a saucepan and pour boiling water, boil over high heat, adding a little salt. Skim off any foam that will rise. As soon as the foam goes away, and the broth becomes transparent, stop cooking. Why do it? In Sheki, cooks put in pots raw lamb, and then, as it cooks, constantly remove the foam formed on the surface in each pot. The soup is boiled there, on the stove rather than in the oven, which makes it easier to access the contents of the pots, but it's still a tedious job. It is easier to slightly boil the meat before laying it in order to immediately get rid of the noise.
Fill pots with food. At the bottom of each place a handful of onion, diced. By the way, special pots are used for piti soup - they are tall and with a narrow bottom, reminiscent of a beer mug. Finding such is problematic, so use those that are available on the farm. If your pots are not potted, then be sure to soak them overnight so that the clay does not crack. If they are poured, then they do not need to be specially prepared somehow.
Put a few pieces of meat on top of the onion.
Pour a serving of soaked chickpeas, salt.
Pour the contents of the pots with the broth in which the meat was cooked. Put cherry plum and chestnuts (peeled, boiled or baked), pepper slightly. I don't have them, so I skipped this step. Dried cherry plum is put in the soup for sourness, and chestnuts add satiety. These products are very exotic for us, so the Azerbaijanis allow us to replace them with tomatoes and potatoes.
According to all the rules, the top of the pot should be covered with a “lid” made of a slice of fat tail fat about 0.5 cm thick. But if you don’t like its specific taste, then you can cover it with the usual clay lid that the pots are equipped with. To prevent steam from escaping, I put a small piece of parchment under each lid - it prevents steam from escaping, the liquid does not boil away, and the aromas remain inside the pot. Then you can follow the traditional technology: put a divider on the burner, and pots on it, heat it very, very slowly so that it does not crack, and then cook at medium power for 2-2.5 hours. Or put it on a baking sheet and send it to an oven preheated to 160-180 degrees, cook for 3-4 hours, constantly make sure that the soup does not boil away.
In the meantime, steam the saffron with boiling water, let it brew. I have inexpensive Imeretian and Egyptian saffron, which I mixed together, they do not give any taste, they are added only for the color of the broth.
When the main ingredients are almost ready, add peeled potatoes (cut into large pieces) and tomatoes (cut in half), pour in the saffron tincture. Return the pots to the oven and simmer for another 1 hour, until fully cooked.
Serving food is a different story. Azerbaijan has a strict procedure for serving national food. So, finely chop the onion. Prepare dried mint, sumac and churek (or other wheat flatbread).
Crumble bread into a bowl and pour hot broth from a pot, season with onions, sprinkle with sumac and fragrant mint. Put all the contents of the pot on another plate, also sprinkle with onion, sumac and mint - according to tradition, all this should be kneaded into porridge and eat with your hands, scooping up bread. The locals claim that it tastes much better this way. I did not turn all this beauty into porridge, we ate a bite. I think that you can generally serve the dish “incorrectly” - all on one plate, then it will be more like a first course that is familiar to us. Try it and choose your option!
Here is such a piti soup - the pride of Azerbaijani cuisine, now you can cook it at home. Bon Appetit!
