Kupaty is a word once heard that arouses the interest of many people. I would like to know what kind of product this is and where its history comes from. However, it is no less interesting to find out why meat sausages have such an unusual name for our ears.
So, about the origin of the name. There are many options to explain the appearance of this word in colloquial speech. Some people believe that it is out of tune with the method of preparation, because before the last stage the sausages are “bathed”, that is, soaked in a marinade of wine, vinegar or pomegranate juice, or boiled. Others associate the name of the delicious sausages with another feature of the preparation of the delicacy, because in their native language it means “raw sausage.”
In the homeland of this dish, in the beautiful picturesque country with the loud and beautiful name of Georgia, kupats are indeed called small raw sausages, shaped like a horseshoe and consisting of very fatty pork meat with the addition of various spices. In fact, such sausages are no different in appearance from homemade sausages. These are ordinary semi-finished products that require additional heat treatment. But in reality it turns out that this is not the case, because the minced meat for the Georgian delicacy is distinguished not only by its fat content, but also by its spiciness.
Those who have tried real Georgian kupaty will definitely say that such pork sausages are something! You can't find a tastier delicacy! But you can try them exclusively in Georgia, as well as in Georgian restaurants with a good reputation. Or, as a last resort, you can try to prepare an amazing delicacy yourself. It is hardly possible to buy real, completely natural and preservative-free pork sausages at the market or supermarket. As an example and confirmation of the above, there is an abundance of so-called kupats made from fish, liver, offal and even squid on the shelves!
From this article you will learn how to properly prepare a delicious delicacy at home, with what side dish kupats will be able to better reveal their taste, as well as the specifics of preparing the semi-finished sausages themselves.
Compound
The composition of the baths is not as complex as it might seem at first glance, so you can recreate them at home with your own hands. A condition for obtaining the best result, which cannot be ignored, is the use of fresh meat and natural Georgian spices. The cooking recipe, or more precisely, the proportions of ingredients vary.
The components of delicious sausages are listed below:
- pork or a mixture of pork and beef in equal parts;
- lard;
- pork intestines;
- onion;
- barberry berries;
- garlic;
- khmeli-suneli;
- savory;
- nutmeg;
- cilantro;
- carnation;
- salt;
- cinnamon; black pepper;
- pomegranate;
- grape wine or wine vinegar.
Kupats without a natural casing, that is, cooked in cling film or in substitutes for natural casings, as well as products made from chicken, turkey or lamb, do not exist in nature, although many unscrupulous sausage manufacturers pass off sausages made from these types of meat as a real product. But it is not only factories that do not adhere to the recipe for producing kupat . Housewives also often experiment with the composition and add pieces of hard cheese, carrots and sweet peppers to the minced meat. This is not to say that this makes the sausages tasteless, but they are no longer real kupats, but rather turn into something like cevapchichi.
How to prepare kupaty with your own hands?
The most interesting thing is that kupaty can be prepared independently, and not from semi-finished products. Kupaty can be prepared from chicken, pork, and beef. Depending on the meat, you can add lard or not. But chicken breast and lean beef go best with lard. Thanks to the addition of lard, the dish will be more juicy and rich in taste.
Ingredients:
- 1.5 kilograms of meat
- 2 large onions
- Salt
- Spices
- 3 cloves garlic
- Some water
- Lard if necessary
Recipe:
- It is necessary to grind the meat ingredients in a meat grinder, add ground onion and garlic, add a little pepper, salt and pour in water.
- Now you need to knock the minced meat onto the table or the walls of a large bowl. This will give the dish juiciness.
- Now it's time to deal with the guts. Nowadays you can buy prepared intestines in stores and large supermarkets.
- They are peeled, so there is no need to scrape them additionally.
- If you purchased intestines at the market, then of course you will have to tinker with them, you need to turn them out and scrape them with the blunt side of a knife to remove all the plaque.
- Next, you need to put a special attachment on the meat grinder and attach the intestine on top of it.
- Now continue filling the entire intestine container with minced meat. If you don’t have a special device, you can make it using a regular plastic bottle.
- To do this, you need to cut off the bottom, fill the bottle with minced meat and press it with a spoon or another object, you can just use your hand.
- The minced meat will come out of the part on which the lid is screwed on; they need to fill the intestines.
- It is necessary to tie up the finished sausages every 20 cm. Try not to fill them too tightly so that they do not burst during the cooking process.
- The film breaks due to the fact that the sausage is very tightly compacted with minced meat.
- Try to ensure that the sausage is very soft when pressed and there is a feeling of free space inside.
- Thanks to this, the finished sausages will not burst, but will be juicy and very tasty.
- This kind of sausage also needs to be boiled for 3 minutes in boiling water, and then fried on all sides in oil.
How are real kupats prepared?
Many people are interested in how to prepare real kupaty at home. In fact, the technology is not complicated at all. In some ways, it completely replicates the preparation of familiar homemade sausages.
The beauty of cooking kupaty is that this Georgian-style sausage does not require lengthy preparation, salting or aging. The intestines stuffed with minced meat are kept in the marinade for about half an hour or boiled immediately, and then cooked in various ways. You can see one of the options for preparing a delicious dish with kupat in the video recipe attached to the article.
The unique taste and aroma of kupats lies in the minced meat. Real sausages consist of pork meat (sometimes a mixture of pork and beef or pork and liver) and lard, and the specific gravity of the latter component is always at least a quarter of the total mass.
The preparation, or more precisely, the production of kupats does not contain any pitfalls, but there is no GOST as such for this product. Having all the components available and knowing the proportions, you can easily prepare amazing sausages yourself.
How to fry kupaty on a grill pan?
Kupaty is often cooked not in a regular frying pan, but on the grill. Similar models are available in rectangular, square, and round shapes. They are mainly purchased by people who prefer a healthy lifestyle and seek to diversify their menu with grilled dishes. When cooking over coals is not possible, fry the kupats in a grill pan.
Recipe:
- It is necessary to boil the sausages for 2 minutes in boiling water, remove and dry with paper towels
- After this, the grill pan is greased with a thin layer of oil and the sausages are laid out on it
- Fry on 4 sides for 3 minutes. The food is served mainly with ketchup, as well as potatoes
Cooking at home
Making kupat at home is a simple task and not much different from making homemade sausage.
The first stage in the production of this Georgian sausage can be called preparing the casing and minced meat. Guts for kupats must either be fresh or well salted. Both fresh and salted shells must be kept for half an hour in cold water and washed thoroughly.
Many chefs are of the opinion that the meat components of the kupat filling should not be twisted in a meat grinder, but finely chopped by hand: then the sausage will be juicier and tastier. And it is true. During heat treatment, the lard inside the sausages is rendered, and the fat it contains is absorbed by pieces of meat. It is the fat that carries spices and salt into the meat, so the taste and aroma of the sausages are simply divine.
The second step is to fill the intestines, form sausages of small weight and size and tie them in the shape of a horseshoe. The casings are stuffed using a funnel placed on a meat grinder or with a special syringe for preparing sausages. The length of the Kupaty sausage should not exceed 17 centimeters, and, accordingly, the weight of the sausage will be close to one hundred and fifty grams.
The third and final step in preparing semi-finished products is most often boiling, or more precisely, heating the sausage.
It is impossible to say exactly how long you need to boil the sausages. The nominal time for boiling sausage in water in cooking recipes is indicated in the range of three to five minutes, but steaming can last about fifteen minutes. Experienced cooks determine the degree of readiness of the kupats by piercing the thickest part of the sausage with the tip of an ordinary needle. If clear juice appears on the surface without traces of ichor, then the sausage can be removed from the heat and cooled without removing it from the broth.
Real sausages are never frozen, and if necessary, they are stored in cool rooms, but not in the refrigerator. In some regions of Georgia, these fatty sausages are specially dried in the fresh air or smoked in smokehouses in order to be able to preserve them for as long as possible under natural conditions. The technology and method of preparing kupats allows you to store semi-finished products for a long time, although this is not necessary, because these sausages are intended for quick consumption.
How to properly fry kupaty in a frying pan?
Nowadays it is not a problem to purchase ready-made homemade sausages, as they are also called, in a convenience store. Ideally, they consist of meat, garlic, spices and onions. If necessary, lard is also added. It can be chopped or minced in a meat grinder.
Sometimes you can find kupaty with cheese and bell pepper on sale. Often different types of meat are combined: beef with pork, and even chicken with pork. Depending on what the sausage is made of, the cooking time will vary. There are several ways to cook kupat in a frying pan. Everything is prepared quite simply.
Use in cooking
Kupatam can be widely used in cooking. These delicious homemade meat sausages can be fried in a frying pan and deep-fried, baked in the oven on a baking sheet and in pots, stewed in a slow cooker and air fryer, and also smoked.
Semi-finished kupat products are an excellent solution for a picnic, because pork sausages are wonderfully baked over the fire. The best choice for a country snack are kupats cooked on a barbecue grill or on skewers. Skewers of these Georgian sausages, marinated in a spicy pomegranate sauce, baked on a charcoal grill - this is a very tasty dish!
Kupaty is served with spicy sauce and fried onion seasoning. Satsebeli sauce suits these sausages perfectly.
Many chefs have discovered many recipes for making casseroles with kupat sausages. The most popular and delicious delicacies are dishes with cheese or cream sauce, as well as those cooked in sour cream. Fatty sausages are baked in a sleeve bag or in foil with the addition of a spicy tomato sauce with basil and served as an appetizer with red Georgian wine.
Juicy sausages are eaten unpeeled, that is, together with the casing, and most often served as a side dish.:
- stewed and baked vegetables:
- tomatoes;
- zucchini;
- eggplant;
- bell pepper;
- cabbage;
- buckwheat porridge;
- pasta;
- mushrooms fried in sour cream and seasoned with herbs;
- vegetable stews;
- boiled and baked potatoes.
With baked or fried kupat sausages you can make a very tasty and rich soup. You can also use them to make hot dogs and various dough-based snacks served with Korean-style salads, most often made from asparagus and carrots.
It is simply impossible to describe in words the taste of smoked homemade Georgian sausages, prepared by cold or hot smoking in a smokehouse on wood chips with onion skins. The dish is so good that there are no words!
Types and prices of kupats
The most common varieties of this type of sausage products are:
- pubs Prepared from pork, salt, onions and lard. Spices and pepper are also added to enhance the taste. Suitable for country gatherings, as they are easy to cook on the grill. On the shelves you will have to pay 206 rubles ;
- spicy. Also made from pork, onions and salt, but with the addition of mustard and paprika (two types at once). Thanks to this recipe, they have a special taste and will appeal to lovers of spicy food. Traditionally cooked over coals. The price in Moscow for a pack of 350 grams is 189 rubles .
- kebab shops The recipe consists of pork, lard pepper and moirana. They have a special taste of meat and vegetables, but to preserve their taste, it is recommended to fry them in a frying pan. In the Pyaterochka or Magnit store their cost is 176 rubles per package of 0.4 kg;
- Chicken. The main feature is the main ingredient - minced chicken, which in combination with paprika gives excellent taste. This also affected the cost of the product, reducing it to 167 rubles per 0.35 kg. The product has a low calorie content (217 kcal/100g), which makes them dietary. You can cook them in a frying pan, sieve or grill.
- Beef. They are made from minced meat with the addition of spices and sometimes vegetables. They also have a low fat content, reducing the number of calories per 100 grams to 258 kcal. They are baked on a wire rack, frying pan or oven, with a price tag of 421 rubles/kg .
Each of these types has its own answer to how much kupats cost, but you can also buy products and make them yourself.
Benefits and harms
The following can be said about the benefits and harms of eating kupat.
Baths do not bring any benefits as such. Unless eating Georgian sausages helps you quickly fill up and allows you to forget about hunger for a long time. This is facilitated by the naturalness of the homemade product and the complete absence of preservatives in the composition.
But the harm from kupats is obvious: consuming delicacies in large quantities can negatively affect the state of the digestive system and cause problems associated with the functioning of the pancreas. It is also worth noting that kupaty is very high in calories, so overeating contributes to excess weight gain.
But the latter is unlikely to stop lovers of delicious food, and the outlook on life with a full stomach is much more optimistic!
Kupaty in tomato sauce
Products
Kupaty - 4 pieces Tomato paste - 2 tablespoons Sour cream - 2 tablespoons Soy sauce - 1 tablespoon Garlic - 2 cloves Dill - half a bunch Herbes de Provence - 1 teaspoon
How to fry kupaty in tomato sauce
If the kupaty are frozen, defrost them. Pierce the kupaty with a fork in several places. Heat a frying pan, pour oil and add kupaty. Fry the kupaty for 10 minutes until golden brown. Mix chopped garlic, tomato paste, sour cream and soy sauce, dilute a little with water and add the sauce to the kupats. Sprinkle the dish with herbs and simmer covered for 10 minutes, serve with chopped dill.
How to fry kupaty over a fire?
the kupats
over
hot coals for 15 minutes, threading them onto skewers or placing them on a grill. The baths can be pre-lubricated with ketchup or sour cream.
Calorie content of fried kupats
The calorie content of pork kupats is 350 kcal/100 grams. The calorie content of beef kupats is 275 kcal/100 grams. The calorie content of turkey kupats is 200 kcal/100 grams. The calorie content of chicken kupats is 230 kcal/100 grams.
Everyone loves juicy and tasty sausages, but it is not always possible to fry them over a fire or grill. Our article will teach you how to fry kupaty in a frying pan so that it turns out no less tasty than if you cooked it over an open fire in nature. All you need is a little time and patience - and a wonderful lunch will be ready!
