Recipe for making churchkhela at home with a photo. How is churchkhela made? How to make churchkhela with butter

Churchkhela is a delicious long Georgian candy made from nuts and nougat made from grape juice. Traditionally, they are prepared in August-September, when walnuts and grapes are harvested together - for dessert it is best to use milk-ripened walnut kernels, since they are easier to plant on a needle. I prepared churchkhela in March - from the dried kernels that I have left, and I want to say that it is best to soak the dried kernels in water for 20 minutes before stringing them onto a needle - they will crumble less.

Since in our century it is very easy to find store-bought grape juice, but it is difficult to find freshly squeezed juice (like mine), you can purchase such a drink in the supermarket. By the way, using light grape juice, it can be dyed with food dyes in various colors and at the same time you can get multi-colored long churchkhela candies.

The most important point: remember that flour is not added to the hot liquid, otherwise you will get a thick jelly with flour lumps! Pour flour only into cold liquid! This is the first time I did churchkhela, so I used 500 ml of grape juice for 3 long braids with nuts.

Prepare the indicated ingredients.

Using a thin needle, string the walnut kernels on the thread, leaving a little space on top, since the churchkhela should hang. You can string both pieces of kernels and whole kernels.

Pour grape juice into a saucepan, saucepan or cauldron, pour flour into a container and immediately beat everything with a whisk, mixer or puree with an immersion blender until the liquid becomes homogeneous.

Place a container with a homogeneous liquid on the stove, turning on the minimum heat. I see no reason to evaporate grape juice for a long time so that it becomes concentrated - you can simply add granulated sugar to taste.

Add sugar, stir thoroughly in the drink and cook until thick and thick. The mass should resemble thick jelly. Leave to cool for 10-15 minutes.

Hanging nut sausages on some device - I have a hanger for kitchen utensils.

There is also the option of pouring the jelly mass into a wide rectangular basin or mold - then sausages are dipped into it and suspended to drain the jelly mass.

It is more convenient for me to pour the mass onto suspended nut sausages. With a tablespoon, scoop up a little of the mass and pour it directly onto the top row of kernels. Pour very slowly, straighten and shape it with your finger. Apply one coat and leave to cool for 20-30 minutes, then apply a second coat in the same way. In the photo I have two layers of jelly grape mass on the kernels. The more layers of nougat there are, the longer the churchkhela will dry (that's why I stopped at two). In this form, take the candy sausages into a ventilated room, preferably at room temperature. Usually, in the warm autumn season, sweets are air-dried and slightly wither in the sun, but I left them in the kitchen near the radiator at +24.

Churchkhels completely dried up and dried up on the fourth day of drying. The readiness of the sweets is determined by the fact that they do not stick to the hands - the nougat should become like rubber when squeezed. Now you can taste the sweetness - it is really incredibly tasty and not cloying!

Enjoy your tea with sweets.

In 2011, churchkhela was registered as a primordial Georgian dish, although similar delicacies are prepared in both Armenia and the Krasnodar Territory of Russia. Dessert consists of nuts (most often walnuts) strung on a thread, covered with a sweet shell made from thickened juice, usually grape juice. The main difference between the Georgian churchkhela and the Armenian sharots, according to Pokhlebkin, the author of the famous "Book about tasty and healthy food", is the use of spices and spices by the Armenians, which give the sweetness a special aroma. Those who have rested on the Black Sea coast of the Caucasus know very well that churchkhela is made from any nuts and juice, sometimes with the addition of dried fruits, so even residents of regions where grapes do not grow can prepare this healthy delicacy, using the juice of berries and fruits, which the corresponding area is rich in. ...

Cooking features

Churchkhela preparation process is lengthy, but does not require great culinary skills. Even a novice culinary specialist can cope with the task if he is familiar with the technology for preparing this healthy nutty delicacy.

Churchkhela will taste more delicate if the nuts used for its preparation are pre-peeled. It is easier to do this if you bake them in a dry frying pan, but then they become brittle and brittle, which makes it difficult to work with them further. Experienced housewives soak peeled nuts for 20 minutes in water and only after that start cooking churchkhela. If you refuse to peel the nuts from their husks and ignite them, it will be much easier to make churchkhela.
To prepare churchkhela, it is recommended to take freshly squeezed juice, then the delicacy will be not only tasty, but also aromatic.
When stringing nuts on a thread, it is recommended to tie a piece of a match to it from below, and fasten it with a knot from above and make a loop. Then the nuts will not jump off the thread and their bundle will simply be suspended.
It is recommended to make bunches of nuts not too long, stopping at 15–20 cm. Then it will be easier to cover them with thickened juice. A place where you can hang a short churchkhela to dry it is easier to find than for drying a long one.
Fruit or berry juice used for making churchkhela is boiled down and thickened with flour. To prevent flour from forming lumps, it is not recommended to add it to a liquid that is too cold or hot. The optimum temperature is from 25 to 45 degrees. When adding flour, the mass must be whipped with a whisk, otherwise it will still not be possible to avoid the formation of lumps.
If you want churchkhela to have a sweeter taste, you can add a little sugar or honey to the juice.
Covering churchkhela with thickened juice, it is left hanging to dry. The duration of drying depends on the number of layers of fruit and berry mass covering the churchkhela. Most often, the nuts are covered with juice in three layers, it dries from 5 to 7 days, depending on the air temperature in the room. If the weather permits, churchkhela can also be dried outdoors, this is even more in line with the tradition of its preparation.
After drying, the churchkhela is ready for use, but it is often wrapped in cloth and left for 1–2 months until fully ripe. It is considered ripe when it becomes covered with powdered sugar that has come to the surface.

Churchkhela has a long shelf life - up to 4 months. It is usually kept sprinkled with flour and wrapped in a cloth in a cool place. It is best to place it in the refrigerator, but it will not deteriorate in the kitchen cabinet.

The classic churchkhela recipe from grape juice and walnuts

grape juice - 2 l;
wheat flour - 0.2 kg;
sugar - 60-100 g;
walnut kernels - 0.2 kg.

Cooking method:

Divide the kernels into 2–4 parts, peel them.
Thread the thread into the needle, at the end tie a piece of match (without the sulfur head).
String the nuts together. The length of the nut bunch should be 15–20 cm. Secure with a knot, make a loop on the rest of the thread.
Prepare bunches of nuts from the remaining kernels in the same way.
Heat the grape juice in a saucepan. When it boils, add sugar to it and boil it about halfway.
Let the juice cool to about 40 degrees.
Whisk the flour into it.
Place the grape syrup mixed with flour on the stove top. Heat it, stirring occasionally, until it resembles a thick jelly in consistency.
Pour the condensed grape juice into a container that is large enough for the strings of nuts.
Dip one bunch of nuts into the container. The nuts should be completely submerged in the juice. When there is little juice left, you can pour a spoon over the nuts.
Remove the nuts from the juice, let them dry slightly, "bathe" them 1-3 more times, giving time to dry.
Treat the remaining nut bunches in the same way.
Hang up the nuts. Initially, it will not hurt to put a plate or other container under them, into which the juice that did not have time to freeze will drip. Some housewives hang nuts on a stand for kitchen utensils (shovels, ladles).
Dry the churchkhela until it stops sticking to your hands.

After that, the treat can be eaten or stored, lightly sprinkled with flour and wrapped in a kitchen towel. It is believed that the most aromatic and dark dessert is obtained from the juice of Isabella grapes, but you can use any grape variety, even light.

Churchkhela from roasted nuts

grape juice - 1 l;
hazelnuts - 0.2 kg;
flour - 130 g;
sugar (optional) - to taste.

Cooking method:

Warm up the juice. When its temperature rises to about 30 degrees, pour out a glass of juice, combine it with flour, beat with a whisk to get a homogeneous composition, without lumps.
Continue heating the remaining juice over low heat until it boils. Add sugar and cook until the juice is halved.
Stir the flour and juice mixture again. Pour it into a container of hot juice in a thin stream, stirring at the same time. Continue cooking for 10-15 minutes.
While the juice is boiling down, prepare the nuts. To do this, fry them in a dry frying pan until a characteristic aroma appears, cool, peel them, soak in water for 20 minutes and sprinkle on a towel so that they dry quickly.
Gently string the nuts on the string, preparing bundles about 15 cm long or slightly longer.
Hang the bunches of nuts over a plate or other container. The ligaments should not touch each other.
Spoon the sticky juice over the nut threads with a spoon, pouring it over the top nut until it covers all the nuts. After a while, repeat the procedure and cover the hazelnuts with another layer of thickened juice.
Leave the churchkhela to dry for 4–5 days until it is no longer sticky.

When they want to make churchkhela from roasted nuts, hazelnuts are most often chosen, since its kernels do not crumble as much as the kernels of other nuts.

Spicy churchkhela

grape juice - 2 l;
walnuts - 0.3 kg;
cinnamon - 5 g;
ground cloves - a large pinch;
sugar (optional) - 40-60 g;
flour - 0.2 kg.

Cooking method:

Peel the nuts, string them on a coarse thread.
Pour half a liter of juice, mix with flour.
Bring the remaining juice to a boil and reduce by half.
Add sugar, spices, cook for another 5 minutes.
Add flour mixture and cook for 10 minutes.
Dip nuts in boiled juice, let them dry for 2-3 minutes. Repeat the manipulation 2-3 more times.
Leave the churchkhela hanging to dry for 1–2 weeks.

This variant of the delicacy is more typical for Armenian cuisine than for Georgian, but churchkhela with spices is prepared not only in Armenia.

Plum churchkhela

walnuts - 0.5 kg;
plum (peeled) - 0.5 kg;
flour - 0.3 kg;
sugar - 0.2 kg;
water - 0.8 l;
cardamom - 5 g;
cinnamon - 5 g;
cloves - 5 g.

Cooking method:

Break the nut kernels into 2–4 pieces, string on threads. The length of the ligaments should be 18–20 cm.
Heat half a liter of water to about 30 degrees. Add flour gradually, whisking liquid with a whisk. It is important to avoid clumping. If you cannot avoid this, strain the flour mixture through a sieve.
Place the washed, dried and pitted plums in a blender bowl and chop until puree.
Dilute the plum puree with the remaining water. Add sugar and spices, stir. Bring to a boil over low heat until the sugar dissolves. Cook for a while, stirring occasionally, until the plum mass has boiled down by 30-50 percent.
Add the flour mixture in portions. As a result, a homogeneous mass should be obtained, in consistency resembling a thick jelly.
Dip all the nut threads into the prepared plum mass in turn. Let them dry slightly. Repeat the procedure 2-3 more times. As a result, all nuts should be covered with a thick layer of plum mass.
Hang the plum pureed walnut threads from the eyelets and let dry for at least 7 days.

Churchkhela prepared according to this recipe has an appetizing color, sweet and sour taste and is not inferior in its organoleptic qualities to traditional grape churchkhela.

Churchkhela is a healthy dessert related to Georgian cuisine, although it is also made in a number of other countries. The main ingredients are nuts and condensed juice. Usually in Georgia walnuts and grape juice are taken for churchkhela, but in central Russia it is advisable to use apple or plum juices for making sweets, which are more readily available here.

The most famous Georgian sweet - churchkhela - is traditionally prepared from fresh grape juice and nuts. There is nothing difficult in making it! Nuts can be taken in one variety or assorted: choose hazelnuts, walnuts or almonds. Also for making churchkhela you will need a thick cotton thread and a large "gypsy" needle.

Name:	Churchkhela
Date added:	09.01.2016
Cooking time:	3 hours
Servings Per Recipe:	6
Rating:	(1 , cf. 5.00 out of 5)

Ingredients

Churchkhela recipe

Wash the grapes and squeeze the juice out of it (2 liters are required). If the juice is not sweet enough, you can add sugar or honey. Take a saucepan, pour 1 liter of juice into it. Bring it to a boil, reduce heat and simmer for 10-15 minutes. Pour flour into the remaining 1 liter of juice, stirring vigorously so that no lumps form.

Instead of corn flour, you can use wheat flour, but in the classic recipe, only corn flour is used. Then pour the flour mixture into the boiling juice in a thin stream, stirring constantly. After the two types of juice have mixed, you need to let the mixture boil for 15-20 minutes to form grape jelly - pelamushi. The mixture should be constantly stirred.

For each churchkhela, measure 35-40 cm of thread on the basis that 25 cm of them will be in the sweetness itself, and the remaining 10-15 cm will go to the loop, from which the churchkhela should be hung. Find a place where the blanks will hang. On a thick and strong thread, you need to string nuts, then dip each thread well in jelly so that the nuts are covered with it from all sides.
By choosing unusual ingredients for the mixture, you will get a very special churchkhela! Hang the finished threads to dry for 20 minutes, placing food foil or baking paper under them, where the jelly will drop. Be careful not to hang the sweets too close or they will stick together! After 20 minutes, you need to repeat the dipping of each thread and again hang to dry. Repeat until the churchkhela becomes the desired thickness.

Then hang the threads in a place protected from direct sunlight and leave there until final hardening (for 5-7 days). Sometimes raisins, dried fruits and seeds are added to churchkhela along with nuts. Churchkhela is also made from apple, apricot, pear and peach juices.

Eastern sweets

10-15

1 hour 45 minutes

405 kcal

5/5 (1)

Churchkhela is the prototype of energy bars given to us by generous Georgian cuisine. A healthy and tasty dessert looks like a colored icicle with nuts inside and an elastic, sweet, grape shell on top. The recipe for this sweet has not changed since the reign of the Georgian king David IV, but in modern cuisine it is prepared much easier and faster.

Churchkhela recipe at home with photo

Necessary equipment:

a saucepan with a thick bottom,
wooden or plastic spatula,
spool of thread,
hangers for clothes
sewing needle,

whisk,
a bowl,
blender,
sieve,
plate.

List of ingredients

Choosing products

The grapes for our dessert must be absolutely ripe and very, very sweet. Therefore, when buying it you need to try it. The berries for the sample must be selected from the bottom of the brush, where they ripen later.
The Georgian churchkhela recipe uses walnuts or hazelnuts, but other types of nuts, pumpkin seeds, and even dried fruits will do as well. Before buying peeled walnuts, you also need to try: from long storage they can turn rancid, and if stored improperly, they become rotten or acquire an unpleasant odor.
Instead of corn flour, you can use wheat, but the finished dessert will slightly lose its taste.

Step by step cooking

Cut 600-700 g of walnut kernels into quarters. We spread them on a baking sheet and dry them in the oven with the door ajar at a temperature of 60-70 ° for 1 hour.
We unwind 1-1.2 m of thread from the spool, fold it in half and thread it into the needle. We connect the ends of the thread and tie with a knot. We string the quarters of nuts on a thread, piercing with a needle in the middle. At the end of the walnut beads, you need to leave a free piece of thread 5-7 cm long.
We wash 1.5 kg of grapes. We pick the berries from the brush and put them in the blender bowl.
Grind the grapes with a blender and filter the juice through a sieve. As a result, it should turn out to be 1.3-1.2 liters.
Pour 1.5-2 cups of juice into a separate bowl, the rest into a heavy-bottomed saucepan. We put the saucepan on the stove and heat it over medium heat.
Pour 300-320 g of corn flour into a bowl with the measured liquid and stir with a whisk until smooth.
We shift the grape-flour mass into a saucepan with the main liquid and stir it diligently, breaking the lumps.
When the mass boils, reduce the heat to a minimum and cook, stirring constantly, until it thickens. After 15 minutes, grape jelly reaches the desired density. Turn off the heat and remove the pan from the stove.
We dip the nut bunches into grape jelly, holding them with one hand for a free piece of thread. Using a spatula, help to distribute the sticky mass over the entire surface of the walnut beads.
To dry the churchkhela, I suggest using a coat hanger. Tie the free ends of the thread with a knot around the lower strap of the hanger. We put a pallet under the hanging garlands, where excess grape jelly will drip.
We place the structure in a shaded, well-ventilated area. After 5-7 days, a delicious dessert will be ready.

Churchkhela cooking video recipe

You can make sure that making churchkhela according to this recipe at home is absolutely easy by watching the video below.

You can use a juicer or juicer to make grape juice... The grapes can be minced, crumpled with your hands and then folded into cheesecloth and squeezed.
Canned juice can be used instead of grapes.... The main condition is that it must be natural. Moreover, the juice does not have to be grape juice. Apricot will give the dessert a bright orange color, pomegranate and cherry - red. Since not all juices are as sweet as grape juice, the churchkhela recipe will need to be supplemented with sugar to taste.
Sweetness needs to be said separately.... In the homeland of this dish, the grape must is first boiled until half of the initial volume remains. This concentrated, sweet, natural syrup is used to prepare jelly. How to make churchkhela sweeter, decide for yourself: whether to boil the juice at home or, simplifying the recipe, add sugar to it.
Nuts can be strung on threads in advance and dried in the sun. But you should not fry them in a pan: they will become brittle and will break into pieces when the needle touches.
No need to speed up churchkhela ripening... Of course, in the sun or in a hot room, it will dry out faster, but the nuts will not have time to soak up the sweet moisture.

Other healthy sweets

In addition to the Georgian churchkhela, there is an Armenian version - sharotz, for the preparation of which you just need to add spices to the above recipe: 3 g of ground cloves and cinnamon each.
To all mothers, grandmothers and those who follow their figure, I recommend making an apple marshmallow. The resulting delicious dessert contains fiber, vitamins, and pectins necessary for health.
A healthy delicacy can be prepared not only from apples, you can be convinced of this by reading the recipe for marshmallow.
Oriental cuisine is famous for its luxurious sweets.

The daughter recently announced that she had never eaten anything tastier than Snickers. ((Well, how to understand this? ((Our grapes are now cheap, our nuts ... I decided to make her "Snickers", but only Georgian - a natural, tasty and nutritious delicacy. Shl. Georgian girls (well, boys), correct if it didn't work out quite authentic. But I tried ...

Ingredients for Churchkhela:

Nutritional and energy value:

Churchkhela recipe:

I took Isabella grapes for juice, it is very aromatic, sweet and the juice from it is very dark in color. The easiest way to get juice from grapes, of course, is through a juicer. But I don't have such a miracle of technology, so I just punched the berries in a blender and strained them, grinding them through a sieve. If it's really tight with grapes (we have a season, I paid 100 rubles for three kilograms), take ready-made, packaged juice, but the taste, of course, will be completely different. From three kg of grape juice, I got almost 2 liters.

Prepare your nuts. I have a mix of walnuts and hazelnuts. Break them into halves or quarters, but not smaller, otherwise you will not be able to string them on a string. Leave the hazelnuts intact. Using a fairly dense, strong thread and a needle, make these walnut beads.

Pour about a glass of juice, put the rest on the stove and bring to a boil. Cook for five minutes. Add flour to a glass to juice and pour into boiling juice, stirring vigorously. I didn’t add sugar - the grapes were very sweet, but try it, you may have to sweeten it. About flour. I have seen a different ratio of flour-juice proportions. For myself, I stopped at this option - I did not add all the flour, cook it, stir it and look at the density of the resulting mass. It should be quite thick and stringy. I dipped the edge of the thread with nuts and looked to see if the mass was holding on to the nuts, if it was not draining too quickly. The amount of flour may need to be increased or, conversely, reduced. This viscous and aromatic mass must be boiled for another 5 minutes.

Well, now - the most pleasant thing. We dip the threads with the strung nuts in the syrup, melting them with a spoon. We raise it over the pan, wait a little for the excess weight of the glass and hang it in a pre-prepared place (I hung it on the open door of the oven on hooks made of paper clips. You can adapt an ordinary clothes hanger for this case). Be sure to place a baking sheet under the churchkhela or lay baking paper!

This procedure will have to be repeated several times, increasing the grape layer. When you dip the last thread, the first one will drain slightly and harden, you can wait a couple of minutes and start the process over again: dipped it, raised it, slightly glass, hung it up. I did it three times. If grape juice remains, add substandard nuts made from small pieces of nuts and place in candy tins.