Lecho winter recipe: a traditional canned salad framed by fruit and hearty options

For Hungarians, lecho is one of the most beloved main dishes of national cuisine. They do not harvest it for the winter, but eat it with heat, immediately after cooking. To make a thick sauce with large pieces of vegetables hearty and rich, Hungarian housewives and restaurateurs add meat ingredients to it. Most often - home-made pork sausage, which turns a light snack into a full dinner.

In our country, lecho is prepared according to a different principle. In Russia, it is a salad with peppers, carrots and onions, canned for the winter. Thanks to the housewives, the World Wide Web is filled with a wide variety of recipes of Hungarian food, adapted to modern Russian realities. Having opened a tin can with lecho, the workpiece can be used as a sauce for meat or fish dishes, as well as a dressing for borsch and tomato soups.

In the classic Hungarian lecho at the very end, add chicken eggs beaten with a fork. Hungarians believe that it is impossible to eat a dish without crispy white bread. They dip it in sauce and in one sitting can eat at least half a roll.

Full benefit can

Bell pepper cure for the winter is not only convenient, but also “vitamin”. With the advent of winter colds, the reserves of nutrients stored by the body in the summer begin to run low. Pepper is rich in vitamin C, which is vital for a person in the early spring, when there are still no fresh vegetables and fruits, as well as in the winter and late autumn, when the quality gifts of the garden are a real luxury. However, this is not the only advantage of the dish under discussion. About the rest will tell the table.

Table - The benefits of the main components of lecho for the body

5 rules of competent spin

You can follow the example of the Hungarians and enjoy the taste of freshly prepared lecho. In such a dish, acetic acid is absent - as well as the possibility of its long-term storage. It can be cooked in a slow cooker without oil - on only water, minimizing the calorie content of the snack and making it lean. But for the winter to cook lecho without oil and vinegar will not work. Acid kills all bacteria that got into the jar along with vegetables, and prevents their reproduction. Due to these properties of vinegar, preservation is stored under a tin lid for a long time. Consider five more rules of successful spin.

1. Sweet Tomatoes. Ripe, even overripe fruits are the secret of the sweetness of Hungarian food. Tomatoes participating in the culinary process must be fleshy and juicy at the same time. Some housewives take red and pink tomatoes in a 1: 1 ratio.
2. Red pepper. Green bell pepper is extremely rare in lecho. If it is added, then exclusively for color contrast. The most suitable option is red “Bulgarian”. The reason is the same as when choosing tomatoes - sweetness. Green pepper tastes fresh, and red pepper is almost sugar.
3. The density of the main ingredient. Digest bell pepper is not worth it. The Hungarians believe that the vegetable should remain a bit dense, thereby contrasting with mashed tomatoes and transparent slices of onions.
4. Fragrant spices. An unrivaled smell can be obtained using fresh herbs. Most of all with tomatoes and peppers, cilantro, thyme and basil are in harmony. Parsley - dried or fresh - is also suitable. By the way, it is because of its prevalence that it is most often added to conservation. It is important to know that dried herbs are added to the lecho together with vegetables. But fresh spices - only a couple of minutes before readiness.
5. The experiments. If you want to close the lecho with bell pepper for the winter, spending a minimum of time, use proven recipes. But if you want to achieve a new taste, feel free to experiment. The sweetness of the dish can be adjusted using honey. Acidity - with an apple. Delicate consistency of the salad will add pumpkin pulp. A nice grain is red beans.

Pepper and tomato recipes: 3 delicious options

One of the most popular domestic variants of the Hungarian lecho is a salad based on pepper, tomato and bean. Beans are pre-soaked overnight to swell and reach readiness in a common pot at the same time as pepper and other vegetables. Tomato puree is often replaced with ready-made tomato juice, oriented as follows: 3 kg of tomatoes are equal to 1 liter of juice, 6 kg of tomatoes are equal to 2 liters of juice and so on.

For Conservatives: Classic

Feature. Cooking Lecho at home for the winter will take a minimum of time, but will bring maximum results, if you know some of the subtleties of the process. Pepper is cut only along. Each bend, if the fruit is too large, can be cut into two equal parts. Before sending to the common boiler, it is better to blanch the tomatoes. Minute heat treatment will simplify the removal of the peel from the fruit. If this is not done, the tomato peel will roll into a tube and will look very unsightly in the finished dish.

Test purchase:

• red bell pepper - 2 kg;
• tomatoes - 1 kg;
• garlic - two large heads;
• onions - four root crops;
• parsley - a bunch;
• cilantro - a bunch;
• ground black pepper - a teaspoon;
• vegetable oil (refined) - 250 ml;
• sugar - 125 g;
• ground paprika - a teaspoon;
• 9% vinegar - two tablespoons per can.

Cooking algorithm step by step

1. Peel the onions, cut into medium-sized half rings and fry in a small amount of oil until transparent and golden in color.
2. Blanch the tomatoes and grind them in a blender or pass through a meat grinder.
3. From peppers we cut the stalk, peel it from the seeds and cut along.
4. In a deep stewpan or pan with a thick bottom, transfer the fried onions, add the tomatoes turned into thick tomato juice, add salt to your taste and, stirring occasionally, simmer for about a quarter of an hour.
5. After we add chopped pepper to the common pot, close the pan with a lid, simmer for about five minutes. Remove the lid and stirring, continue the process for another ten minutes.
6. Peel the garlic, finely chop it or let it pass through the press and add it to the pot with vegetables along with sugar.
7. After 20 minutes, pour spices, finely chopped greens into the lecho and simmer for another ten minutes. Pour vinegar a couple of minutes before cooking.
8. We lay out on sterilized jars, preserve, turn upside down, wrap in a blanket and leave to cool until morning.
9. After cooling, turn the cans back and put them in storage in the pantry or cellar.

Gourmet: with plums

Feature. If you want a fundamentally new taste, try cooking lecho for the winter with plums. The fruit variety does not matter. It can be either green or pink, and dark blue fruits, which are often used to make prunes. The dish should be thick. To do this, frying onions, you need to add a couple of tablespoons of flour to it, mix well and fry for another minute. After that, introduce the onion with flour component into the common pot, thus achieving the desired level of viscosity.

Test purchase:

• bell pepper - 2 kg;
• onions - four pieces;
• garlic - head;
• chili - one;
• plums - 15 fruits;
• refined vegetable oil - 0.1 l;
• 9% vinegar - 25 ml;
• table salt - three tablespoons;
• granulated sugar - two tablespoons;
• drinking water - 1/5 cup.

Cooking algorithm step by step

1. We clear the plums and send to a blender. There we throw the peeled cloves of garlic and hot pepper, from which all seeds are taken out. Grind the fruit and vegetable mixture to a puree state.
2. Add vegetable oil, granulated sugar and table salt to the garlic-plum puree, pour the mixture into a saucepan and bring to a boil.
3. To the boiling mixture we send sliced ​​onions and longitudinally chopped large pieces of pepper.
4. Add water and, stirring occasionally, boil the salad for 1/3 hour.
5. Before removing from heat, pour vinegar into the salad and pack it in sterilized jars. After we roll up the canning key.

For experimenters: with eggplant and rice

Feature. Lecho with tomato paste for the winter is very popular in our country, among the ingredients of which are eggplant and round rice. As a result, you can get not just a salad or a snack, but a thick hearty side dish. Sometimes the recipe is supplemented with zucchini, taking them in proportion with the blue ones 1: 1. Some housewives use ketchup instead of tomato paste, but professional chefs do not approve of such a replacement. The only high-quality alternative to tomato paste is natural tomato juice.

Test purchase:

• sweet pepper - 1 kg;
• tomato paste - four tablespoons;
• carrot - 500 g;
• eggplant - two small;
• round rice (not steamed) - a glass;
• onions - 1 kg;
• granulated sugar - six tablespoons;
• salt - six teaspoons;
• refined vegetable oil - a glass;
• vinegar - two tablespoons for each jar.

Cooking algorithm step by step

1. Peel eggplant and carrots. Grind carrots on a coarse grater, cut blue ones into cubes.
2. Pepper is cleared of seeds and stalk and cut into large pieces. Mix the main ingredient with eggplant and carrots.
3. Mix the tomato paste with four glasses of drinking water and pour it into the vegetables. We put the pan on fire and boil the contents for ¼ hour.
4. Rice, meanwhile, is boiled in a large amount of water until half ready, drained into a colander and allowed to drain excess moisture.
5. Add rice to the pot with vegetables and simmer for another ¼ hour.
6. Season with sugar and salt, add your favorite spices if desired.
7. A minute before cooking, add vinegar or pour acid into the jars after packing the hot salad.

Due to the fact that the salad is packaged in jars completely ready, preservation is carried out without sterilization.The role of the main ingredient can be not only fresh, but also frozen bell pepper, stocked up by the hostess in the fall.

Another trick with which you can improve the recipe for the winter season is starch. This is a natural thickener, which is mixed with several tablespoons of tomato juice, and then poured into a common pot. The dish turns out to be viscous and nourishing - similar to a thick tomato soup or sauce.

Reviews

I fry a little pepper, put the tomatoes to cook for 30 minutes until thickened. I put salt sugar and pepper, it is already soft, I bring it to a boil, cook for 5 minutes and roll it. I don’t add oil since I also don’t add fried vinegar pepper. Tomatoes have their own acid.

Hope, https://tutknow.ru/cookery/preserving/980-lecho-iz-bolgarskogo-perca.html

And you can make a potato casserole with lecho: on top of mashed potatoes with an egg and butter, put a jar of lecho with beans (or zucchini, or rice) on top, and fill with grated cheese and bake in the oven! And if you also let the meat layer in there !!

Lana_nov, http://forum.say7.info/topic8242.html

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