These wonderful Karaite pies remain fluffy even when they cool! Crispy crust, pleasant golden color, juicy filling...

By the way, the filling in these pies deserves special attention. It turns out so amazing because the meat is chopped raw into small pieces! It will be even tastier if you add a little fat to the minced meat. Here it is, the perfect mince for pies.

Meat pies in the oven
DOUGH INGREDIENTS

650 g flour
250 g butter
200 ml water
0.5 tsp. salt
0.5 tbsp. l. Sahara
1 tbsp. l. vinegar
3 eggs
INGREDIENTS FOR FILLING
600 g lamb or beef pulp
2 onions
100 g fat tail fat
salt
ground black pepper
COOKING
Sift the flour into a bowl. Finely chop the cold butter with a knife and mix with the sifted flour.
Add 2 eggs, salt, sugar and water with vinegar. Knead the dough. The dough for meat pies should be homogeneous. Wrap it in cling film and place it in the refrigerator for 1 hour.
Chop the meat or cut it into small pieces, but under no circumstances use a meat grinder: the filling may lose its juiciness! Add finely chopped onion and fat tail fat, salt and pepper, mix with meat.
Pinch off a small piece from the dough, make a bun and roll it into a thin flat cake. Place 1 tbsp on one half. l. filling, cover with the rest, connect the edges and wrap them with a pigtail. The delicious pie will resemble a big dumpling!

Before baking, brush the pies with egg. Bake them in an oven preheated to 200 degrees for about 30 minutes.

These meat pies can be fried in oil: you get a classic version of the dish, because this is how Karaite pies were prepared in the old days. We choose a more dietary and healthy option, so we recommend cooking in the oven. But sometimes you can treat yourself! If you like this recipe, be sure to save it on your wall and show it to your loved ones! It’s rare to find such a successful pie recipe.

My grandmother was a purebred Karaite (some historians classify Karaites as Semites, others as Turks). Karaite pies are one of the most favorite dishes of our family... and our friends. The peculiarity of Karaite pies and pies: they are made from fatty or puff pastry, and the filling of raw meat and other ingredients is placed inside. Be sure to add a little water to the filling so that the finished pies have juicy meat with broth. Everyone, having tried these pies at least once, becomes their fans.

Filling:

Pork (lamb) pulp - 500 g,

Potatoes - 1-2 pcs.,

Onion - 1 head,

Water - 3-4 table. spoons,

Salt and ground black pepper - to taste.

Dough: make the dough with 2.5-3 cups of flour according to any of three recipes (see below).

Making pies.

Prepare unleavened fatty or puff pastry, cover and refrigerate for 20-30 minutes. For those who are making pies for the first time, I advise you to prepare bland fatty dough. First of all, this is what my grandmother did. And secondly, this dough is quick to make and easier to work with.

The pies you see in the photo are made from unleavened puff pastry test. The dough is crispy, a little hard. It is more difficult to work with than fat. Because of this, my pies did not come out as beautiful as usual.

I choose the best meat for pies at the market. If it is pork, then take not very fatty pieces. Fat is allowed, but only a little.

Wash the meat, cut into small pieces (approximately 8 mm cubes). Peel the potatoes and cut into slightly smaller cubes. Cut the onion into small pieces. Put everything in a saucepan, add salt and pepper, add a few tablespoons of water, and mix everything.

Cut the dough into portions, make balls, roll out flat cakes with a diameter of 10-12 cm. Do not roll the dough too thin, otherwise the wet filling will cause the dough to fall apart. The thickness of the dough should be approximately 3-4 mm.

Place a tablespoon of filling in the middle of each flatbread and make a pie. To do this, make tucks along the edge (they should be on top). Make the pinches carefully so that the juice does not leak out of the pie during baking. Then make teeth along the edge of each pie.

The cloves are made as follows: lightly pull the two pinched edges together and fold them forward from the outside inwards, towards the center of the pie. And so, tooth by tooth.

Make a “spout” in the center of each pie - a hole for steam to escape. The “nose” is made like this: pinch the dough with your thumb and forefinger so that two holes are formed, and between them there is a protruding piece of dough.

Place the pies on a baking sheet greased with vegetable oil. Brush the top of the pies with egg.

Bake the pies in a hot oven for approximately 40 minutes. Karaite pies are best eaten hot.

However, cold Karaite pies are also incredibly tasty. Place the cooled pies in a large pan, cover with a napkin, cover the top with a pan lid and place in the refrigerator. So pies can be stored for 2-3 days, maintaining their taste.

Advice: When making pies, you may have some dough left over. Add any filling to the remaining dough and bake the pies. For example, my family likes this filling: chopped dried apricots, prunes and walnuts, plus put 1/2 teaspoon in each pie (when you add the filling). spoons of sugar.

If there is any meat filling left, you can simply fry it in a frying pan.

If you have some dough left and more filling than you need, make one large pie in the pan. Divide the dough into two parts. Roll out two flat cakes, slightly larger in diameter than the bottom of the pan. Grease the pan with oil. Lay out the first flatbread, lift the edges to form “sides,” and fill the top with meat filling. Top with a second tortilla. Connect the edges of the two cakes, make tucks, and then “teeth”, as on Karaite pies. Make two or three “spouts” for steam to escape (like on Karaite pies). Brush the top with egg. Place in the preheated oven and bake for about 40 minutes.

Preparing the dough.

Unleavened fatty dough.

To prepare unleavened fatty dough, lamb tail fat, melted butter, beef fat in combination with vegetable oil are used.

As for me, I tried baking with lard (instead of lamb fat), adding vegetable oil. But it turns out very satisfying and not every stomach can withstand such “fullness”. Therefore, as fat I use melted butter (or margarine) with the addition of vegetable oil (can be in a one-to-one ratio, or any other).

Products: wheat flour - 3 cups, fat (butter, margarine, beef fat, etc.) - 1 cup, water - 0.5 cups, salt - 0.5 teaspoon. spoons.

Sift the flour, pour it into a heap on the table or into a basin, and make a hole on top with a funnel. Dissolve the salt in water, pour water into the funnel and carefully mix from the center to the edges, gradually increasing the funnel. When the flour has absorbed all the water, pour melted hot fat into the funnel (heat the fat so as not to burn yourself) and quickly knead the dough. The dough should not be very hard (steep). Cover the dough with a napkin or wrap it in cellophane, let it rest for 15-20 minutes, then make the pies.

Unleavened puff pastry.

Products: wheat flour - 3 cups, liquid (eggs, water) - 1.5 cups, salt - 1/3 teaspoon. spoons, vinegar - 3 teaspoons. spoons, butter or margarine for a layer of 300-450 g, flour for rolling with butter - 3-5 teaspoons. spoons

You can add 1 to 3 eggs to the puff pastry. When adding eggs, the required amount of water decreases accordingly. Those. To prepare a dough from 3 cups of flour, you need to combine water, vinegar, egg, salt so that together you get as much liquid as the water required according to the recipe - 1.5 cups. You can replace water with whey.

Pour sifted flour into a bowl.

Mix water, egg, vinegar, salt in a separate bowl, mix everything. Gradually add liquid to the flour and stir with a spoon or hand until a homogeneous dense mass is obtained. Knead the dough until it comes off from your hands and from the utensils. Roll the dough into a ball, place it on a table sprinkled with flour, cover with a napkin and let rest for 20-30 minutes. “We need to let the dough rest,” my grandmother said.

First put the butter in a bowl so that it softens, mix it with the amount of flour necessary for rolling with the butter, make a small cake from the butter and flour and put it in the refrigerator.

Roll out the dough into a flat cake four times the size of the flat cake using flour and butter. Remove the small tortilla from the refrigerator, place it on top of the larger one, and fold the edges of the larger tortilla over the smaller one to form an envelope. I tried to depict how I did it in the picture.

Products: wheat flour - 2.5-3 cups, butter (or margarine) - 250 g, liquid (water, salt, egg, vinegar) - 1 cup, vinegar - 3 teaspoons. spoons, salt - 1/3 teaspoon. spoons.

Mix eggs (2-3 pcs.), water, salt and vinegar in a separate bowl to make the liquid according to the recipe - 1 glass.

Pour sifted flour onto a table or into a large bowl, put chilled margarine (butter) on top and cut into small pieces, chop with a knife so that the flour is mixed with fat and a homogeneous granular mass is obtained. Sprinkle this mass with liquid little by little and continue chopping until all the liquid is used up.

Gather the dough into a ball, cover with a napkin and leave for 30-40 minutes. in the refrigerator, the dough is ready for making products.

I think the recipe will be useful to you. And someday I will pamper you with recipes of Karaite national cuisine.

Kibins (kibinai) are pies of the Karaite people, traditionally prepared on fatty dough with a filling of raw chopped lamb or any meat except pork. The filling should be juicy, so if you are afraid that the meat will not release its juices during baking, add a little water to the filling.

We suggest making Karaite kibina pies from unleavened dough with sour cream and margarine. These sour cream pies turn out very juicy and flavorful.

For the test:
- flour – 1 kg
- margarine – 450 g
- eggs – 3 pcs. + 1 pc. for greasing pies
- sour cream – 200 g
- salt – 1 teaspoon

For filling:
- lamb or turkey pulp – 1 kg
- onions – 3 pcs.
- salt, pepper - to taste
- margarine – 50 g
- water

Cooking Karaite pies - kibins

1. Chop the chilled margarine into the sifted flour and rub into greasy crumbs with your hands.

2. Add eggs, sour cream, salt and knead the dough. It should turn out to be quite soft, lagging behind your hands.

3. Wrap the dough in cling film and place in the refrigerator for 30 minutes. During this time you will have time to prepare the filling.

4. Chop the meat very finely with a sharp knife. You can pass it through a meat grinder with large holes, but then the meat will lose its juiciness and you will have to add more water to the filling.

5. Peel the onion and cut into small cubes.

6. Mix meat with onion, salt and pepper. Add melted margarine and a little water so that the filling becomes a little wet (then a delicious broth will form inside the finished kibins).

7. Divide the chilled dough into equal parts (about 24 balls).

8. Roll out each ball into a flat cake, add the filling, mold it like a dumpling, and decorate the edges with a braid.

9. Cover a baking tray with baking paper (it is not necessary to oil it, since the dough is fatty) and place the kibins on it with the braids facing up.

10. Brush the pies with egg and bake in an oven preheated to 200 degrees for about 30 minutes, until golden brown.

Bon appetit and delicious pies!

Interesting to know
Kibins (kybyny, kibinay, in the Karaite language “kybyn”, in the plural “kybynlar”) are a popular dish of the Turkic Karaite people. The traditional place of residence of the Karaites is Crimea, but there is a diaspora in Lithuania and some cities in western Ukraine.

The dough should hold its shape well and be quite dense.

Divide the dough into 4 parts and roll out each part thinly.

Melt margarine and grease the rolled out layers.

The spread I had was soft margarine (a butter substitute), so at room temperature it was very easy to spread it over the dough layer with a knife, which is what I did.

Roll the greased layers into a roll and place in the refrigerator for 15-20 minutes.

Prepare the minced meat for the filling. Fatty meat (if it is beef, then add a small amount of fat, in the original fat tail, but it can be replaced with lard) finely chop with a knife - a meat grinder is not needed here. Cut the onion into small cubes and mix with the meat.

To make the pies more juicy, pour half a glass of water into the minced meat and mix thoroughly. Salt and pepper, add a little chopped parsley.

We cut the dough in the roll into pieces 10 cm long, flatten them and roll them into flat cakes with a diameter of about 15-17 cm. The main thing is that they are not very thin.

Place a heaping tablespoon of minced meat in the middle of the flatbread, pinch the edges tightly and we do along the edge of the pie there is a “string”. To do this, bend the corner of the dough slightly with your thumb and press the dough towards the middle of the pie. As a result, a new corner is formed, which we bend again. And so on until the end of the pie.

1. Karaite pies - a favorite dish of all Crimeans and generally one of the culinary calling cards of Crimea. True, they are also very popular in Lithuania, where a fairly large Karaite diaspora lives. In Lithuania they are calledkibinai (or kibins). The Karaite dough is crispy, and the filling is very juicy.

Ingredients

For the test:

Flour - 650 g

Butter – 250 g

Water – 200 ml

Egg - 2 pcs. + 1 pc. for surface lubrication

Salt - 0.5 tsp.

Sugar - 0.5 tbsp. l.

Vinegar - 1 tbsp. l.

For filling:

Lamb or beef pulp - 600 g

Onion - 2 pcs.

Salt

Ground black pepper

Fat tail fat (if the meat is lean) - 100 g

Cooking method:

1. Sift the flour into a bowl. Finely chop the chilled butter or grate it on a coarse grater and combine it with flour, add eggs, salt, sugar and water with vinegar and knead into a homogeneous soft dough. You can do without vinegar, but with it the dough becomes crispier, that is, the effect of puff pastry appears. Wrap it in film and put it in the refrigerator for an hour.

Step 1. Knead the dough and put it in the refrigerator for an hour

2 . Traditionally, lamb is used for Karaite pies. The Karaites did not eat pork. Therefore, if you do not like the flavor of lamb, you can replace it with beef. Adjust the fat content of the meat to your taste. If you use lean meat, add a little fat tail fat. This will add juiciness and lamb flavor to the filling.

Finely chop or chop the meat (but do not use a meat grinder, otherwise there will be no juiciness), add chopped onion to it. Season the filling with salt and pepper and mix thoroughly.

Step 2. Prepare the filling for Karaite pies

3. Pinch off balls the size of a child's fist from the dough and roll out into thin flat cakes. Place a tablespoon of filling on one half and seal the edge. Then we wrap the edge with a pigtail, like a large dumpling. If you don’t know how to do this, go to Google with the request “pigtail on dumplings” or pies and watch one of the suggested video options. Google usually produces a large number of very intelligible short videos.

Step 3. Forming the pies

4. Sometimes in some literary sources I came across a recommendation to make “spouts” on Karaite pies - holes with a tuck for steam to escape. I DO NOT RECOMMEND doing this. Since in this case the juice flows out unsightly and remains in streaks on the pie, in addition, the filling remains dry and not juicy, and the pie itself does not inflate without exposure to steam and remains flat.

5. Before baking, brush the pies with egg and bake at 200 degrees for about half an hour. Serve hot!!! True, they are also very tasty when cold.

________________________________________ ____

2. Kashyk-ash - spoon soup

This ancient dish is found among several peoples in Crimea. Among the Crimean Tatars, kashyk-ash or sometimes another spelling kaash-kash is translated as spoon soup, among the Crimeans - syuzme, among the Karaites - khamur-dolma (literally stuffed dough), among the Azov Greeks who came from the Crimea - hashikhya. Essentially, these are very small dumplings filled with meat. They are served along with the broth in which they were boiled. As a rule, yogurt or natural yogurt is added to kashyk-ash and generously sprinkled with herbs. The size of the dumplings spoke about the skill of the hostess. There should be at least 6-7 of them in a spoon. I could fit 8 and even had some room left.

Ingredients

For the test:

Water – 200 ml

Egg - 1 pc.

Salt - 1 tsp.

Flour - at least 4 cups, but possibly more (640 g)

Sunflower oil - 1-2 tbsp. l.

For filling:

Beef – 200 g

Lamb – 150 g

Onion - 1 pc.

Ground black pepper

Salt - 1 tsp.

For serving:

Greens (onion, dill, parsley) - to taste

Yogurt or sour cream - to taste

Ground black pepper - to taste

Cooking method:

1. Mix flour, water, eggs and salt into a stiff dough. Cover it with a bowl, film or towel and leave for an hour.

Step 1. Knead the dough

2 . For minced meat, pass the meat and onion through a meat grinder. Salt and pepper. The choice of meat was determined by religious views, since Tatars and Krymchaks do not eat pork. The proportions of beef and lamb can be any.

Step 2. Prepare the minced meat

3. Roll out a small piece of dough on a well-floured surface. The fact is that making small dumplings takes longer than regular ones, so the dough can dry out. If you have an assistant in modeling, then you can cut the dough into squares and quickly form dumplings. The dough needs to be rolled out quite thinly, but not too zealously - otherwise the dough, wet from the filling, may break through. Squares should be no larger than 3 cm in size.

Step 3. Making small dumplings

If you are making dumplings without an assistant, then you need to roll out the dough in small portions, cut it into strips, and fold the strips one on top of the other. In this case, the dough should be very stiff and dusted with flour so that the layers do not stick together. It is easier to cut strips folded together into equal squares. We stack the finished squares on top of each other - this way the dough dries out less - and form small dumplings the size of a knuckle. Some craftswomen sculpted dumplings the size of a marigold.

4. Place the finished dumplings on a floured surface and let them dry a little, and then freeze or cook immediately.

Step 3. Place the finished dumplings on a floured surface

5. Place the dumplings in boiling broth or water. Serve the porridge immediately, without allowing the dish to cool. Season with ground pepper and sprinkle generously with herbs. If desired, you can top it with sour cream, yogurt or natural yoghurt.

_________________________________

3. Chebureks

Chebureks are the most popular dish of Crimean cuisine; they are prepared in almost every home. Both my mother and grandmother often cooked pasties, at least once a month - that’s for sure. This ancient dish is found among many Crimean peoples under different names. Chebureks are the Crimean Tatar name, and among the Krymchaks and Karaites they are called chir-chir (consonant with the sizzling oil during frying). Previously, they were prepared only from lamb and fried in lamb fat. Nowadays they are boiled in hot sunflower oil, and on the menu of numerous Crimean chebureks, cafes and restaurants you can often find variations of cheese filling, tomato and even sweet chebureks with cottage cheese. And all this is undoubtedly very tasty too.

The dough in chebureks is thin, very tender and slightly crispy. Hot chebureks are always bubbly and pot-bellied, and when you bite into them, a delicious juice—broth—oozes out of the filling. It goes without saying that you should only eat them hot, before the juice is absorbed into the dough.

Ingredients:

For the test:

Flour - 3.5 cups. (560 g)

Water - 1 glass.

Salt - 1 tsp.

For filling:

Onion - 1-2 pcs.

Salt

Greenery

Black pepper

Water - about 0.5 cup.

For frying:

Refined sunflower oil - at least 0.5 l

Cooking method:

1. Mix water, flour, salt and a small amount of vegetable oil into a fairly stiff dough. You need to knead it until it becomes smooth, elastic and glossy. Cover it with a bowl, film or towel and leave to rest for an hour.

2 . Add salt, a lot of herbs and ground black pepper to the minced meat. Finely chop the onion and sprinkle it with a little salt, crush it with your hands so that it becomes softer and is not too noticeable in the finished pasties. Mix the onion with the filling, add water and stir. The consistency of the minced meat should be a little liquid, but not too much so that the filling does not spread, and not thick so that it remains juicy in the finished cheburek.

3. Pinch off a ball of dough from the dough and roll out a thin circle with a diameter corresponding to your frying pan or cauldron in which the pasties will be fried. If the dough sticks to the board, lightly dust it with flour, but not much, so that the excess flour does not burn in the oil. Place a tablespoon of filling on one half of the circle, cover with the other half and seal the edge well. We cut the edge of the dough with a special knife for pasties. The Crimean Tatars called it chegyr.

4 . Pour a lot of oil into a cauldron or deep frying pan so that the pasties float and do not touch the bottom. We heat it very well, so that when lowering the cheburek it boils. Fry the pasties until golden brown. It is important that there are no holes in the dough and that the edge is well formed, otherwise during frying the juice will leak out and the oil will smoke heavily. Turn over and remove the chebureki with a slotted spoon.

We serve the pasties right there! Immediately!!!

_______________________________________

4. Yantyki

Essentially, yantyki are pasties fried in a dry frying pan, without oil.. Once cooked, they are generously greased with butter and covered, this makes them soft and very tasty. The result is a completely different dish from chebureks. It's hard to say which one tastes better, you have to try both!

Ingredients:

For the test:

Flour - 3.5 cups. (560 g)

Water - 1 glass.

Vegetable oil - 2 tbsp. l.

Salt - 1 tsp.

For filling:

Minced lamb or beef - 200-300 g

Onion - 1-2 pcs.

Salt

Greenery

Black pepper

Water - about 0.5 cup.

For lubrication:

Melted or softened butter - 100 g

Cooking method:

All stages of preparation before frying, that is, kneading the dough and preparing the filling, are no different from pasties.

Then we take a frying pan, preferably with a thick bottom, preferably cast iron, heat it over medium heat and fry the yantyki without using oil, that is, in a completely dry frying pan. A couple of minutes on one side and the same on the other. If you are not sure that the dough is fried, you can turn the yantik over again and let it bake for another minute.

Grease hot yantiki with butter and cover with a lid or plate so that they steam a little and soften. Served hot, of course!

___________________________________

5. Jewish stuffed fish (gefilte fish)

I learned about this dish from my grandmother, who lived for a long time in the same yard with a Jewish family. The peculiarity of this dish, traditional for Crimean Jews, is that the whole fish is skinned, stuffed and then boiled with beets, onions and carrots. It is probably appropriate to mention that in the 20s of the twentieth century. A large number of Jews moved to Crimea and they even wanted to make the peninsula a Jewish autonomy.

This is a very difficult dish, both in terms of preparation technology and its significance, which is simply enormous for Jewish culture. Translated from Yiddish, gefilte fish can be translated not only as stuffed fish, but as a filled, rich fish. It is served on the holidays of Passover and Rosh Hashanah, and is also ideal for the Sabbath, since, cooked on Friday, it contains no bones, which means it does not violate the Jewish prohibition against removing bones on the Sabbath.

When cold, stuffed fish is a very tasty dish. It is served in different ways. Some are served with broth as a cold first course, while others allow the broth to harden and serve as aspic.

I learned the intricacies of cooking from my friend and colleague Evgeniy Melnichenko, who simply expertly prepares gefilte fish. By the way, Evgeniy is an amazing artist, a master of wood carving, many of his products are dedicated to Jewish art.

Ingredients

For fish:

Pike or pike perch – 1.5 kg

Onions - 2-3 pcs.

Matzo – 100 g

Dill - 0.5 bunch.

Raw eggs - 2 pcs.

Boiled eggs, peeled, whole (small) - 3 pcs.

Salt - to taste, but a little more than usual

Ground black pepper

For the broth:

Raw beets - 2 pcs.

Raw carrots - 2 pcs.

Onion - 1 pc.

Yellow and red onion peels

Bay leaf - 3-4 pcs.

Black peppercorns

Brown sugar - 0.5 tbsp. l.

Salt - to taste

Water

Cooking method:

1 . First, let's focus on the choice of fish. I consider pike perch to be the ideal fish for this dish, although pike or carp are considered traditional for stuffed fish in the world. A bearing is also quite suitable.

We clean the fish from scales, remove the gills, cut off all the fins except the tail, remove the gill bone, but try to ensure that the head remains attached to the body along the back. Then we go under the skin with our fingers and separate it from the meat. In the place of the dorsal fin under the skin, we trim the bones with scissors, being careful not to damage the skin. So we reach the tail, gradually turning the skin inside out. Finally, we use scissors to separate the ridge from the tail, again, being careful not to damage the skin.

2. Before you start preparing the minced meat, collect the cut off fins, ridge and scales (discard only the gills), add a liter of water and cook the clear broth over very low heat, adding a little salt to it. Strain the broth.

3 . Cover the matzo with water and let it soften completely. In supermarkets you can find many variations of matzo, from classic unleavened to delicious salted with onions, poppy seeds and other fillings.

Finely chop the onion and saute half in vegetable oil, and leave the other half raw.

We separate the meat from the bones and pass it through a meat grinder along with the matzo. Add sautéed and raw onions, salt, pepper, chopped herbs, and two raw eggs to the minced meat. Mix everything.

4. We fill the fish with minced meat, but not too tightly, but so that it takes on a natural shape. Sometimes boiled eggs are placed in the middle of the fish to make the fish slices look more impressive when cut. By the way, I noticed that with eggs inside, the fish retains a more rounded shape when cooked and does not become flat.

5 . At the bottom of the pan we place onion peels, peeled and cut into slices beets and carrots, a whole peeled onion, bay leaf, and peppercorns.

6. Then we place the fish belly down, back up and fill it with hot broth. It's okay if the fish is completely uncovered. Salt the broth well and add a couple of teaspoons of brown sugar. If you don't have brown sugar, you can replace it with burnt sugar: hold half a tablespoon of sugar over the fire until it caramelizes and turns light brown. Cook the fish with the lid closed for about two hours, skimming off the foam at the beginning. We wait for it to cool completely and only then take out the fish, trying not to let the head come off.

Strain the broth, heat it and add gelatin according to the instructions. Place the fish on a dish, pour in a small amount of jelly, let it harden well and decorate with lemon, beets, and herbs.

Pour the stuffed fish with hot broth and cook for about 2 hours.

________________________________________ _________

Another recipe for chebureks from the book “Karaite Cuisine”:

________________________________________ __________

Our blog has already published posts with recipes from seasonal Crimean products and Crimean recipes.