The recipe for a delicious cold. When to salt a cold and how to make it transparent?

A fragrant transparent jelly is a frequent guest at many festive feasts and celebrations. For someone, the main decoration of the festive table is exotic dishes and tropical fruits. But many prefer the traditional, but from the no less delicious food, which can be attributed and the cold. It is often called jelly. However, not every young housewife will risk cooking a cold - the recipe is not as simple as it might seem at first glance. The process has its own nuances. In order to make the jellyfish not just delicious, but also transparent, mouth-watering and simply beautiful, you must follow certain rules for its preparation. Do not neglect these recommendations - and the jelly will definitely become your crown dish, a real decoration of any festive feast.

How to choose the right meat for a cold?

The first rule of making a transparent and tasty chill is the choice of the basis for the dish. For cooking jelly, you can take almost any meat at your discretion - pork, beef, chicken or turkey. However, many experienced housewives recommend to stop their choice on beef. Since it is possible to cook beef jelly only from certain parts of the carcass, it is necessary to take meat on the bone, part of the shin that is closer to the hoof, or beef sticks with veins, cartilages or with a skin. This choice is due to the fact that in their composition there are special gelling agents that promote the quick freezing of the broth without the use of gelatin and do not make it cloudy in appearance. You can use one or several types of meat.

When buying a meat set for making a holod, make sure it's fresh. If the beef has a specific "old" smell, small spots on the surface, visible traces of frequent frost, defrost or too dark color - it is better to refuse to purchase such a product, since it will not be possible to cook a delicious cold from it. Be sure to make sure that the meat set has approximately the same content of pulp and bones. If the beef pulp is too much, the jelly simply does not freeze. The same goes for too much bone. Therefore, the most important thing is a measure in everything.

Preparation of products

So, fresh meat for cooking the cold is chosen. Then it must be properly prepared. Beef should be soaked - it helps to get rid of the traces of blood and provide a beautiful transparent base of the holland. If the meat does not soak, the broth will be cloudy and unappetizing. Put the beef in cold water and leave for a couple of hours before cooking the jelly. The recipe of any housewife is the same in that the meat should be completely covered with water, otherwise the remaining blood traces and the hardness of the skin can not be avoided. After soaking, you can safely proceed with cutting. To do this, it is better to use a special meat knife or a hacksaw with large sharp teeth - with it you can cut beef bones so that there are no small fragments. If you just cut the beef with an ax, then there will definitely be sharp edges on the bones. Next, peel the meat with a knife, freeing it from splinters of bones, prepare other ingredients for cooking.

Ingredients necessary for the preparation of jelly

• Beef or meat set weighing from 2 to 4 kg.
• Pure cold water, better purified.
• Salt to taste (about when you need to salt a cold, below).
• 2-3 large onions.
• 2-4 large carrots.
• Tooth cloves - 6-8 pcs.
• Spices and herbs on your choice - bay leaf, black pepper, sweet pepper, red pepper, parsley root and celery, dill.

The basic stages of preparation of the cold

Further on how to cook a delicious cold. Place the cooked meat set in a saucepan and pour with clean, cold water. It is better to choose purified or filtered water for cooking this dish. If you use ordinary tap water, there will be a very high likelihood of a murky cast of broth. In addition, tap water has specific impurities that can give an unpleasant aftertaste to the finished jelly. Water should be taken in proportion 1: 2 to meat - this means that 1 kg of beef will need 2 liters of purified cold water. Part of the beef lay very tightly so that the meat is completely covered with water. We put on the fire.

Many experienced housewives recommend to cook the jelly only on a small fire - in this way you can get a crystal clear and transparent broth. If you cook on high fire, there is a risk that it will grow cloudy.

So, how to properly prepare a cold. After 20-30 minutes, once the broth boils, you need to carefully collect all the foam on its surface. Foam will rise during the whole cooking, so it is very important to carefully and regularly collect it all the time. Thanks to this process, the broth will remain transparent and beautiful in appearance. Many famous chefs recommend not to collect foam, but to completely drain the first water, in which the meat was cooked for the cold. Drain all the water, and wash the beef itself thoroughly under clean running water - so the meat will be cleansed of the remains of foam and bone fragments.

How to achieve a transparent color of the prepared dish?

The question that torments not only the novice mistresses: how to make the jelly transparent? Everything is simple. Rinse the pieces of meat set again in a saucepan and pour water, if necessary, grind again. After that, the pot can again be put on a small fire. Now, when a foam or fat appears on the surface of the broth, you can simply remove them with noise. As already mentioned above, the jellyfish cook on low heat - that's why the whole process of cooking this dish can take from 5 to 10 hours. Do not try to speed up the long process of cooking to increase the fire - the broth will become cloudy, and your jelly will turn out to be unattractive and unappetizing. In addition, prolonged cooking on low heat contributes to excellent hardening of the finished cavity - you will not need to use gelatin or other substances.

The rules for adding spices and herbs

After the cold is cooked under the lid for 4-5 hours, it will be time to add spices and herbs. This occurs until the moment when salt pudding (from beef including) will be necessary. Do not add these ingredients before the specified time - by the end of cooking they will lose their taste and characteristic spicy flavor. For holland, it is recommended to use whole vegetables without crushing them. You can take carrots and other vegetables directly in the skin without cleaning, - just simply rinse them thoroughly under running water. If you do not like this method, peel the vegetables from the peel, but do not cut them into pieces. Many put in the cooking jelly an unpeeled bulb - this trick helps to give the broth a light golden hue. Garlic cloves can be placed in any shape convenient for you - whole or chopped. At the same time, add the various spices to your future taste in a future cold - a special piquancy and the incomparable taste of the dish is given by black pepper, sweet pepper, pea, celery, parsley, bay leaf. But in any case, do not strongly zealous with the amount of spices - the ready-made jelly has an incredibly delicate and exquisite taste that can easily be spoiled with spicy spices.

When to salt a beef from a beef?

The main rule of a delicious and mouth-watering dish is the right salting. When to salt a cold? Remember that the cold must be salted 20-30 minutes before the end of its preparation. If you salt the dish before, the result will certainly disappoint you. Meat strongly absorbs salt. And even a small amount of it, poured in the beginning of cooking, can make your dish just inedible. In addition, the broth should be cooked on low heat for at least 5 hours - during this time the water in the pan boils out strongly, so the salt concentration in the broth becomes excessive. The best option for when to pour a cold is half an hour before the end of cooking.

Grind cooked meat correctly

After the jelly is cooked, turn off the fire and gently use the noise to remove the prepared meat from the pan. A whole bulb and carrots can also be removed - they have already fulfilled their mission. Slightly cool the cooked meat. Next, the cooked meat must be crushed thoroughly. This can be done simply by hand or using a small knife, with which to carefully separate the flesh from the bones and cartilage. Many people prefer to use it for grinding meat with a food processor or a meat grinder, but in the case of preparing a holly such methods should be avoided, since with such a method of grinding, the ready dish is deprived of its unique and exquisite taste. Make sure that in the finished meat there were no small bones, rests of skins or cartilage. Grind the cloves of garlic through the press and mix them with the meat obtained. Garlic is better not to cut with a knife, and press through a special press - so it mixes better with beef, there will not be large sloppy pieces.

Fill the cooked meat correctly

At the bottom of deep plates or trays, put chopped and mixed with garlic meat. If you want to make your culinary creation brighter and more original, you can put pieces of boiled yolk or carrots on the bottom of the plates, as well as any other products of your choice. Meat must be poured into the salted broth (about when to salt the cold, we already mentioned). To do this, it should be carefully filtered through a fine sieve or a double-folded gauze fabric. Thus, small pieces of cartilage and bones, excess fat are removed from the broth. As a result, it acquires an even, clean color and a pleasant shade. Slightly heat the strained broth in a saucepan over low heat and pour into it molds with cooked meat. If you use gelatin when preparing a cold, it's time to add this ingredient to the broth. To do this, take a glass with the already prepared and filtered broth, dilute in it one bag of gelatin and add the resulting mixture to the rest of the decoction before pouring it into the molds.

Freezing of a cold

It would seem that for housewives the most contentious issue is the question of when to salt a cold. But it is not so. There is another stage in the preparation of this dish, which causes quite a lot of questions - frosting.

To fully freeze the chill requires quite a considerable amount of time - from 4 to 10 hours. You can leave the molds with a fragrant meat dish for the whole night. In order for the cooked jelly to freeze, it will need a cool temperature, which is below room temperature. You can leave the dish on the balcony or on the windowsill - but these places are completely unsuitable in the winter season. At low temperatures, the delicate jelly left on the balcony will simply freeze and completely lose its unsurpassed tender taste. The optimum option for fast and high-quality congealing is the refrigerator.

It is better not to put dishes with beef cold on the top shelf of the refrigerator - as is known, here the zone of the lowest temperature, and your meat delicacy will simply freeze. It is not recommended to place molds with beef jelly and on the bottom shelves of the refrigerator - here, on the contrary, it will not freeze. The best choice will be an average shelf with the optimum temperature regime.

So, how to properly cook and when to salt a cold, you learned. And they did everything according to the prescription. Now your culinary masterpiece is ready, but with what to serve it? The traditional answer to this question is various hot sauces, mustard, horseradish or adzhika. You can serve a delicate meat dish with a small amount of soy sauce - it will give the chill a special piquancy. A very tasty combination will be jelly served with marinated mushrooms or cucumbers, fresh or canned tomatoes, a salad of fresh vegetables with greens to your taste.

The most important nuances

In order to make the beef cold really tasty and delicious, observe several simple rules for its preparation.

• The basic rule of how to make the jelly transparent - in no case do not add water to the meat, which is already brewed. If during the boiling process a new portion of water is added to the broth, it will lose its beautiful transparent color and become cloudy. In addition, this broth practically never freezes without the addition of gelatin. In this case, it is best to pour a little more water into the pan with beef, than you need, - with the boiling out there will be the necessary quantity of broth, and its color will not suffer at all.

• We will repeat, when to salt a cold at cooking. When preparing a delicate meat delicacy, you should not do this at the beginning or the middle of the process. When cooking, the broth boils out and becomes more saturated, the salt concentration increases significantly. That's why even a small pinch thrown into a pot with a jelly at the beginning of cooking can make it salty and inedible.
• Many do not like the specific fatty taste that can have a ready-made jelly from beef or pork. Avoid this unpleasant phenomenon helps a simple way - be sure to drain the first water in which the meat was boiled. So you not only remove excess fat from the meat broth, but also make the prepared dish less caloric and heavy for the stomach.
• Do not try to put 10 kg of various meat products into the pan with the broth. Remember that the water in the pan should cover the meat at least 2-3 cm. This is necessary in order to obtain the required amount of pure and fragrant broth as a result. If initially there is too much water in the pan - it will not boil out during the cooking process, and the broth will harden. At the same time, when you add too little water, the opposite problem will arise - it will quickly boil away and you will have to add a new portion of water to the pan. In this case, you can not avoid the appearance of an unpleasant hazy shade in the finished meat dish.
• 5-10 hours - so much you need to cook a cold. Recipe does not tolerate haste and sloppy.
• Many housewives with the experience recommend not to throw out meat cartilages and skins, which you will get after the end of cooking beef. Thoroughly grind these products with a knife, meat grinder or food processor, then gently mix the resulting mixture with cooked beef. As you know, in the cartilage and veins contain special gelling substances, which contribute to the rapid hardening of the finished cavity without using gelatin. At the same time, the taste of a delicate dish does not deteriorate at all.

And finally

Since to cook a delicious cold is a painstaking business and requires a certain skill, do not be upset if your first jelly turned out to be not quite what you expected. A little culinary practice and patience - and your dish will be the main decoration of any festive table.