Georgian hominy. Tasty and healthy hominy from corn grits

Name: Ghomi (hominy)
Gomi - the national dish of the Mengrelians (Samegrelo - a corner of western Georgia)

Ingredients

Mamaliga is a traditional Georgian dish. Many peoples know how to cook hominy, for example, Romanians or Moldovans. The name hominy came just from their language. But in Georgia, hominy is called gomi. In fact, hominy is a very thick corn porridge cooked from corn grits or flour. It seems, nothing complicated, water, cereals and salt are required, but not everything is as simple as it seems at first glance. Cooking hominy is a whole sacrament, with its own rules and traditions in cooking and serving. Hominy is so thick that it can be cut with a knife. Usually hominy is used instead of bread, therefore it is combined with almost all products. It is eaten with cottage cheese, meat, feta cheese, vegetables, for which there is only enough imagination. And on the table next to the hominy they always put sour cream, grated cheese and various sauces. Corn cakes are even made from hominy, for this it is cut into pieces and fried in oil. There are a lot of ways to use hominy.

How to cook hominy in Georgian villages and villages is known firsthand. This is real art! Water is poured into a cast-iron pot with a convex bottom and allowed to boil, salted, a tablespoon of pork fat is added and corn grits or flour are poured in a thin stream. Cover with a lid and let the cereal swell. Now the fun begins, you need to knead the hominy. A wooden rolling pin is inserted into the middle of the pot and stirred in circles clockwise. This process is precisely how to make hominy smooth and uniform. It stirs and kneads at the same time. In terms of time, this action lasts 30 - 40 minutes, only the hostess herself can decide. After kneading, the hominy must be allowed to evaporate and reach. Mistresses, as a rule, do everything by eye and their knowledge does not fail. By the way, water and cereals are also taken into account. When the hominy takes a certain shape, does not spread or fall apart, it is turned over on a wooden board and covered with a clean towel. Hominy should lie down a little. As they say, relax.

Many Georgian men can teach how to cook hominy for fishing. Since hominy has a bright color and a peculiar smell, it is also used in catching fish. Each fisherman can tell his interesting recipe for making hominy for catching fish. Of course, cooking porridge takes time and patience, it is easier to buy ready-made bait, but experienced fishermen love to cook porridge with their own hands. Hominy for fishing should turn out not only beautiful and smelly, but also sit perfectly on the hook. That is, it should be dense and not fall apart. Any experienced fisherman should know how to properly cook hominy. What amateur fishermen just don’t come up with in order to make hominy more sticky. Some add gelatin or cotton wool. But most often, before cooking, cornmeal and grits are mixed in equal proportions and fried until golden brown. Flour adds gluten to the porridge and makes it thick and not crumbly. Fishermen also add honey, jam or raspberry concentrate to the hominy. What tricks do experienced anglers go to to lure large fish.

In order to cook the most delicious hominy, you must definitely follow certain rules. The dishes, as a rule, are a cast-iron pot with thick walls and a convex bottom, you can, of course, cook hominy in a saucepan, as many housewives do at home, but I assure you, it will not be the same. It is better to take cornmeal for porridge with fine grinding, be sure to knead with a wooden spatula or rolling pin. Without prejudice, I can say that the most delicious hominy is obtained from the village housewives, it cannot be compared with restaurant preparations. Personally, I know several ways to cook hominy, but I'm still far from ideal. In Georgia, hominy is considered a cult dish. Each housewife has her own zest in cooking hominy, but the main thing is to cook this dish with love and then everything will work out.

Mamaliga from corn grits is a very healthy, satisfying, nutritious dish. Since ancient times, this cereal has been considered a product that replaces bread. Before corn was introduced, hominy was made from millet. But with the advent of corn, millet was no longer used, since hominy comes out of corn flour much tastier, and besides, it is more nutritious.

Mamaliga from corn grits is a very healthy, satisfying, nutritious dish

Corn porridge is very high-calorie and satisfying.

Contains many vitamins: retinol, thiamine, riboflavin, niacin, pyridoxine, folic acid, tocopherol, biotin. It also contains minerals: calcium, iron, magnesium, potassium, sodium, phosphorus. Therefore, such porridge:

• favorably affects the body;
• improves digestion;
• cleanses the body of toxins;
• helps to lower cholesterol levels;
• favorably affects the cardiovascular system;
• improves the condition of hair, skin, nails;
• stabilizes the work of the nervous system;
• gives strength, invigorates, increases efficiency and mood.

Hominy - porridge from corn grits (video)

Hominy Recipes

There are a lot of hominy recipes. It is prepared in different countries. In Italy there is a dish called polenta. This is also a kind of hominy. Only the final dish comes out not as thick as ours. Georgians cook gomi, Romanians have hominy.

Corn grains are crushed and cut into different sizes. There are 1, 2, 3, 4th grade of grain grinding, and the 5th is flour. In different countries, a variety of tasty and nutritious dishes are prepared from corn grits of a certain variety.

This is the national dish of Moldova. Porridge is cooked only in cast-iron thick-walled dishes. Use cereals, water, salt. Groats should be finely ground or generally cornmeal (grade 5). The ratio of cereals and water should be equal to 1: 3. When the water boils, you need to salt, pour corn flour in a thin stream. It must be constantly stirred so that it does not burn. To do this, a wooden rolling pin is placed in the center of the cauldron. The porridge should boil slightly for 25-30 minutes, then reduce the gas or reduce the heat to a minimum, continue cooking until the liquid has completely evaporated and until the desired density is obtained. At the same time, porridge should not stick to the rolling pin. It is pulled out and cut into pieces with a thick thread. To do this, the thread is hooked from the bottom and cut from the bottom up, crosswise.

Traditionally, Moldovans eat it with their hands. Topped with butter, sour cream.

It is customary to use such porridge with sour cream, cottage cheese, cheese. You can bite with herbs, vegetables, bacon, eggs, mushrooms. It already depends on taste preferences or national traditions. It is eaten instead of bread with many dishes.

The recipe for making hominy is budget. It will take a little money for the porridge itself. But to spice it up with something special, you will have to allocate a certain amount.

It will be difficult to prepare the dish, because it will take a long time to mix it so that lumps do not form. The more often you cook porridge, the faster your hand will get used to physical activity.

According to another method, it can also be boiled in milk:

1. To do this, you need to prepare a glass of milk, 2 glasses of water, 2 glasses of finely ground cereals, salt, butter (50 g), about 400 g of fat with streaks of meat, sheep cheese.
2. Pour milk into a saucepan or thick-walled pan, bring to a boil. Pour water into it. Boil again. Salt quite a bit.
3. When foam appears in the liquid, pour in a thin stream of cereal or cornmeal.
4. The grain remains in the center of the dish, no need to stir. It is necessary to reduce the fire to a minimum and wait until it swells.
5. The grain is swollen. Now you need to move the pan to the table. Take a pusher and start kneading the porridge so as to capture and knead all the lumps. It is necessary to mix it thoroughly, turning it over, prying well from the walls and bottom, there should not be any dry missed lumps of cereal. At first, the porridge will be wet, viscous. But gradually it will absorb all the moisture and become thick.
6. Then you need to add a piece of butter, then the porridge will become more elastic, it will be easier to form sausages from it.
7. Next, you need to put the pan back on the stove on the weakest fire. Let the porridge steam for 15 minutes, remove the lid to evaporate the liquid.
8. The resulting hominy should be thick, steep, dense.

How to quickly cook corn porridge (video)

Mamaliga in Georgian

This dish is also popular in Georgia. Mamaliga in Georgian is called gomi. It is often used instead of bread. Store-bought corn is not suitable for this dish. In the market, if you ask for grits for gomi, they will definitely sell what you need. Usually these are two types of cereals - cornmeal and coarse grinding.

Recipe for hominy from cornmeal and grits grade 3-4:

1. Pour cold water into a saucepan or cauldron. First, carefully pour a large cut into it, followed by flour. You need to constantly stir so that there are no lumps. Flour should be taken less than cereals.
2. After the container should be put on medium heat, cook for 2 hours. It is necessary to constantly rub and stir the mass thoroughly throughout the entire cooking, preventing flour and cereals from clumping.
3. When the water boils away, and the porridge loses the taste of raw flour, you can remove the dishes from the stove. The porridge will come out thick, dense, without lumps.
4. Serve it on a plate, putting inside 2-3 pieces of suluguni cheese, brynza, Adyghe cheese. They eat porridge with their hands.
5. Gomi can be served with other dishes - satsivi, kharcho, shurpa. Only each dish should be in a separate plate, they cannot be mixed.

By experimenting, you can learn how to cook hominy, select proportions, feel the readiness of porridge, and then a cooked dinner will always delight your family and guests. There are a large number of recipes. It is distributed throughout the world.

Hominy is a tasty, hearty and inexpensive dish that can often be seen on the table in Georgian, Ossetian, Adyghe and Abkhazian families. It is easy to prepare and does not require many ingredients.

In fact, the hominy recipe is a recipe for a very thick porridge (often eaten instead of bread), which is boiled hard and then cut with a special wooden knife or canvas thread.

In Romanian and hominy they cook a very thick consistency. We can say that this is not even porridge, but steamed bread. The finished dish even in its shape resembles a loaf. Caucasians, on the other hand, cook hominy, which is closer to porridge. It is cooked from corn grits or flour. Another essential condition is that the recipe for hominy in the Caucasus does not involve the addition of salt, sugar or spices, the porridge turns out to be absolutely fresh. Additional ingredients give it a unique taste: salty suluguni cheese, cherry plum sauce and other spicy sauces.

Mamaliga in Abkhazian: cooking recipe

There is nothing complicated in cooking hominy. Perhaps the most important thing is to guess the ratio of water and Many people use a ratio of 1:3, but in our recipe from Abkhazian housewives it is 1:2.5. So, for one full glass of fine corn grits or flour, we need two and a half glasses of water. You will also need brine about 150 grams, and a tablespoon of butter, for tenderness.

The traditional hominy recipe, as we have already mentioned, does not involve the addition of salt. However, at first, porridge may seem too bland to you, and the taste preferences of our compatriots are somewhat different from the traditions adopted in the Caucasus. Therefore, once you can salt the hominy, but quite a bit - then you will understand for yourself whether you need salt in this recipe and how much.

For a delicious hominy, you need the right pan, and it is better if it has thick walls. The ideal cookware for cooking is a cast iron, but at worst, an ordinary enameled saucepan is also suitable. Pour the required amount of water into it, add a little salt and wait until the water boils.

Pouring cereals into boiling water is an important and responsible process. This should be done carefully, in a thin stream, while constantly stirring the contents of the saucepan. Then the finished porridge will turn out homogeneous and without nasty lumps.

The recipe for hominy from involves 20-30 minutes to prepare. If porridge is made from flour, half of this time is enough. True, it will not be possible to move away from the stove for a long time - after all, mamalyga needs to be stirred often. The dish is cooked on the smallest fire. Readiness is checked very easily: we stick a wooden rolling pin into the porridge and turn it. If the porridge does not stick, then it is ready!

But do not rush to lay out hominy on plates. First, using a wooden spatula moistened with water, slightly separate the contents of the pot from its walls and leave for a couple of minutes on the stove. Then it remains only to turn the dishes over and dump the finished “loaf” onto a beautiful dish. By the way, according to the integrity and shape of the hominy, according to whether it falls apart, or all the grains make up a single monolith, and they judge the quality of the finished porridge.

Hominy is served with many different products. This is suluguni, and cheese, and kvass, and garlic, and fried onions, and bacon with cracklings ... In general, choose what you like and enjoy this hearty and healthy dish!

17.04.2009 - David

Traditional Georgian thick corn porridge, which in Western Georgia is still often used instead of bread. Originally prepared from Italian millet (millet). A similar dish is prepared by many other nations, for example, Romanians and Moldovans. The word hominy comes from their language, and in Georgian hominy is called gomi.

Hominy is a simple, healthy, inexpensive dish. I bought a pack of cereals for 26 rubles and 600 grams of delicious Adyghe cheese (produced by Denmax) for 136 rubles. That is, about 160 rubles for 5-6 servings of hominy with cheese. If you add to it, for example, such inexpensive dishes as, you will get a tasty and healthy menu for ridiculous money.

Now - hominy recipe and helpful tips.

Ingredients

• Corn grits - 1 part
• Water - 3.5 parts (for example, for 2 cups of cereal, 7 cups of water)
• Suluguni cheese or other (read more)

For 5 cups (650 grams - somewhere in 5-6 servings) of corn grits, I used 17 glasses of water - I specifically measured for the blog. You may need a little more - it depends on the cereal, the pot, the intensity of the fire. You can always add water to the hominy while it is boiling, so it is better to have a lack of water than too much. In the case of busting, you will have to evaporate water for a long time.

This is the corn grits that was used:

Almost always in Georgia, hominy is made from white corn grits, which has a slightly different taste.

In the photo: on the left is groats from a St. Petersburg store, on the right is white corn groats, bought from a megrel in Tbilisi.

Hominy should not be salty. You can salt a little at the beginning of cooking. I prefer not to salt at all. The cheese must be very salty.

Recipe for hominy

Fill the cereal with water, put on a small fire and bring to readiness. To determine if the hominy is ready, try it - if the grits are boiled, then the dish is ready.

This is how my pot with ready-made hominy looked like:

The cooking time for hominy depends on the size of the cereal, the size of the fire on which you cook it, and the quality of the cereal. Therefore, the cooking time ranges from 45 minutes to one and a half hours. In this case, I cooked for 1 hour and 15 minutes.

The density of the finished hominy: it depends on your preferences. In any case, hominy should not flow like milky rice porridge, but when placed on plates it should form a non-spreading slide.

Hominy needs to be stirred occasionally. When water boils, lumps may form in some cases. And with further cooking, in some cases, the upper layers of hominy receive less heat in comparison with the lower ones.

For mixing hominy, a wooden spatula is used, which is called chogani. You can use any spatula, as long as it is not too thin, otherwise it will break.

It is widely believed that it is necessary to add cornmeal to hominy (in its absence, semolina). The main purpose of flour is to hold the mass together. This is required if the cereal is large. Store-bought factory cereals, which are sold in Russia, are usually smaller, so flour is not needed.

Corn crisps

Another recipe, as it were, is embedded in the hominy recipe - corn crunches.

Put the pan with the hominy remaining on the walls on the smallest fire. When the mass on the walls is completely dry, the crisps will be ready.

Break off and eat. Usually kids love it.

We serve hominy on the table

Hominy is laid out on plates in slides, into which pieces of cheese are stuck - imeruli or suluguni. To prevent the hominy from sticking to the shoulder blade of the chogani, it is moistened from time to time with cold water.

Hominy is not stored in a saucepan - everything is laid out on plates. What is not eaten will be fried later.

The factory suluguni, in essence a very miserable copy of the normal suluguni, is also suitable for this purpose. Adyghe cheese, feta cheese - anything. Of course, it is desirable that the cheese be salty and melt, but if not, well, what can you do. Cheeses of the Western European type, in my opinion, are poorly combined with hominy - for an amateur. Salted cottage cheese goes well with hominy. Or cottage cheese mixed with adjika and mint.

They eat hot hominy.

What do you eat hominy with?

As I already mentioned, hominy in Western Georgia was used and is often used instead of bread, so they ate it with almost everything.

It goes well with hominy and fried pork. Tkemali, tomato, and are suitable as gravy for hominy.

Hominy can be eaten by itself. When frying, you can also add an egg to the hominy and cheese.

Fried hominy

It is customary to heat hominy - fry in a pan with cheese. For me personally, it tastes even better. You can do something like this.

mchadi

11/14/2016 - Natia (guest)

David! Thanks for the recipe. On the issue of cornmeal. I suspect that the Georgian version is different from our Moldovan one. We decided yesterday to cook mchadi. Those that ate in Georgia - very much. And the recipe is simple. Cornmeal with water, a little melted butter. Knead the dough, form cakes and fry in a pan. All done. It turned out to be "oak" flat cakes that crumble into grains in your mouth and you chew these grains, and chew, and chew ... Believe me, I know the difference between cereals and flour. We had cornmeal. But, apparently, our grinding is different from Georgian and our flour is closer to cereals. Let a little. But cornbread is no longer available. Now I will be in Georgia - I will take not only tkemali, dried adjika, sulguni and churchkhela, but also corn meal) Have a nice day, David!

Hello! Abkhazian

08/02/2016 - OlegM (guest)

Hello! Abkhaz mamaliga classic always with meat (preferably chicken) and without quartz? A real Abkhaz mamaliga is mamaliga itself with pieces of sulugun or brinza in the middle of the mamaliga itself. Top with fried chicken pieces. On the side is gravy (quartz) and poured over with fat that remained after frying chicken.

I brought white corn grits from Georgia, really large, so you definitely need to add cornmeal to it ... Either I will supplement this post, or I will write a new one. I’ll take a photo of store-bought and Georgian cereals so that everything can be seen, well, in general, everything is on the shelves ...) Well, there are some such plans ... Slowly, slowly))

07/15/2011 - ygodka (guest)

A very inspiring post. Thank you.

Let me share my version:

Instead of grits - cornmeal 1 to 3 parts of water. I cook until almost ready and crumble into it cheese, crushed garlic, red pepper and any seasonings (only natural, not mixtures with glutamate!), For example, ground coriander or turmeric.
My husband and son eat in any form: hot in the form of porridge, and cold, like a pie, and baked in slices. Although at first they were skeptical. =) With sour cream and tkemali (I also cook it myself, my Georgian friends taught me).

Mamaliga

hello vsem! V Moldove traditsionno podaiut mamaligu s skrobom(smesi iaits so svinimi shkvarkami) sezonnimi ovoshami i ovechei brinzoi. Po vsei Ruminii, v chasnosti v Moldove, izdrevle mamaliga zameniala hleb. Pod osmanskim igom krestiane davali dani na hleb pshenitsei, inogda ostavaiasi nischem. Vot kukuruza i kormila semiu krestianina, kotoraia inogda dohodila do 12-15 detei.
Babushka kogda gotovila mamaligu, to ona poluchalasi ocheni gustoi, rezala obichno chiornoi nitkoi i s parnim molokom, stanovilasi ocheni sitnim zavtrakom.

http://ru.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mamalyga

hominy in Moldovan

Vitaly, thank you, a very informative story... Moldavian (Moldovan-Romanian, Romanian?) cuisine is very interesting to me, and not only to me, I'm sure. Maybe you can tell me something? Because, for example, the only thing I know about Moldovan food is that Moldovans and Romanians traditionally cook hominy.) Now, I know that they eat it with skrob ... What else do they eat, how they eat, what do they eat with? ..)) It would be interesting to read about the living experience and considerations of a person who knows firsthand about the issue ...

The young woman threw herself on her neck, and could only say “MOM, LITTLE ...” and sobbed in the voice “Y-s-s” ... ... And so as not to guess and not be offended, let's call this tool MA-MAL- Y-...GA! »

And so, did the Moldovans speak Russian or something when they invented hominy?) In fact, the legend is completely implausible)

02/01/2013 - Stupa (guest)

Hello! In Moldova, in addition to feta cheese, they cook fried carp with muzhdei for hominy. Carp is fried in a pan, and muzhdey is garlic paste. Garlic is crushed on the garlic plant, a little water is added. While eating, this paste is smeared with carp. Before the appearance of corn on our continent, the ancestors of the Moldovans - the Dacians, prepared hominy from millet. I haven't tried. The other day, for this case, I bought a package of millet. I will experiment

hominy husbands

02/10/2013 - Stupa (guest)

Sorry, I messed up. Not water, but sunflower oil is added to garlic in muzhdey. I tried to cook hominy from millet. According to the recipe 1:3, I did not add anything else. While it was warm, according to my taste, it was necessary to eat it with the addition of sweets, dried fruits, honey. When it cooled down, the taste completely changed. He warmed it up in a frying pan, and went with the fish ....

Anekdot

"Me: - So... Like this... softer... come on, come on. Don't stop!.. Oh, how good it is!
He: - Do not rush! Your hand will hurt! Do it like this! Look, it's getting hard!
Me: Wow, you!
He: - Go on! A little more, and it will become quite hard!
Me: - So, okay?
He: - Yeah! If the hand is tired, then come on, I'll change!
Me: No, I still can! I like the process itself - when it hardens! Wow! Right in front of your eyes!
He: Just a little more...
Me: Do you think that's it? Enough already?
He examines intently, then touches a couple of times and says: - Done!
Me: Exactly forty minutes! Well, nifiga to yourself! And so that I once again began to cook this hominy! .. :))))

I will never learn

03/11/2011 - Smurova Mira (guest)

I will never learn how to cook - I have long wanted to cook hominy - photos that call for this. It turned out to be porridge with suluguni cheese - spoiling the products - but thanks for the experience) A sore head does not give rest to the legs! (

good old alright

03/14/2011 - Guest (guest)

The good old hominy, well known in western Ukraine... Only in our country they pour over this business with bacon with fried onions, and sprinkle with grated feta cheese. Not Georgian cuisine, but for a change it is quite possible to experience!

hominy in western Ukraine

12/10/2011 - Guest (guest)

In western Ukraine, there are many dishes made from cornmeal and cereals, and they differ depending on the region. In our country, for example, they eat it hot with milk like porridge, with various sauces, sour cream, sour milk, mushrooms in sour cream, cottage cheese with sour cream, sheep cheese and cracklings, meat sauce, instead of bread with borscht-cabbage soups, in spring cabbage rolls are made by wrapping the filling of corn grits with onions and herbs in grape leaves, coltsfoot and sorrel ...
They also cook malai (cornmeal cake). Here is a recipe you might like: Dough: 150 g cornmeal, 150 g wheat flour, 1/2 cup milk, 4 proteins, 150 g sugar, 100 g butter, 1/2 tsp. soda, a bag of vanilla sugar, a pinch of salt. Filling: 200 g cottage cheese, 4 egg yolks, 100 g sugar. Mix corn and wheat flour.
Grind the butter with sugar, salt, vanilla sugar until foam appears, add milk, slaked soda, and, stirring, gradually introduce all the flour. Beat the whites until a stable foam and stir into the finished dough with a spoon (it will be like very thick sour cream). Put the dough in a form greased with vegetable oil, put the curd filling on top of the dough with a boat (grind the cottage cheese with sugar, yolks, you can add orange peel or cinnamon - whatever you like), retreating 2 centimeters from the edges. Bake until tender (about 45 minutes in a hot oven - 220 degrees). Ready malai - ruddy and the filling will "hide". Bon appetit!

Mira, have you tried hominy? Perhaps you did everything right, but you just don’t like hominy as a dish? I will say that food is for everyone, or rather, for those who are used to it and love it. And for those who are not used to it, it is usually an unusual unleavened porridge with a corn flavor.

kitchen

06/12/2010 - Erast (guest)

Honest, kind, trustworthy. Recipes recognized and loved around the world. But, nevertheless, in Tsalenjikha and Zugdidi???? made from white and only white cornmeal. And in Tiflis I did not meet another. Moldavian version of hominy - exclusively from yellow flour. For my taste, these are different dishes.
David, I sincerely wish you good luck in all your endeavors!

Hominy will be white if it is made from white corn flour, and such flour is made from white corn) Unfortunately, this is not available everywhere. For example, in St. Petersburg, I have never seen for sale in stores. You can also yellow - it's more a question of quality, not color. :) Not all white flour is good, she says...

multinational dishes

04/21/2010 - Ira (guest)

Great blog! Lots of good recipes!
I heard the name "mamaliga" but never knew what it meant before your recipe.
And the dish is really multinational. In Italy it is called polenta. At the end of cooking, grated parmesan cheese and a little butter are added. Just like in Georgia, there are several options: thick porridge (wet polenta) or fried (grilled). In the second variety, the boiled porridge is dumped on a flat plate, allowed to cool completely, cut into portions like a casserole, brushed with olive oil and fried a little. I just made it yesterday.