Serbian pljeskavica is a dish in the form of a large flat juicy cutlet. You can cook it on the grill or in a frying pan, either way the taste is delicious. And it seems like nothing special! There are several options for preparing pljeskavica, here is one of them.
Serbian pljeskavica is a table decoration, sprinkle cheese on top and place it in the very center. You need to eat it by cutting it into portions. Be sure to have fried potatoes, tomato and cheese salad on the table, as well as a couple of different sauces; tzatziki and ajvar are ideal. The authors of the site “Quick Recipes” have prepared an unusual selection of recipes for making pljeskavica.
recipe for making pljeskavica
Serbian cutlet "Pleskavica"
Ingredients:
- Beef 400 gr.
- Pork 350 gr.
- Lard 100 gr.
- onions 2 pcs.
- sparkling mineral water ½ cup
- salt to taste
- pepper to taste
- red chili pepper to taste
- vegetable oil for frying 2 tbsp. l.
preparing Serbian pljeskavica at home
General information:
- Cooking time: 60 minutes;
- Number of servings 4.
Cooking method:
- First you need to prepare minced meat from beef, pork and lard using a mincing disc with large holes. Add spices and stir. Add mineral water, stir, cover with cling film and refrigerate overnight.
- Remove the minced meat from the refrigerator. Finely chop the onion. Mix onion with minced meat. In order for the minced meat to be elastic and the cutlets to stick together well, you need to beat the minced meat a little. To do this, you need to transfer the minced meat into a clean and strong bag and hit it on the table several times. Make cutlets.
- 850 g of minced meat yielded 5 huge juicy cutlets. Fry in a well-heated frying pan until done. When frying, the cutlets will rise greatly. Serve with any side dish.
General principles of cooking
Traditionally, the treat is fried on a grill over coals. But, if this is not possible, you can do it at home in a regular frying pan.
There are several rules for preparing pljeskavica:
- cutlets are always molded in a round shape;
- the dish should include only meat, onions and spices (in extreme cases, cheese);
- a treat is prepared from beef and pork in equal proportions;
- No flour, bread, eggs, or cereals are added to the dish.
Marinating minced meat before making cutlets is a mandatory process. First, the meat is salted, then coated with oil so that the liquid does not evaporate, and covered with a film. The minced meat is left in this form for at least overnight. It’s better to let it “rest” for at least 25 hours. To ensure that the meat does not spoil, it is advisable to make several holes in the film.
Pljeskavica with spices
recipe for pljeskavica dish
Ingredients:
- minced meat (beef + pork) 700 gr.
- onions 100 gr.
- mineral water 100 ml.
- hot red pepper to taste
- salt to taste
- olive oil for frying
General information:
- Cooking time: 60 minutes;
- Number of servings 5.
Cooking method:
- We pass equal weight pieces of beef and pork through a meat grinder or, if you trust the manufacturer, buy ready-made assorted minced meat. Salt, add a portion of ground red pepper - always hot. Mix thoroughly and thoroughly to distribute the spices evenly.
- Pour sparkling water (unsweetened, of course) into the seasoned minced meat and stir again until smooth. We tamp without leaving any hollow areas inside the mass. Level the surface and cover with film or install a plate/lid. We keep the workpiece for the next 24 hours on the refrigerator shelf.
- Before frying the pljeskavica cutlets, remove the skins from large onions (or take a couple of small ones) and chop them into cubes of approximately the same size. In some establishments, Serbs place one onion per product. Please note that chopped onions that are too large will burn and turn black ahead of time.
- The next step, following the recipe with the photo, is to combine the onion slices with the already marinated meat. You can work in a bowl, but try my method. Place the minced meat and onions in a food bag (make sure it is strong, otherwise it will tear). First, we bring it to homogeneity with our hands, and then we pull together the edges of the bag, twist it or tie it in a knot, and hit the package with the semi-finished product several times on a countertop or other hard surface. This increases the plasticity of the mixture and makes it easier to sculpt Turkish kebabs, Serbian-style pljeskavica, and any international cutlets.
- Lubricate your palms with olive oil, pinch off the prepared minced meat and form round cakes with a diameter of about 12 cm. Vary the size yourself, taking into account the needs of your household. If you plan to make sandwiches, adjust the diameters of the buns and pljeskavica cutlets to each other.
- Fry on both sides over moderate heat, in hot oil, until golden brown. Press down with a spatula and check the color of the juice that comes out - it all depends on the degree of roasting that you personally prefer. As with steaks, the heat shrinks at high temperatures, so you don't need to keep them covered. For the children's menu, the dish is sent into a hot oven for a few minutes to further steam. To speed up the process, immediately boil the side dish - pasta, mashed potatoes or some cereal.
- Serve pljeskavica hot, warm, for example, with homemade pickles, ketchup, fresh herbs and vegetables - bon appetit and a hearty lunch!
Useful tips and tricks
There are several tricks that will help you prepare delicious pljeskavica:
- if you don’t have a grill pan, you need to fry the cutlet on a cast iron one;
- minced meat can be used only after long-term cooling;
- In order for the cutlets to better hold their shape, the meat mass is beaten in a bag on a hard surface;
- You should not use mineral water for the recipe; it is better to take regular drinking water, but carbonated;
- large pieces of onion in a dish will burn, so you need to cut it finely.
A simple recipe for delicious Serbian-style pljeskavica even includes the addition of cheese. For example, feta or cheese. It may also include bacon.
Serbian gourmet pljeskavica
Ingredients:
- minced meat 300 gr.
- onion 1 pc.
- cayenne pepper 1 tsp.
- salt to taste
- black pepper to taste
- hard cheese 50 gr.
- raw smoked bacon 1 piece
General information:
- Cooking time: 50 minutes;
- Number of servings 2.
Cooking method:
- Let's prepare the minced meat for pljeskavica. Pass the meat through a fine grill of a meat grinder or twice through a regular one. Mix well for at least 10–15 minutes, add good carbonated mineral water (1 cup per kilogram of meat), mix until smooth, cover with film and put in the refrigerator for a day.
- Cut the bacon and cheese into cubes. Peel the onion and cut into small cubes. Mix the minced meat evenly with bacon, onion, cayenne pepper, and cheese - about 5 minutes. With wet hands, form large cutlets - up to 15 cm in diameter. I shaped it in my hands, then leveled it on a small wooden board. I greased one side with vegetable oil and carefully placed it on a hot grill pan. The cutlets don't fall apart!
- Once the pljeskavica has hit the grill, do not touch it! Do not look and do not try to check whether it will come off or not. “It will come unstuck”! We time it for 4 minutes. Cook, turn over, carefully lift with a spatula, and cook for another 4 minutes. Serve with any side dish.
From Serge Markovic
Chef Serge Marovic has his own recipe for making pljeskavica. Only beef is used for it. Sea salt is also required.
Ingredients
For the dish you need to take:
- minced beef – 1 kg;
- onions – 2-3 pcs.;
- sparkling water - ½ tbsp.;
- garlic – 3-4 cloves;
- bacon - 3-4 slices;
- feta cheese – 60 g;
- sea salt - 1 tbsp. l.
Step-by-step cooking process
The cooking process includes several stages:
- The beef must be minced and mixed with sea salt. Any spices are also added to taste.
- Next, you need to pour sparkling water into the mass and put it in a cool place for a day, coated with vegetable oil and covered with a film with holes.
- Bacon and cheese need to be finely chopped and mixed into the minced meat. You will need to do the same with garlic. You can also use fresh parsley.
Cutlets are formed from the resulting mass and fried in a frying pan or grill.
Pljeskavica with sauce
pleskavici recipe with sauce
Ingredients:
- 500 gr. pork
- 500 gr. beef
- 100 gr. unsalted lard
- 2 large onions
- 2 red chili peppers
- 3 cloves garlic
- olive oil
- salt, freshly ground black pepper
For the sauce:
- 3 sweet red peppers
- 1–2 red chili peppers
- 1 clove of garlic
- 150 ml extra virgin olive oil
- sea salt and freshly ground black pepper
General information:
- Cooking time: 70 minutes;
- Number of servings 5.
Cooking method:
- Cut the meat and lard into small pieces and pass through a meat grinder with a medium grid. Peel the onion and chop very finely. Cut the chili pepper lengthwise, remove the seeds and chop finely. Peel the garlic and grind in a mortar with a pinch of coarse salt into a homogeneous paste.
- Add 2 tbsp to the minced meat. l. olive oil, onion, chili and garlic, salt and pepper and knead well with your hands. Form the minced meat into round cakes with a diameter of 12–15 cm and a thickness of 1 cm.
- Brush the pljeskavici with olive oil. Grill over hot coals on both sides until cooked through, 5 to 7 minutes. Serve pljeskavica with roasted pepper sauce and thinly sliced sweet onion.
- Sauce. Bake sweet and hot peppers in the oven or on fire, put in a bag and leave for 10 minutes. Remove skin and seeds. Grind the pepper in a blender along with garlic and olive oil. Season with salt and pepper.
On the grill
Serbian-style pljeskavica, the recipe for which comes in different variations, is especially tasty when baked on the grill. The cakes must be made round. It is convenient to use a special form designed for preparing burgers for this.
Ingredients
For the dish you need to take:
- mixed minced pork and beef – 650-700 g;
- onion – 1 pc.;
- soda (unsweetened) – ½ cup;
- ground coriander, pepper, salt.
Step-by-step cooking process
The cooking process includes several stages:
- You need to add salt and the spices specified in the recipe to the minced meat. You can take others to your liking. After thorough mixing (when the spices are well distributed throughout the meat mass), sparkling water is poured into the bowl.
- Next, you will need to compact the minced meat well so that all the air comes out of it. Under the cling film, the meat will “rest” in the cold for about a day.
- Then you should combine the prepared minced meat with chopped onions. Its pieces should be miniature so that they do not burn.
- After the next mixing, the minced meat is placed in a tight bag and beaten. In this form, it is left cool for another couple of hours.
- While the meat is being prepared, you should start grilling with coals. When they are well warmed up, you can make round cakes from the minced meat.
- In the next step, the blanks are placed on a wire rack and left until ready. During the first 5-7 minutes you need to turn the cutlets very often. Then the meat will “grab” and will not fall out. Cooking time will be 15-17 minutes.
The cutlets should be served hot. You can complement them with tzadiki sauce and pickled onions.
Serbian pljeskavica with veal
pljeskavica recipe
Ingredients:
- Minced veal 250 gr.
- Onion 1 head
- Minced pork 250 gr.
- Cheese 100 gr.
- Sparkling water 100 ml.
- Feta cheese 200 gr.
- Red bell pepper 1 piece
- Salt to taste
- Freshly ground black pepper to taste
- Ground chili pepper to taste
- Olive oil 2 tablespoons
- Garlic2 cloves
General information:
- Cooking time: 60 minutes;
- Number of servings 5.
Cooking method:
- Mix both types of minced meat in a large bowl, adding salt, black pepper and chili (I took literally one pinch of chili). Pour sparkling water into the minced meat and begin to knead it. When the minced meat becomes smooth, compact it in a bowl, squeezing out the air, and cover the surface with olive oil.
- Cover the bowl with minced meat with a lid or film and put it in the refrigerator for at least a day (or even 48 hours).
- After a day, remove the marinated minced meat from the refrigerator. Cut the cheese into very small cubes. Finely chop the onion.
- Next, you need to lightly grease the board with oil (or spread cling film), take a large handful of minced meat, form a ball, and then flatten it into a flat cake, transferring it from one hand to the other, while slapping it on the flat cake. The size of the cake is large; I made it slightly smaller than the size of a tea saucer, about 1.5 cm thick.
- As a rule, pljeskavica is fried on a grill and cooked at home on a grill or in a large frying pan. I used a large frying pan and greased it with a very small amount of vegetable oil (remember that we already greased the minced meat with olive oil).
- Fry as usual on both sides. Before your eyes, pljeskavica will grow in height and become plump - this is how mineral water works, but you need to be careful, as it boils away and the fat splashes out. Place the finished pljeskavica on plates and garnish with fried potatoes.
- For the sauce, bake or fry the bell peppers in a pan and remove the skin (or the part of the skin that comes off easily). Mash the feta with a fork, combine with pieces of pepper and garlic (I used a garlic press) and mash everything together with a fork or blender. The sauce is ready to serve, but to make it more impressive, you can form it into balls.
Balkan
The recipe for hearty Serbian-style pljeskavica allows you to prepare a very juicy, tender and soft meat treat. Even when the cutlets cool down, juice continues to flow out of them when pressed with a knife. To achieve this result, you need to cool the minced meat well and add cold sparkling water to it.
Ingredients
For the dish you need to take:
- beef and pork (already in the form of minced meat) - half a kilo each;
- highly carbonated water – 180-200 ml;
- paprika (ground) – ½ tsp;
- onion – 1 pc.;
- salt.
Step-by-step cooking process
The cooking process includes several stages:
- The two types of meat specified in the recipe are first passed through a meat grinder.
- Afterwards they are mixed with salt and dry sweet paprika. For those who like it spicy, you can add hot pepper to the dish.
- Next, you need to pour highly carbonated water into the meat mass. It is best to take regular, non-mineral.
- You need to wait until the minced meat stops sizzling and splashing. Next, you will need to knead it with your hands for about 10-12 minutes. In the process, you should kind of mix water into the meat. With every minute the mass will become more homogeneous and eventually begin to resemble plasticine.
- When the meat has compacted, you will need to compact it into a bowl, coat it with vegetable oil to retain moisture, cover it with film or a lid and leave it like that for 25 hours.
- Then you need to add chopped peeled onions to the minced meat and mix everything again.
- Afterwards you will need to immediately form large cutlets from the mass. This should be done in a special way - take a portion of minced meat and throw it several times from palm to palm. You can also beat the meat on the table. This will compact it and make it more convenient to work with.
- All that remains is to form flat cakes about 1.5 cm thick and fry them in a heated frying pan with oil until fully cooked. At first, the cutlets will “shoot” a lot of fat. Therefore, it is better to cover the pan with a lid. It is enough to fry the treat for about 5-6 minutes on each side.
The finished pljeskavica is immediately served to the table. As a side dish, it can be complemented with a salad of tomatoes, mozzarella and red sweet onions.
Gourmet pljeskavica
Ingredients:
- 700 gr. ground beef
- 300 gr. bacon
- 1 large onion
- 2–3 cloves of garlic
- 100 gr. dry cheese
- 1–2 tbsp. l. ground sweet paprika
- 1 tbsp. l. ground hot paprika
- Sparkling water
- 5 pit
- Thick natural yogurt
- Salt and black pepper
General information:
- Cooking time: 70 minutes;
- Number of servings 7.
Cooking method:
- Chop the bacon finely and mix it with the ground beef. Add to the minced meat half a glass of sparkling water, half of hot and sweet paprika (if you don’t like paprika, don’t even touch pljeskavica, it’s paprika that gives it that very Balkan taste for which everything was conceived), salt, pepper and mix well - for about 10 minutes, not less. Now put the minced meat in a bowl, compact it thoroughly so that there is no air left in the bowl. Pour a thin, a couple of millimeters, layer of vegetable oil on top, cover with cling film and place in the refrigerator for at least 6-8 hours, or better yet, overnight. And even better - for a day.
- Chop the onion and garlic as finely as possible, crumble the cheese and mix with the minced meat. Add another half of the remaining paprika and mix thoroughly again. Grease a cutting board with olive oil and start making wide and fairly thin cutlets, 6–8 millimeters in thickness.
- Grease each cutlet on all sides with olive oil and carefully place on the grill. Both the grate and the coals under it must be properly hot so that a crust immediately forms on the pljeskavica, which will retain the juices inside and prevent the cutlet from falling apart. You can also grease the grate with oil (for this you will need a special silicone brush, which is sold in kitchenware stores) so that the pljeskavica does not burn.
- While your cutlets are frying, work on the bread. Ideally, of course, you need real Serbian somun bread - a flatbread similar to pita, but fluffier. But pita will do too. If you want to do everything completely authentic, heat a small bowl on the fire, put a little melted butter in it, add half a glass of chicken broth, mix, add hot and sweet paprika and let it boil. Brush the insides of the pitas cut in half with this mixture and place them on the grill, cut sides down, for just a minute. Or just warm up some pitas on the grill.
- Now put the heated half of the pita on a plate, grease it with yogurt, put pljeskavica on top, sprinkle with paprika (it never goes out of place in a Serbian dish) and cover with the other half. Tomatoes, cucumbers, cabbage and other sandwich fillings are optional, but in an authentic pljeskavica there is nothing except flatbread, yogurt, paprika and the cutlet itself.
In Montenegrin
The recipe for the unusual Montenegrin dish being discussed includes not only sparkling water, but also soy sauce. The latter is best to choose classic without additional additives.
The calorie content of the finished treat will be approximately 270.5 kcal, and its BJU:
| BJU | Value in g (per 100 g) |
| Squirrels | 16,2 |
| Fats | 22,6 |
| Carbohydrates | 0,8 |
Ingredients
For the dish you need to take:
- mixture of beef and pork - half a kilo;
- salt and paprika - ½ tsp each;
- soda (unsweetened) – ½ cup;
- onion – 1 pc.;
- olive oil – 3-4 tbsp. l.;
- classic soy sauce – 1 tbsp. l.
Step-by-step cooking process
The cooking process includes several stages:
- The first thing you need to do is place the mixed minced meat into a large bowl. Afterwards, pour soda and soy sauce into it.
- Next, the products need to be kneaded very thoroughly to remove excess air from the mass. All that remains is to level the surface of the minced meat and coat it with olive oil.
- Then the meat mixture is covered with a bag/cling film and stored in a cool place for a day.
- When the minced meat is well infused and cooled, you can add finely chopped onions to it. Thanks to soy sauce, you won't need salt in your treat. It should be added only as desired along with sweet paprika.
- Afterwards you will need to form the minced meat into large thick cakes and fry them in a frying pan with well-heated oil.
Fully cooked cutlets should be served immediately. They are complemented with fresh vegetables and pickled red onions.
