Description. What kind of dish? How is the food prepared?
First, I would like to say that shawarma is a method of preparing meat, and not the finished dish itself. Therefore, it does not matter whether you wrap the meat in pita bread, bread, pita or pancake. The most important thing is that it is well fried on a vertical grill.
In this dish in Egypt, instead of sour cream, tahini sauce is added. Meat is traditionally complemented with greens and tomatoes.
Based on the above, we can say that shawarma is shawarma. It’s just that in different cities of the Russian Federation they call this dish differently. It is believed that the word “shawarma” is a striking example of St. Petersburg speech. It is in St. Petersburg that residents call this dish that way. In Moscow, meat in pita bread with vegetables is called the familiar word “shawarma”.
Why is there “shawarma” in St. Petersburg? Because the first to prepare this dish in Russia were people from Lebanon in Leningrad (now St. Petersburg). In their language, the word “shawarma” sounds like “shawarma”.
Marketing move
Also, the reason for the existence of so many names for one dish was a kind of marketing ploy, when competition arose between companies producing this fast food. To attract buyers, businessmen had to constantly come up with impressive oriental names and launch promotions for the product. Representatives of little-known companies and private firms gave the products they supplied new names, changing one or two ingredients in the contents of the proposed dish (sauce, vegetables or spices). For example, instead of tomatoes they began to add sweet pepper, and instead of garlic sauce - mayonnaise.
And when the first fashion for shish kebab in lavash appeared, and the number of consumers decreased, it was necessary to urgently look for an alternative to the market. And it was found: mini-cafes and countless stalls appeared in the markets, which offered to try doner kebab or durum . This hasn’t changed the essence, but the buyer’s interest brought good results.
Homemade recipe. Product with cheese sauce
First, let's look at how to make shawarma without mayonnaise and sauce. This food will be much healthier and tastier than store-bought.
To prepare the product you will need:
- two thin flatbreads (wheat);
- salt (to your taste);
- tomato;
- black pepper (ground)
- cucumber;
- four leaves of lettuce, iceberg or frisse;
- two chicken thighs.
To prepare the sauce you will need:
- garlic clove;
- two tbsp. spoons of cream cheese (for example, mascarpone, although you can use any other of your choice);
- four tablespoons of sour cream (low-fat);
- parsley (one or two bunches will be enough).
Why is shawarma called shawarma?
Shawarma, as is commonly believed, first appeared at the end of the 70s of the last century in Germany. Kadir Nurman, who came from Turkey, tried to create his own culinary business in Berlin. It was he who first came up with the idea of wrapping the then popular Turkish kebab in pita bread, which made it possible to eat it on the go.
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Europeans, always living at a pace “on the run,” immediately appreciated such filling, convenient and tasty fast food, and shawarma gained mass popularity. Vertical skewers with meat in tents immediately appeared in all cities.
The difference in concepts is influenced by how many ingredients are used, what their composition is and the presence of any cooking features:
- Pete. If the filling is laid out only on one side of the dough, and the second one on top covers the entire contents. Next, it is fried in this form on the grill or in a hot frying pan. This type of shawarma is very popular in Belgium.
- Doner kebab (or simply doner) is a version of shawarma when the filling is all kinds of meat, various sausages and sausages. And there is an abundance of sauces to choose from and, if desired, various vegetables. Duner is in demand among connoisseurs of Armenian, Azerbaijani, Polish and German fast food cuisine.
- Girros is another interesting version of Greek shawarma made from special meat wrapped in a yeast-free thin dough.
Step-by-step cooking recipe
- First, cut the chicken thighs and salt them. Then pepper it.
- Place the chicken skin side down on a hot frying pan. Press her. Then fry until golden brown.
- Then turn the chicken over and fry the other side until done. This process will take approximately ten minutes.
- If additional oil is needed, add it to the pan.
- Once the chicken is completely cooked, cut it into cubes.
- Now move on to the process of preparing the sauce. To do this, mix the cream cheese and sour cream with a fork. Then add the garlic (pass it through a press in advance), then add finely chopped parsley. Afterwards, taste the sauce and add salt if necessary.
- Then cut the tomatoes and cucumbers into large cubes. Then add a little salt to the vegetables. If you want, remove the skin from the cucumber. Perhaps then the dish will be a little more tender.
- Then take the cake. Heat it in a dry frying pan. Be careful not to overcook the cake. Otherwise it may become hard. As a result, when you roll it up, it will simply break. Therefore, the heating process should take about thirty seconds, no more.
- When the flatbreads are browned, place lettuce leaves on them, followed by the sauce. At the same time, do not regret the latter. To make it tasty, there must be a lot of sauce.
- Then add the chicken pieces.
- Then vegetables.
- Then carefully roll the roll. Then place it seam side down on a dry, heated frying pan. Let the product sit like this for a minute.
- To make it convenient to eat without the filling falling out, wrap the bottom of the flatbread in a napkin.
Where is it tastier?
According to fans of this product, it is best prepared in St. Petersburg. This is also due to the fact that chicken and lamb are softer in taste, unlike pork. And the general culture of cooking affects the quality.
There are a lot of restaurants in the capital of Russia that belong to large, advertised monopolists. And, to be honest, they do not monitor the quality and behavior of the staff as much as in small St. Petersburg cafes, where they honestly try to monitor their reputation.
In fact, in any city you can stumble upon chefs who are negligent in their work (Photo: pixabay.com)
And in small private establishments they are very careful that their guests will like it, they try to select professional chefs and be sure to train them. After all, even if you use the freshest products and a variety of sauces, in the absence of experience and knowledge you can make a dish that will be dry and tasteless.
The second recipe. Shawarma with potatoes
In lavash, shawarma is a dish that is prepared when you need a satisfying and quick snack. You can create different food options. We offer you this method. Thus, quite simply you will get shawarma. This dish is prepared without much effort and large financial costs. You can bake the finished shawarma in the microwave. If you wish, you can put it in a frying pan or in the oven.
What does it take to make a delicious shawarma, the recipe for which we are now describing? The following ingredients:
- three cucumbers, tomatoes;
- two hundred grams of hard cheese;
- four pita breads;
- vegetable oil;
- six tbsp. spoons of ketchup, mayonnaise;
- two chicken breasts;
- salt;
- two hundred grams of white cabbage;
- pepper;
- 2 potatoes.
Reflections of philologists
If you look through Russian dictionaries, you will find that everywhere there is only one option: “shawarma”. Although the word “shawarma” is much more convenient in phonetic terms and is easier to pronounce. But it is believed that “shawarma” refers to one of the variants of dialectical pronunciation.
Linguists argue that over time, linguistic dictionaries are expected to be amended in favor of the second option, which corresponds to the characteristics of the norm. Whereas the first option is in clear contradiction due to the awkward combination of two vowels “a-u”. By strictly following the rules, the Russian language avoids such circumstances, so correcting the error in the future is inevitable.
Cooking shawarma at home: step-by-step instructions
- First, cut the chicken fillet into small pieces. Then add salt and pepper. Then fry until golden in vegetable oil.
- Wash the potatoes. Then peel and cut into strips. Then fry the potatoes in vegetable oil. This process will take you about fifteen minutes.
- Then chop the cabbage.
- Rinse the cucumbers. Then cut into thin slices.
- Rinse the tomatoes. Then cut them thinly too.
- Take hard sur. It should be grated on a coarse grater.
- Then mix with mayonnaise and ketchup. You've got a unique sauce. Grease the pita bread with it. Then start adding the filling. Do it in layers. First lay out the chicken, then the cucumbers and tomatoes, then the cabbage, potatoes and cheese. After this, roll up the shawarma.
- The resulting product is placed in the microwave for four minutes.
- That's it, the shawarma is ready. This product should be served warm. It won't taste very good cold.
In search of the scroll
To find the best shawarma in the Danilovsky district of Moscow, the Izvestia correspondent used the popular application “Where is the shawarma,” in which thousands of doner outlets are sorted by the number of positive reviews. In line for shawarma stood a utility worker in an orange vest, a man in a business suit, a guy with an athletic build and an intelligent gray-haired man with thin-framed glasses. The shawarma master, who introduced himself as Abbas, has been working at this point for about five months. Before that, he worked as a plumber in Krasnodar, and before that he worked in Turkey. It took him a couple of weeks to master his new profession. The basics of making shawarma were taught by my brother, who has been doing this for several years.
“I cook from 20 to 70 pita breads with meat a day. I get very tired, of course, and sometimes I can’t sit down all day. We have a 12-hour shift every day, no days off. We work around the clock. I arrive at 9 am, and my shift person works in the evening and works all night. I used to work at night myself,” Abbas said.
He did not notice any aggressive visitors at night and thinks that this is largely due to the fact that he used to wear a thick beard. After Abbas was transferred to the day shift, he decided to get rid of his facial hair.
“Krasnodar is a wonderful city, but I like Moscow much less, and I don’t really see anything here. I only have time to come home to sleep so that I can go to work again in the morning. Of course, you can’t work at this pace for long, I hope to save up in a year and a half to prepare for taking my license in order to get a job as a taxi driver: more money and free time,” says the shawarma seller.
According to him, slightly more men come for shawarma than women. Quite often people come in pairs, and many found out about the stall through the app. He says that dissatisfied visitors have never come, but he knows regular customers by sight. For lunch, Abbas cooks shawarma for himself every day - judging by his physique, he has not gained weight from eating it every day for six months. Opening your own shawarma shop in Moscow is quite expensive, Abbas is sure. Neither he nor his brother are even thinking about this yet.
Russian cities with the cheapest shawarma have become known
Recipe three. Shawarma in pita
This cooking option differs in that it uses pita bread rather than pita bread. You must purchase it in advance at the store.
To prepare you will need:
- one large tomato;
- one medium cucumber;
- 100 ml sauce;
- pita (two pieces);
- 100 grams of grilled chicken;
- onion (to taste).
Where did the name shawarma come from?
In modern Russian dictionaries you can find only one name - and this is shawarma, although shawarma is easier to pronounce and a phonetically more convenient word. Most likely, this name is a dialectical variant, which was initially used erroneously.
And according to some experts, shawarma will also soon be included in dictionaries and, perhaps, it will even be made the main word, because it meets all modern standards. And this, by the way, differs from shawarma, where two consonants appear in a row at once.
Perhaps, in the new dictionaries, instead of shawarma, shawarma will be listed (Photo: rentyerevan.com)
By the way, such passions and such confrontation once arose between these two names that some residents of the “cultural capital” proposed to completely ban the use of the word “shawarma” at the legislative level within the borders of St. Petersburg. It seems to us that an ordinary word does not deserve such passions at all.
Garlic Sause
This sauce is perfect for shawarma. In addition, it goes well with fish and meat dishes.
To prepare the sauce you will need:
- pepper mixture;
- 50 ml of mayonnaise, kefir and sour cream;
- a bunch of greenery;
- khmeli-suneli;
- five cloves of garlic.
Notes[ | ]
- Running kitchen, Kommersant
- 7 questions about shawarma and shawarma (undefined)
. Gramota.ru. - “In the latest academic dictionaries of the Russian language, only shawarma is recorded.” Access date: August 31, 2017. - Albert N. Link.
Gender and Entrepreneurial Activity. - Edward Elgar publishing, 2017. - P. 49. - ISBN 178536474X, 9781785364747. - Yandex Research - Local words
- Israeli Street Foods (unspecified)
(unavailable link). Access date: June 15, 2009. Archived March 6, 2014. - As for Greek origin, see information about Greece and Crete.
