For many, all three dishes - manti, dumplings and khinkali - are simply dough containing some kind of filling, be it meat, vegetables, animal fat or other variations. They are really very similar. Especially if you look at their photographs. But everything is not so simple and there are really many differences. Below is a detailed description of the differences between these dishes.
What is khinkali
Khinkali is a food vaguely reminiscent of dumplings or manti. Clearly came from China, perhaps along with the Mongols. Now khinkali is made all over Georgia, although it is an “oriental” food, its homeland is Kakheti and Mtskheta-Mtianeti. For real khinkali you need to go to Pasanauri. Samegrelo is the most non-khinkal region. In Adjara and Guria you don’t come across them very often and here you don’t have to know how to cook them properly. Khinkali is sometimes sold in markets - frozen, like dumplings. It's cheap, but the quality is usually poor.
The correct khinkali looks like a knot or a pyramid. Inside there is meat and broth. The lack of broth is a defect inherent in khinkali ice cream. Khinkali is eaten as follows. The pyramid is taken by the tip-tail, turned over, and bitten off at the edge. The broth is carefully drunk. Then everything else is gradually eaten, except for the tail itself, where the dough is not very edible. Some people, out of inexperience, start eating from the tail, which is tasteless and wrong.
Now about the variations. There are seven types of Khinkali.
- “Kalakuri” is what is sold everywhere: inside is minced meat from two types of meat mixed with grass.
- “Mtialuri” is the same, but without grass.
- “Pasanauruli” - with minced meat instead of minced meat.
- “Kakheti” - with pure pork.
- Made from pure beef - they don’t have their own name.
- With crab meat - a strange combination for Georgia, but it happens in some places.
- With cheese (sometimes they differ with cheese and with sulugni).
It is best to drink beer or vodka with them. It doesn’t go well with wine, except perhaps the roughest rustic wine.
What are dumplings
Pelmeni is a famous dish of Russian cuisine, which has ancient Chinese, Finno-Ugric, Turkic and Slavic roots. The modern name comes from the Udmurt “pelnyan” - “bread ear”. Analogues of dumplings exist in many cuisines around the world. Taste, satiety and ease of storage have made dumplings extremely popular; ready-made dumplings can be bought at any grocery store. But, of course, the most delicious dumplings are homemade. In order to make delicious dumplings, you first need a good dumpling dough recipe, a dumpling mince recipe and a little skill.
Good recipes for homemade dumplings, dough recipes for dumplings, minced meat recipes for dumplings, as well as answers to questions: how to make dumplings, how to cook dumplings, how long to cook dumplings, how to fry dumplings in a frying pan, how to bake dumplings in the oven, how to cook dumplings in a pot , lazy dumplings, you will find on our website.
Vareniki
This is a dish from Ukrainian cuisine, which originates from a Turkic recipe. The filling in dumplings can be either sweet or savory. The dough is prepared by analogy with dumplings. The traditional way to prepare dumplings is to boil them in water.
The main differences between dumplings and dumplings:
- dumplings contain raw minced meat, and dumplings contain only ready-to-eat ingredients: berries, cottage cheese, boiled potatoes;
- the technology for sculpting these two dishes is different: dumplings are shaped like ears, and dumplings have a more elongated shape, similar to a crescent;
- dumpling dough is kneaded only with water; for dumplings, water can be replaced with other liquids: kefir, yogurt, milk, unsweetened yogurt;
- the size of one dumpling is much larger than even the largest dumpling.
What are manti
Manta rays are a prominent representative of the cuisine of the peoples of Central Asia, Pakistan and Turkey. These products are very similar to Russian dumplings, but are prepared exclusively by steaming. In most cases, meat and fat tail fat of various animals, as well as pumpkin, are used as filling.
In the classic version, manti is prepared with lamb and served with hot or spicy sauce. This dish is used not only on the everyday menu, but is also served as a ceremonial dish on family and national holidays. Manti are more often used as a separate main dish, but in some regions they are served with a vegetable side dish or manti sauce.
How are the two types of products similar?
Both dishes are prepared on the principle of wrapping the filling in dough . In many cases, both are prepared from unleavened dough. Minced meat is most often meat, and in both khinkali and manti it is preferable to take the following meat: lamb, beef or lean pork, and chop it to prepare the minced meat.
Spices are used to prepare both dishes , which gives them a specific, distinctive taste. In addition, they are always very juicy, since there is broth inside the product.
Dumplings, khinkali and manti - what's the difference?
What is the difference between manti and dumplings?
Many people think that manti are just big dumplings. On the one hand, it seems so, on the other – not at all! Manti is a dish unique in its content and method of preparation.
- Steamed manti is prepared in a special vessel - a caskan (manti cooker), or you can cook it in a double boiler. If you have neither one nor the other, then use a saucepan and a colander.
- The filling can be varied. First of all - meat (lamb, beef, chicken, pork). Vegetable manti, manti with herbs and cottage cheese are also prepared. Nowadays you can find manti stuffed with seafood, for example, shrimp.
- Spices play an important role in the preparation of manti. They give the dish an extraordinary taste and aroma.
- The dough for making manti is unleavened and consists of water, salt and flour. Sometimes they are prepared with milk, sour milk, with the addition of eggs and yeast. Dough for manti is similar in preparation to dough for dumplings, but it is steeper, denser and needs to be rolled out very thinly.
What is the difference between khinkali and manti
Khinkali differs from manti primarily in its origin - the birthplace of this dish is the mountainous regions of Georgia. Over the course of their history, they have undergone many changes in the recipe and today they are a juicy dish of meat filling mixed with a lot of herbs. Khinkali are shaped like pouches with tails. Each bag must be filled with broth, which is not provided for in any of the dishes discussed in the article. The ways of serving the dish to the table and its consumption have their own characteristics: it is customary to eat with your hands, first seasoning the bags with black pepper.
The position of consumption itself is also not without its specifics: the tail that closes the bag is not eaten, but is held by it, which is why sometimes the hands are in an awkward position, because cutlery is not provided according to the culture of use. “The main thing is not to ask for a fork for khinkali at a Georgian table, but to politely put the tails of the bags aside, otherwise you can offend the owner with your ignorance.” - common advice for tourists.
Historically, according to legend, this food was positioned as a meal with which wives greeted their husbands who returned from battles with broken jaws or knocked out teeth. They are quite similar in preparation methods; the forms of heat treatment of semi-finished products differ. The main difference is how the meat is processed.
Manti
- Take half a kilogram of wheat flour, one chicken egg, a teaspoon of salt and 0.5 cups of water - the dough is kneaded from these ingredients, which then must be left for thirty minutes. It must be covered with a towel.
- For the filling, minced meat and onions are mixed, and part of a glass of water with diluted salt is added. Pepper is used as a spice. The recipe also includes lard cut into small pieces. The present dough is cut into squares with sides of 10 centimeters. Place a spoonful of filling and a piece of lard in the middle. The dough is then folded into an envelope shape. On a steam bath, cooking time takes approximately twenty minutes, on a mantrovka grill - more than half an hour.
Khinkali
- A glass of sifted flour is mixed with half a glass of chilled water, then salt is added and a spoonful of table oil is poured in. Next, the dough should infuse for half an hour. Then add another glass of flour and leave for another 30 minutes.
- The present dough is divided into a couple of parts, each of which is rolled out to a thickness acceptable for further wrapping. From the resulting semi-finished product, circles with a diameter of 15 centimeters are cut out. Minced meat is mixed from three hundred grams of meat, you can take half pork, the other half beef. Add chopped onion, water and salt. A few spoons of filling are placed in the center of the cut out circle, then bags are formed and pinched at the top. The resulting preparations should be boiled in boiling water, adding salt and pepper to taste.
“It’s simple: manti is minced lamb meat, steamed; Khinkali is also lamb, but the meat must be ground and then boiled.” - this is how masters teach inexperienced chefs to correctly determine the differences.
What is the difference between dumplings and khinkali?
The filling of dumplings and khinkali is meat. For dumplings, it is rolled into minced meat, to which salt and ground black pepper are added to taste. There are recipes for dumplings with meat and mushrooms, with fish, with minced poultry (chicken, duck, turkey). The filling for khinkali is made from beef or pork, less often lamb, other types of meat are not used. The filling can be chopped or in the form of minced meat. Many different spices and herbs are necessarily added to it.
Khinkali and dumplings have different shapes. The first ones are molded in the form of small, hermetically sealed bags. Due to the fact that they are closed as tightly as possible, a large amount of tasty spicy broth accumulates in the khinkali during the cooking process. The dumplings are made in the shape of a crescent, the ends of which are very tightly fastened together. Some housewives make “written” dumplings - products in which one side is “written out” in the form of a braid.
Khinkali is served generously sprinkled with coarse black pepper. The traditional sauce for dumplings is sour cream. They are also good with vinegar dressing or ketchup.
Eating khinkali is a real ritual. You need to take them by the “tail” (khinkali is usually eaten with your hands) and, having carefully bitten off, drink the broth. The “tail” itself is almost never eaten. Dumplings can be eaten with a fork or spoon, whichever is more convenient for you. The dumpling is eaten whole.
Definition
Manti is the national dish of the peoples inhabiting Central Asia, Turkey, and Crimea. They are round or three-quadrangular envelopes made of dough with meat filling, closed at the top.
Manti
Khinkali is the national dish of the peoples of the Caucasus. The homeland of khinkali is Georgia. They are hermetically sealed dough bags filled with meat.
Khinkali
A little about the history of dumplings in Russia
Dumplings became most popular in Russia at the beginning of the 19th century. At least, it was at the dawn of this century that historians and culinary specialists first began to mention this dish in their works as a traditional treat for the townspeople.
It is believed that residents of neighboring countries shared the recipe for dumplings with us, and the “infusion” of gastronomic culture was gradual and chaotic. In the northern regions, dumplings appeared thanks to the Finno-Ugric tribes. Asian peoples, conducting active trade with Russia at the turn of the 12th-14th centuries, brought their own traditions. In the European and southern parts of Russia, the prototype of dumplings was “ears”, which the Don Cossacks loved to treat themselves to.
The most common version says that the Russian word “pelmen” comes from the word “pelnyan” (“bread ear”), later it was transformed into “pelmen”, and then into “pelmen”. Sources differ in indicating the specific language from which this word came into Russian. Komi, Udmurt, Mansi and Finnish languages are mentioned as possible options.
Small pies or, as they were once called, ears, became so popular in Siberia because of their practicality. When going on a hike or hunting, men took with them meat wrapped in dough and could store it in travel bags for many months - the dish did not lose its taste at all when frozen for a long time.
“Usually pelnyani are boiled in water and then laid out directly on a dirty table; and they simply take them with their hands, very rarely with wooden forks,” this is how V.V. Grigoriev, a member of the Russian Geographical Society, described the process of preparing and eating dumplings in 1848.
Now almost every country has its own version of this hot dish: in Italian cuisine it is ravioli, in Jewish cuisine it is krepl, in Caucasian cuisine it is manti and khinkali, in Asia it is jiaozi and baozi or, as they are most often called in Europe, dim sum. In Russia, to this day, home-made Siberian dumplings are considered a model - perhaps only in Siberia is the hundred-year-old tradition of their preparation still preserved.
