Chicken Tabaka in a frying pan

Chicken Tabaka is a world-famous dish of Georgian cuisine. This dish got its strange name from the name of a special frying pan called “tapa”, which is why at first the dish was called Chicken Tapaka, that is, fried in a frying pan. Over time, the name changed, adapted to what was most understandable to the Russian ear, and now we have what we have - in all restaurants and cafes this chicken is called Tabaka Chicken. Extreme times even gave birth to a legend that a flattened chicken closely resembles a large tobacco leaf - hence the name. Tapaka is a deep, thick-walled vessel (frying pan) designed to cook whole chicken. Usually a heavy lid-press is attached to it. The press presses the chicken tightly to the bottom of the pan and promotes the rapid formation of a uniform golden brown crust - mmm... yummy! But, if you don’t have special utensils, you shouldn’t give up making this delicious dish. We will cook it in an ordinary frying pan, and we will build a press from what is available in any home kitchen.

It will be useful for you:

chicken 0.5 - 1 kg
garlic 2-4 cloves
salt
ground black pepper
vegetable oil for frying

For this dish, it is better to choose chicken weighing up to 1 kg. I have a very small chicken, weighing 0.5 kg.

Step-by-step photo recipe for making:

Rinse the chicken and remove any remaining feathers.

Cut the chicken lengthwise down the breast.

Flatten the chicken and pound it with a hammer.

This is what should happen.

Cut the peeled garlic cloves into 2-3 parts, mix salt and pepper.

Make punctures in the carcass with a knife.

Dip the garlic into the salt and pepper mixture and press into the cut.

Season the chicken carcass on both sides with salt and pepper.

In this marinated form, the chicken can be stored in the refrigerator for up to 2 days, just cover it with cling film.

Heat the oil in a frying pan and place the chicken inside down. If you have a special lid-press, press the bird tightly with it. Fry the chicken over medium heat for 15 minutes.

The press can be replaced with an ordinary pan of water. Just cover the chicken with baking paper ahead of time. This technique will protect your stove and pan from grease and splatters, but the chicken will not have a crispy crust.

I cover the chicken with a thick flat plate and put a three-liter jar of, for example, tomatoes on top. With all this option, the crunch of the crust is 100% guaranteed.

Tip: Take note of tomatoes with mustard The Mom's Stove website has a delightful "Favorite Recipes" where you can save the recipe you like and easily find it whenever you need it. The category is located on the top panel of the website.

No matter what kind of water container is suitable for the press.

When the chicken is cooked on one side, remove the press, turn the bird over to the other side, install the press and fry over medium heat for 15 minutes.
If your chicken is more than 0.5 kg, keep it on the fire a little longer or fry it 2 times on each side.

Chicken Tabaka is not bad either hot or cold, but it’s better to eat it right away. Juicy, fragrant chicken meat with a tender, crispy crust - this dish will become a frequent guest in your home kitchen. You see, it's quite easy to prepare!

The best side dish for this dish would be the freshest vegetables and herbs. I like to serve it with Sour Cream and Peanut Sauce or Georgian Tkemali Sauce.

Chicken Tabaka. Laconic recipe.

It will be useful for you:

chicken 0.5 - 1 kg
garlic 2-4 cloves
salt
ground black pepper
vegetable oil for frying

Rinse the chicken, remove any remaining feathers, cut lengthwise along the breast, flatten and pound with a hammer.

Make punctures in the carcass with a knife and insert garlic cloves into them, dipping them in a mixture of salt and pepper.

Season the chicken with salt and pepper on both sides.

Fry in a hot frying pan with oil, pressing down with a press for 15 minutes on each side.

Chicken tabaka (tapaka)

Saturday, October 13, 2018

An unusually tasty dish of Georgian cuisine, which anyone can prepare. It's really just pan-fried chicken, but not quite. Chicken tabaka (tapaka) has a crispy crust, juicy meat and just an amazing smell. Once you try it, you will love it forever!

They knew how to cook tobacco chicken (tapaka) back in the days of the former Russian Union, because that’s where the name tobacco came from, even though the dish has nothing to do with this plant. Tapa is a special flat and languid Georgian frying pan with a heavy press lid. It is clear that not every kitchen (especially Belarusian, to be sure) has tapa, so I suggest cooking tabaka chicken (tapaka) in a metal frying pan.

The seasoning mixture in my version of the chicken tabaka (tapaka) recipe is limited to 3 components: salt, black pepper and fresh garlic. Hot hot peppers, aromatic herbs and other fragrant additives are possible, but not now. Ghee can be purchased, but it is better to make it for future use using this recipe. As a second component for frying chicken tabaka (tapaka), you can use any kind of vegetable oil, only refined, that is, without aroma.

Will just butter work for this chicken tabaka (tapaka) recipe? No, you cannot fry it on it, because the protein in the composition will simply burn. If you don’t have ghee in stock, take 150 grams of butter and melt it in the microwave or on the stove. Let it cool or put it in the freezer - the frisky melted butter will rise to the top, harden and you can scoop it up with a spoon without any problems. True, it will not have the smell that is characteristic of real ghee.

Ingredients:

Making a dish step by step:

To make this ordinary, but very tasty and fragrant dish, we will need the following ingredients: chicken (we only sell broiler chicken), ghee, vegetable oil, fresh garlic, salt and dark pepper.

First, let's prepare the bird. Naturally, we would have to find a small chicken, but in Vitebsk I have not seen any small ones for sale. That is why for such a dish I buy a broiler chicken weighing 1.5 kilograms - this fits perfectly into my grill pan. We take a whole carcass, wash it in cool running water, removing the cores of feathers (if any) and yellowish pellets (often found on the skin). After this, use a sharp knife to cut it along the breast. If you eat the tail, leave it, but be sure to cut off the top part where the feather oil is located.

We open it with our hands so that the chicken lies on its back. If there are remains of viscera (usually lungs and kidneys remain in the carcass), remove them. Again, we wash the carcass under cool water, washing away blood clots (internal environment of the human and animal body) .

Let the water drain, then wipe the cooked chicken carcass dry with cardboard napkins.

In order for the chicken to lie as tightly as possible on the bottom of the pan, it must be beaten with a kitchen hammer. And so that you don’t have to wash the walls and table later, we cover the carcass with a piece of cling film or a brand new plastic bag, which we simply cut along the folds so that one piece comes out. It is necessary to beat the carcass at the joints, although not very much and for a relatively short time.

There is no need to marinate the chicken ahead of time. It is enough just to salt the carcass on both sides. Our family doesn’t eat a lot of salt, so half a teaspoon will be enough for now. I advise you to choose not small salt (Extra), but ordinary rock or sea salt.

Let's move on to the container in which the chicken will be fried. It’s clear that I don’t have real tapa (not that I often cook chicken this way), but I literally have half of it. I mean a languid cast-iron grill pan (I have a square 24x24 cm) - just enough for a chicken weighing 1.5 kilograms. We heat the frying pan properly (the metal one takes a long time to heat up, but at the same time it retains heat for a very long time), pour 100 ml of melted butter and 50 ml of refined vegetable oil into it. Let them warm up as needed.

Place the cooked chicken carcass on its back, in other words, skin side down, in hot oil. Fry the chicken over medium heat for 5-7 minutes until the skin sets and browns. If you immediately start cooking tapaka (tabaka) chicken on low heat, it will not fry, but stew.

Next, it’s a small matter: you need to create a load, because I don’t have a special heavy lid-press. I got used to placing the bottom of a springform pan on top of the chicken (it fits perfectly against the sides of the pan).

And to make it heavier, I place a three-liter pan filled with water on the flat part of the baking dish. By the way, I recommend pouring hot water so as not to slow down the process of cooking the chicken. Turn the heat to moderate (below medium) and cook the chicken tapaka (tabaka) for 25 minutes. I indicate the production time for a metal frying pan and a carcass weighing 1.5 kilograms.

While the tapaka (tabaka) chicken is fried, let's prepare a fragrant seasoning for it. To do this, it is best to use a mortar, in which you need to grind half a teaspoon of salt with half a teaspoon of dark peppercorns.

I advise you to grind it not into dust, but into small crumbs, so that you can feel the pieces of pepper - it tastes better this way (in my opinion). If you want to use ready-made ground pepper from a bag (I’m talking about store-bought), believe me, it will be worse. Freshly ground, the degree of grinding of which you constantly control yourself, is much more aromatic!

We peel several large cloves of garlic (there is never too much garlic in this recipe), cut them into pieces to make it easier to crush in a mortar.

Grind salt, pepper and garlic until a pasty mass is obtained. This is a very fragrant seasoning that will make tapaka (tabaka) chicken unusually savory. For now, let's leave it on the table - let it wait for the bird to be ready. If you don’t have a mortar, you can use a pepper grinder and grind the garlic with a knife on a cutting board or grate it.

When the required time has passed, remove the press from the chicken.

Very carefully, so as not to burn yourself and leave the brown skin in the pan, turn the chicken over. Usually, I first quietly lift the carcass from all sides with a steel spatula and, only after making sure that nothing is stuck, turn the bird over by its legs. Again, place the weight on top of the chicken and cook on the 2nd side for another 20-25 minutes.

When the allotted time for frying has passed, remove the pressure. Our fried tapaka (tabaka) chicken is ready, which you can simply verify by piercing the meat in the thickest part (for example, in the legs to the very bone). Turn the carcass over again - skin side down.

Apply a fragrant mixture of garlic, salt and pepper to the chicken. Spread it over the entire half of the carcass. Why specifically at this moment, and not, for example, marinate the chicken in the consistency given to us? Yes, because the garlic and pepper will simply burn during the preparation of chicken tapaka (tobacco), and at the same time they will give an unpleasant bitterness.

The usual recipe for traditional chicken tabaka in a frying pan

The most difficult thing in a recipe for tobacco chicken in a modern town is to find on sale, firstly, the chicken itself, and secondly, weighing no more than 1 kg, and not a giant broiler chicken. And cooking it under pressure in a frying pan won’t take much effort. The main thing is proper preparation. How to create everything correctly, see our recipe, carefully and step by step. This time we offer the most common method, which is worth starting with: it’s useful to get your hands full, and to experience the taste of a famous dish of Georgian cuisine, “unclouded” by anything other than salt and dark ground pepper. This is the traditional recipe.

What will we need

broiler chicken - 500 g;
large salt - 1 tsp. with a slide;
freshly ground dark pepper - 0.5 tsp;
butter - 50 g;
refined sunflower oil - 50 ml.

How to cook tobacco chicken in a frying pan, how much and how to fry it correctly

Preparing the chicken mainly comes down to bringing it into the flattest possible state and equalizing its thickness. This is the most important thing. Why do we take the carcass, cut it lengthwise along the breast, and spread it out, as in the photo below.
If during the process we find any remains of entrails, remove them, rinse them well, and dry them with a towel. Turn the back upside down. Cover with a plastic bag, take a rolling pin, and beat it. Why a specific rolling pin and not a special hammer? Usually, it has a corrugated striking surface, and if it is smooth, it has a small area. This is great for chops, but not very suitable for tobacco chicken. The rolling pin is both smooth and has a larger surface. By beating, we need to create the narrowest carcass. To do this, we break bones and cartilage, as it may sound ruthless. We pay special attention to the hips and chest as the largest areas. But we beat it very carefully so as not to destroy the skin.
This is roughly what a beaten chicken should look like.
Now all we have to do is marinate it. Sprinkle with salt and pepper and rub the spices into the meat with your hands. Cover the chicken with film and leave to stand for 30 minutes.
After half an hour, we take a frying pan - preferably a metal one, but a high-quality frying pan with a thick bottom and walls is also suitable. Its diameter should be such that the chicken does not feel too cramped. Put a piece of butter, pour in sunflower oil, and heat over high heat. Place the chicken skin side down, heat and immediately reduce the heat to moderate. This is a must, otherwise the skin will start to burn and the fibers inside will remain raw. And now you need to put a load on top: it could be a pan or a jar of water. For greater durability, we place it on a plate with which we cover the carcass. There are, by the way, special languid lids, but these are for people without dexterity. If you have a grill pan, grill on it. The Tabaka chicken will not only acquire a fried, appetizing crust, characteristic of “Tabaka” specifically, but will also be dressed up in beautiful stripes.
How long to fry? At first 20 minutes. Then we turn it over.
Fry on the other side for another 20 minutes. Now attention! If the weight of your broiler does not exceed 500 grams, then this is enough for it to fry until done. If the weight of the chicken is greater, then proceed as follows: remove the press, pour 1/3 cup of boiling water into the frying pan and cook the chicken until cooked for 5-6 minutes on each side, covering with a lid.

So our golden chicken is ready - a true decoration of the table.

Small cooking secrets from a Georgian chef

Before frying tobacco chicken, it is not soaked in brines or sauces. Rubbing with salt and pepper, then letting it sit for half an hour is marinating. No matter what kind of amateur activity here, the authentic taste will quickly disappear.

But just before putting it in the frying pan, the chicken can be greased with a mixture of 2 teaspoons of adjika and 3 teaspoons of sour cream.

And after frying, you can prepare additional seasoning. It is as simple as possible: grate 2 cloves of garlic on a small grater, lightly add salt, and dilute with water. Almost finished chicken is brushed with this garlic water. But it’s better to do this with it already removed from the frying pan. Garlic can give it a bitter taste during cooking and spoil the whole “tobacco” for us.

According to the old Caucasian tradition, the dish is served with the freshest vegetables and herbs - cilantro, parsley, onions. Well, no one has canceled Georgian sauces. The most suitable are adjika and garlic sauce (except for garlic water). It is done like this: chop a couple of cloves of garlic, chop half a bunch of parsley, add salt and pepper, and mix with sour cream. The mixture must be a regular sauce mixture. Thus, we get reddish and snow-white sauces for the main dish. They mix quite well with chicken. But if you think that this has exhausted the gastronomic accompaniment of the dish, you are mistaken. Connoisseurs consider tkemali to be the best sauce for tobacco chicken.

Chicken tabaka

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Chicken tabaka recipe from the delightful Georgian writer Tinatin Mzhavanadze.
Tinatin insists on a young village chicken, weighing about 500 g (such chickens can be purchased at the market). If you don’t have it, you can, of course, cook it with a broiler, but firstly, it will be more difficult to bring it to full readiness in a frying pan (you can’t do without an oven), and the taste, naturally, cannot be compared with homemade chicken. But let’s not waste any more time discussing chickens - everything is clear with them.
We cook with the chicken we managed to buy! Bon appetit! :))

Ingredients

salt
chicken (500-700 g)	1 PC
butter	50 g
vegetable oil	1 tbsp.
For the niortzkali sauce
garlic	3-4 cloves
salt (large)	1/3 tsp.
water (cool, boiled)	100-150 ml

general information

Total production time

1 h

Active production time

20 minutes

Complexity

Easy

Number of servings

Step-by-step recipe with photos

Wash the chicken and dry thoroughly with cardboard towels.
Place the chicken on a cutting board, breast side up, and cut open the breast.

Flatten the chicken carcass so that it becomes flat.
Rub the chicken with plenty of salt.

Advice

The chicken carcass must be made as flat as possible so that its skin is in close contact with the surface of the pan and a uniform crispy crust is formed over the entire surface. To do this, it is better to turn the chicken upside down with its wings, cover it with cling film (to avoid splashes) and beat it well with a hoe (especially the joints).
I didn’t beat the chicken (I didn’t have the ability to make noise :)) and as a result, the skin of the chicken didn’t brown over the entire surface; more of the color was on the wings. Fortunately, this did not affect the taste for the worse, but it is better not to neglect this aspect and get an impeccable result

Also, in order to ensure the most uniform roasting and the greatest contact of the chicken skin with the bottom of the pan, during frying, it must be pressed under pressure.

Pour a little vegetable oil (1 tbsp)
into a cast-iron Place the chicken, back side up, into the hot oil.

Fry for about 5 minutes over high heat, covered, until lightly browned.
Then turn the breast upside down and fry over high heat, covered, for about 5 minutes.

Reduce heat to low, cover the chicken with an inverted flat plate and press down with pressure (for example, a pan of water).
Cook for about 20-30 minutes.
If we bring the chicken to readiness using this simple method, it will be called tabaka chicken (tapaka).
But you can create even tastier chicken.
Then add garlic to it and get a new dish - chkmeruli. It's simple! :)) For the version with garlic, after 20 minutes of frying over low heat, pour the chicken with niortzkali garlic sauce (see sauce recipe below), increase the heat to high, and fry for about another 7-10 minutes so that excess moisture evaporates, and the chicken is completely cooked reached readiness.

Niortzkali sauce .
Place peeled, coarsely chopped garlic cloves in a mortar and add a pinch of large salt.
Grind the garlic with salt until a homogeneous mass is formed (if you don’t have a mortar, crush the garlic using a garlic squeezer and mix with a pinch of salt).

Transfer the garlic pulp into a cup or bowl, add boiled cool water and stir. The sauce is ready!

Advice

Niortskali sauce is a regular rustic garlic sauce. Part of the sauce is added when frying the tabak chicken, and the remaining sauce can be served with the chicken and Georgian lavash can be dipped into it during the meal (for my taste, a little olive oil, it would not hurt the sauce so that it is not very liquid, although it tastes oilless not bad at all)

What can you do if you haven’t bought a young chicken? Cooking with broiler! It also needs to be flattened and rubbed with salt. Fry under pressure on both sides until golden brown, over high heat, and place on a baking sheet. By the way, if you need to cook not just one chicken, but several pieces, fry them one by one under pressure in a frying pan and place them on a baking sheet. Bake until done (time will depend on the weight of the chickens). When the chicken is ready, when you pierce the thickest part with a wooden skewer, clear juices will come out.

Transfer the finished chicken to a plate and serve immediately.

Bon appetit!

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