Lobio red bean soup recipe. Pea dishes. To create a dish you need

“Lobio” translated from Georgian means “beans”, and the same name is given to dishes prepared based on this ingredient. Legumes are supplemented with various vegetables, herbs, seasonings, and consumed both hot and cold.

There are many ways to prepare lobio with the addition of various components.

But for a traditional Georgian dish you will need the following products:

• 600 g beans;
• 150 g walnut kernels;
• 100 g leeks;
• bulb;
• garlic cloves;
• several stalks of celery;
• Bay leaf;
• salt.

Sequence of work:

1. Boil the pre-soaked beans until soft, adding bay leaves and adding water if necessary.
2. Add chopped celery to the prepared beans and reduce heat to low.
3. Chop leeks, onions, cilantro, pass garlic through a press and place in a saucepan.
4. Crush the nut kernels with a rolling pin, add to the dish and keep it on the fire for another quarter of an hour.

Georgian lobio is best eaten hot, but even after the dish has cooled, it will still remain tasty.

Red bean lobio: classic recipe

The classic recipe for making red bean lobio involves the use of a large amount of spices, as well as Tkemali sauce.

For cooking you will need:

• 500 g red beans;
• 380-450 g white or red onion;
• a bunch of cilantro;
• several garlic cloves;
• hot pepper;
• dried coriander and suneli hops;
• Bay leaf;
• Tkemali sauce to taste.

Sequence of work:

1. Place the beans in a thick-walled bowl, add cold water, sprinkle with salt and cook until tender, adding a bay leaf.
2. Drain the liquid from the cooked beans, mash them a little with a fork, then add boiled water and simmer.
3. Chop the onions and simmer them in another frying pan over heated vegetable fat, and then add chopped cilantro and seasonings.
4. Transfer the roast to the beans, add Tkemali sauce and simmer under the lid for some more time.

Important! To make the beans soft and tender, they should be soaked for at least 10-12 hours before boiling.

White bean lobio: traditional version

White bean lobio according to this recipe is easy and quick to make, which is why this cooking method is popular.

To create a dish you need:

• 500-600 g white beans;
• several large onions;
• garlic cloves;
• cilantro;
• hot pepper and suitable seasonings;
• Bay leaf;
• salt.

Operating procedure:

1. Drain the water from the pre-soaked beans, transfer to a container with thick walls, add cold liquid, salt and bay leaf, boil until soft.
2. Cut the onion into thin half rings and fry in vegetable oil until golden brown.
3. Add crushed garlic and chopped herbs to the roast, fry a little and add the mixture to the beans.
4. Sprinkle the dish with seasonings and simmer over low heat for a quarter of an hour.

If desired, you can supplement the lobio with tomato paste or fresh tomatoes.

Green bean lobio

To prepare green bean lobio, you can take the main ingredient fresh or frozen.

For the dish you will need:

• 500 g pods;
• egg;
• garlic;
• hot pepper and Caucasian seasonings;
• greenery;
• salt.

Sequence of work:

1. Peel the onion and garlic cloves and fry in a pan until soft.
2. Rinse the bean pods, strain off the liquid, if necessary, cut into several pieces with a knife and send for frying.
3. When the beans are ready, sprinkle them with salt and seasonings, break the egg on top and continue frying, stirring constantly, and after a few minutes remove from the heat.

Serve the dish hot or cooled, sprinkled with chopped herbs.

Lobio in Megrelian

The homeland of Megrelian lobio is the western part of Georgia. This dish differs from others in that the beans are not boiled too much, and in addition to cilantro, other types of greens are added, for example, basil or parsley. You can use white or red beans as a base.

For cooking you will need:

• 400 g beans;
• 150 g walnuts;
• 3 onion heads;
• 4-5 cloves of garlic;
• salt and hot seasonings;
• a bunch of cilantro and other greens.

Operating procedure:

1. Rinse the soaked beans, place in a deep bowl, add water and cook. When it becomes soft, place in a colander and let cool slightly.
2. Peel the onion and garlic, chop and fry in vegetable oil.
3. Remove the container from the heat, add chopped walnuts, salt, spices and herbs to the frying mixture, mix thoroughly.
4. Add beans to the mixture and simmer covered for a few minutes.

This dish will be an excellent side dish for meat or fish.

Quick tomato lobio

To make a quick lobio from beans, you should use this recipe. This dish will not be inferior in taste to the classic version.

To work you will need:

• 300 g beans;
• bulb;
• carrot;
• several juicy tomatoes;
• garlic cloves;
• 50 g wheat flour;
• salt and suitable spices;
• greenery.

Cooking sequence:

1. Let the soaked beans cook, and when they are ready, drain the water and let cool.
2. Cut the onion into half rings, chop the carrots on a grater, and crush the garlic with a press and place in a frying pan.
3. After the vegetables become soft, add chopped tomatoes, salt, seasonings and continue stewing.
4. When the frying is ready, lay out the beans, sprinkle with chopped herbs and keep on the fire for some more time.

Advice. To make tomato lobio even faster, it is better to use green beans as a base.

Lobio with nuts and mint

Lobio will be given a piquant taste by mint, which can be taken fresh or dried.

For cooking you will need:

• 500 g red or white beans;
• 100 g walnuts;
• a bunch of mint;
• several large onions;
• carrot;
• 3-4 red sweet peppers;
• garlic;
• tomato paste;
• Bay leaf;
• seasonings and salt.

Cooking process:

1. Rinse the soaked beans and cook, adding salt and bay leaf.
2. Peel the onions, garlic, carrots and peppers, chop and fry in a frying pan until soft, then add tomato paste.
3. Mash the boiled beans a little with a fork and add to the roast, sprinkle the dish with spices, salt and stir.
4. Chop the walnuts, chop the washed mint and add the ingredients to the dish, and then simmer under the lid for a short time.

You don’t have to put the greens in the frying pan, but sprinkle them on the finished dish, laid out in portioned plates.

Lobio with added meat

You can cook lobio as a main dish rather than a side dish if you add meat to it. Both pork, beef or veal are suitable.

For the dish you will need:

• 450 g beans;
• 500 g meat;
• several large onions;
• carrot;
• 3-4 bell peppers;
• 5 large tomatoes;
• greenery:
• salt and seasonings.

Cooking procedure:

1. Cook the beans until soft, cool and mash with a fork.
2. Chop the meat and fry in a frying pan with onions.
3. Add grated carrots and chopped bell pepper to the meat frying.
4. When the vegetables soften, add the diced tomatoes and beans, close the lid and simmer for 5-7 minutes.
5. A few moments before removing the container from the heat, sprinkle the lobio with chopped herbs.

Advice. You can make the taste of the dish more rich by adding garlic and ground pepper. For beef or veal, black is suitable, and pork goes better with red pepper.

Canned beans with chicken

Another quick recipe is canned bean lobio with chicken. In this case, the beans do not need to be cooked for a long time; they are added to the dish at the end of cooking, and the bird will fry faster than pork.

To work you will need:

• 500 g chicken;
• a can of beans, canned in its own juice;
• several onions;
• garlic;
• carrot;
• tomatoes or tomato paste;
• salt and seasonings to taste;
• greenery.

Preparation procedure:

1. Cut the bird and fry in vegetable fat.
2. Add chopped onion, garlic, carrots to the chicken and cook until soft.
3. Add diced tomatoes or tomato paste and continue simmering.
4. Place the beans strained from the juice, sprinkle the dish with herbs, salt, seasonings, and leave to simmer on the stove for a few more minutes.

On a note. If there are no tomatoes or pasta in the refrigerator, you can buy beans canned in tomato sauce and add them to the dish along with the liquid.

Lobio in a slow cooker

Lobio turns out tender and juicy in a slow cooker.

To do this you will need the following components:

• 350 g beans;
• bulb;
• garlic;
• tomato paste;
• greenery;
• salt and suitable seasonings.

Cooking process:

1. Place pre-soaked beans in the bowl of the device and add water so that it covers the beans by 3-4 cm.
2. Set the “Stew” or “Soup” mode and cook the main component for at least one and a half hours.
3. Chop the onion into half rings, crush the garlic in a press and add to the beans.

To work you will need:

• beans at the rate of 100 g per serving;
• garlic cloves, 1-2 pieces per container;
• sweet peppers according to the number of pots;
• onions, ½ head per serving;
• tomato paste;
• favorite greens;
• salt and seasonings to taste;
• boiled water.

Preparation procedure:

1. Rinse the pre-soaked beans and boil for a quarter of an hour, then drain the liquid, cool slightly and place in pots.
2. Peel the onion, garlic, pepper, chop and add to the beans.
3. Salt the ingredients, add tomato paste, spices, pour boiled water so that it completely covers the dish and place in the oven.
4. When the beans become soft, remove the containers from the oven, sprinkle the lobio with chopped herbs and place on the table.

For canning you will need:

• 2 kg yellow or green bean pods;
• 2 kg of juicy tomatoes;
• 500 g red bell pepper;
• 1-2 pods of hot pepper;
• 3 heads of garlic;
• 120 g sugar;
• 30-40 g salt;
• 120 ml odorless vegetable oil;
• 30 ml table vinegar 9%;
• favorite greens.

Operating procedure:

1. Wash the pods and, if necessary, chop them with a knife.
2. Scald the tomatoes with boiling water, remove the skins and puree the pulp.
3. Finely chop or mince the bell pepper, garlic and herbs.
4. Place the prepared ingredients in a saucepan, cover with a lid and bring to a boil.
5. Reduce heat to low, remove lid and continue cooking for another 30-40 minutes.
6. Add vinegar, oil and cook the mixture for another quarter of an hour.
7. Finally, add the greens, and after 5-7 minutes, remove the pan from the heat.
8. Place the hot mixture into sterilized jars and roll up.

I like Georgian cuisine. She is self-sufficient, respectable and somehow masculine or something. Searching for new recipes and communicating with culinary experts from our Georgia led me to the recipe for lobio soup. Everything is simple and harmonious in this dish. As if on purpose, friends treated us to another “victim” of the last hunt. I got a carcass of a gray partridge. So that she wouldn't get bored in the pan alone, I added a rabbit bone. Place the processed meat in a pan with water, add salt, parsley root leaves, a couple of allspice peas and let the game broth cook for two hours. Naturally, game can be replaced with regular chicken.

When the broth is cooked, you need to strain it, remove the meat and put it back on the fire. Take half a glass of rice, rinse it and add it to the broth.



Peel one onion and half a large carrot.



Cut the carrots into strips and cut the onion into half rings. Pour a tablespoon of vegetable oil into a frying pan and begin to fry the vegetables over medium heat, stirring them constantly.



Georgian cuisine is favorable to fragrant herbs and vegetables. Prepare one large tomato, dried cilantro, paprika and ground coriander. Lobio soup requires beans in any form. Dried beans should be soaked in water in the evening. She's hard as a rock. However, in my storerooms I found a jar of ready-made lobio in the form of canned food. This is food I have tested, quite tasty and properly prepared. Let's open a jar of lobio. Add a teaspoon of seasoning to the soup. The contents of the jar are entered a little later.



Place the tomato in boiling water for half a minute. Using a knife, make shallow cuts crosswise. After these manipulations, the thick skin of the tomato is removed in seconds.



Our carrot and onion dressing was almost toasted. Add the tomato, pureed on a metal sieve, directly into it and boil everything together for a couple of minutes. Add dressing to the soup.



Let's sort the game out. Separate the meat and cut it into small pieces. Return the meat to the soup. The soup is boiling, add canned lobio to it along with the gravy. Now we have game lobio soup on the stove, to which you can add garlic and bay leaf, as well as ground red pepper. Another minute and it’s time to remove the soup from the heat.



Serve lobio soup as hot as possible. Decorate it with parsley leaves or fresh cilantro. This aromatic and spicy soup should make you sweat and improve your mood.

What is lobio? “Beans” is how the word “lobio” is simply translated from Georgian. The name of the dish suggests that the basis of lobio is beans, red in grains and young green in pods. As an independent dish, Georgian lobio is a thick stew of red beans, the recipe of which is deservedly presented as one of the masterpieces of the national cuisines of the Caucasus (Georgia).

Recipe Basics

The classic recipe assumes that pre-boiled beans are cooked (simmered) in tomato sauce over low heat with the addition of herbs and spices. Before the appearance and spread of beans brought by Columbus to the Eurasian continent, lobio was traditionally prepared using hyacinth beans - dolichos.

This legume plant is still found in the wild in the Caucasus and Georgia. The land of Guri in Georgia gave the same name to the variety of beans from which, according to tradition, the most delicious aromatic lobio is cooked. The Gurian variety of beans is characterized by a small, only 1 centimeter long, bean size. Housewives in Russian kitchens usually prepare lobio from larger dark red kidney beans of the “kidni” variety.

Such a replacement does not spoil the classic recipe; lobio from large beans turns out no worse than from the Gurian variety. Just as in Italy “pizza” is the name of a group of culinary products, so in Georgia lobio is a dish similar in bean base. Onions, cilantro, vegetable oil and garlic - this is the quartet of main seasonings for Georgian-style red bean lobio, the recipe of which can be supplemented with tomatoes, which can be replaced with tomato paste, and herbs:

• basil,
• saffron,
• savory,
• crushed walnut kernels.

Original recipe

There is an original recipe for making lobio with beer. During cooking, the alcohol from the beer evaporates, and the dish is given a unique rich aroma and delicate taste. As an additional dressing for lobio, you can use kvatsarahi - boiled red cherry plum juice concentrate - tkemali or wine vinegar. According to the classic Georgian recipe, chefs prepare lobio only from fresh beans - green beans or red beans. It is not recommended to use canned food, as during the cooking process the dish will turn into porridge and its appearance will be ruined. “The abundance of freshly chopped cilantro makes the lobio authentic,” says Gia Kartvelishvili, chef of the Kidev restaurant in Kyiv. Vegetables are the basis of this Georgian food.

Enter there:

• fried onion,
• garlic crushed with salt,
• cilantro, pepper and savory,
• skinned tomatoes, they can easily be replaced with tomato paste,
• crushed walnuts.

This amazing food is seasoned with kvatsarahi, a boiled concentrate of red cherry plum juice - tkemali. The broth is added to the dish for dilution. The liquid from under the soaking beans is changed two to three times with clean water, removing damaged grains.

Nutritional value of lobio The dish has a vegetable composition, it does not contain an abundance of juicy meat, as is typical of Georgian cuisine. Therefore, the dish is low in nutrition - from 74 to 139 kilocalories per 100 grams of product. The same amount of food contains:

• 3.9 grams protein
• 0.3 grams fat
• 11.9 grams carbohydrates.

Due to the high level of carbohydrates in grains, bean dishes cannot be classified as directly indicated dietary products. Lobio attracts vegetarian food lovers and healthy eating enthusiasts. Red beans ("lobio" in Georgian) are rich in potassium, beneficial for the heart muscle, vitamins PP, B 1, B 2, B 5, B 6, B 9, E. Can be served during traditional religious abstinence from meat foods – posts. Excessive consumption of lobio is not recommended due to the excessive gas formation during fermentation of legumes in the stomach. People with gastritis and ulcerative diseases of the digestive system should also refrain from spicy and spicy lobio. When eating lobio, it is preferable to refrain from heavy foods such as mushroom dishes, since the legumes themselves are difficult to digest. Mushrooms will make the process of digestion more difficult.

Video on how to cook red bean lobio:

The classic recipe for red bean lobio represents the genre tradition of North Caucasian cuisine. Before starting culinary creativity, carefully pre-sorted and cleaned beans are soaked in cool water. This is necessary to soften the grains. Thanks to the soaked state, the beans cook faster, the cooking time is within an hour. If the cook uses soft and young grains from the stem when cooking, then there is no need to soak them. While the beans are soaking, change the water under them every 1 hour, draining the reddish infusion and adding clean water.

Georgian red bean lobio, recipe No. 1

Before treating your loved ones to traditional lobio, prepared according to the canons of Samegrelian cuisine, you should stock up on the following products and spices:

• Red beans – 250 grams
• juicy aromatic tomatoes, you can use the “Baku” variety – 150 grams
• hot pepper, “light” or chili – 1 small pod
• onion - 3 medium sized onions
• celery (stem/leaves) – 100/60 grams respectively
• purple basil – 50 grams of leaves
• small head of garlic
• cilantro and parsley - a small bunch each (50 grams)
• bulk seasonings: utskho-suneli, hops-suneli
• adjika, bay leaf, salt and ground black pepper are added to taste

Prepare step by step like this:

The beans need to be sorted and the broken grains discarded. Rinse the beans in several passes, further removing husks and impurities. Pour into a saucepan and add water so that its volume exceeds the volume of the beans by 5 times. The beans are kept cool, maybe in the refrigerator. This is necessary to prevent the fermentation process from starting - legumes are prone to this. The grains will swell for a long time, 6-8 hours. During this time, change the water to fresh water four times. Do not pour out the last water, but leave it for further cooking. This infusion will need to be added to the pan as the liquid evaporates. The finished lobio should not be dry or too thick. This is the correct consistency of the dish.

After swelling, you need to rinse the raw material under a generous stream of cold water. Next, carefully (the skin has become soft and may burst), you need to transfer the grains into a saucepan where they will be cooked. Pour water twice the volume of beans. Place the pan over high heat and bring to a boil, skimming off the pink foam with a slotted spoon. Reduce heat to low. Add water as the liquid evaporates.

Place the pre-peeled onion, one clean, peeled stalk of celery and a large bay leaf into a saucepan with boiling aromatic beans. This will give the base a pleasant tart aroma. The dish must be stirred gently with a wooden spatula so as not to damage the fragile beans.

Cut the remaining two onions into small cubes. Finely chop the peeled garlic cloves or squeeze them with a press. Mix the gruel with ground pepper and salt, grinding the mixture with a tablespoon in a plate or a pestle in a mortar.

Remove the boiled onion and celery stalk from the pan about 10 minutes before turning off the heat.

Tomatoes must be scalded with boiling water and quickly transferred to cold water. This will make it easy to remove the skin from them and grind on a sieve until pureed. Mix this puree with the remaining finely chopped herbs - cilantro, parsley, celery leaves and basil. Add the resulting mass to the pan with the hot dish. It is important to remember to monitor the liquid level in the pan, preventing the water from boiling away and the beans from turning into a shapeless mess.

Combine spices (khmeli-suneli or utskho-suneli) with adjika and mix with lobio. Salt and pepper until desired taste. Remove the pan from the stove - the lobio is ready.

After cooking, the dish should rest (rest) in a warm place to reveal the aroma of spices and herbs.

If lobio is served as a main course, it should be hot. Georgian cheeses Suluguni and Imereti, lean fried meat will perfectly complement the aromatic bean soup. Fatty lamb, salted wild garlic and Georgian cabbage will highlight the rich taste of beans. They eat lobio with delicious bread “shatis puri” or unleavened corn cake – mchadi.

Georgian red bean lobio with tomato paste, recipe No. 2

When preparing lobio, you can do without fussing with scalding and skinning tomatoes - not everyone is good at this. It is enough to use tomato paste purchased at the nearest store.

How to prepare red beans in Georgian with a step-by-step guide:

• Beans – 250 grams
• Cilantro - a small bunch
• Half a glass of tomato paste
• 2 tablespoons olive oil
• Medium head of garlic 5-7 cloves
• Georgian seasoning khmeli-suneli
• Half a teaspoon of salt, black pepper (ground)

The recipe for this type of dish is simple:

1. As in the previous recipe, sort out the beans for lobio, rinse and soak for 8 hours.
2. Remove husks and dirt from the bean mass. Boil water, use a slotted spoon to transfer the beans into boiling water. Do it carefully.
3. Boil the beans and simmer slowly for 1 hour until completely cooked, stirring gently with a wooden spoon or spatula without damaging the beans.
4. Peel the garlic and lightly squeeze the cloves with the flat side of a knife. After this, they need to be finely chopped. You can use a garlic press.
5. Turn off the gas under the pan. Cool the cooked lobio mass slightly
6. Peel and press the garlic or finely chop the cloves.
7. Finely chop the cilantro.
8. Fry tomato paste in vegetable oil
9. Place tomato paste in a warm dish, add chopped cilantro, crushed garlic, sprinkle with spices: black pepper and suneli hops.
10. Simmer the lobio over low heat for 3 minutes until fully cooked. Legumes are traditionally salted at the end of cooking before serving.

This red bean lobio can be served chilled on a hot summer day as a salad, an appetizer combined with a cool fermented Georgian drink called matsoni and a flatbread of warm fluffy lavash, like a classic recipe from Caucasian cuisine.

Classic Georgian green bean lobio, recipe No. 3

Green bean lobio has a mild spicy taste and is rich in vitamins and microelements. The harmonious appearance of the dish is achieved thanks to the combination of the green color of the pods with the red shades of tomato and bell pepper. You can use frozen semi-finished beans from the store.

Ingredients:

• 1 kilogram of green beans
• juicy tomatoes – 2 pieces
• parsley, cilantro, purple basil leaves – 50 grams
• 1 bell pepper
• 5 cloves garlic
• hops-suneli, paprika, ground black pepper
• hot pepper pod without seeds
• any vegetable oil, olive oil can be used
• table salt

1. Let's first prepare the bean pods by cutting off the stalks and pulling out the longitudinal veins from the “seam” of each pod.
2. Wash the pods with running water, removing impurities and husks. It is better to divide them crosswise into halves - this way they will cook faster. Boil the pods without pre-soaking.
3. Take a thick-walled saucepan and boil water in which we will cook the dish. Carefully place the beans into the boiling water and simmer over low heat for about 15 minutes.
4. After cooking, it is correct to drain the water and let the pods cool slightly.
5. Chop the onions into medium cubes.
6. Cut the butts of the tomatoes, place the fruits in a bowl and pour boiling water over them to the top. Quickly pour them out of the bowl with a slotted spoon and throw them into ice water. Then cut into slices. After removing the seeds and white veins inside the pepper, cut the bell pepper into squares the size of a tomato.
7. Lightly press the peeled garlic cloves with a knife, chop them to a pulp and finely chop the greens.
8. Grind the walnuts in a mortar or blender. Do this carefully, without leaving hard membranes in the nut mass.
9. In a pre-heated frying pan, fry the diced onion with olive oil until golden brown, add the tomatoes. Fry the mixture for 3-4 minutes.
10. Add bell pepper cubes to the tomato-onion mixture and fry for 2 minutes, stirring the vegetables thoroughly and quickly.
11. Add frying along with spices, finely chopped red pepper without seeds and garlic to the pan with lobio beans. Simmer the lobio for 1 minute.
12. At the end of cooking, salt the dish to taste and add nut crumbs. How much salt to add is up to everyone’s own taste.
13. Cover, turning off the heat under the pan. Ready.

How do they eat it? In this version, lobio is served with herbs, Georgian cheeses - suluguni and Imeret cheese. Some gourmets can sprinkle it with chopped hard-boiled eggs or season it with pomegranate seeds. It can also be combined with fatty meats (pork, lamb), and traditional Georgian dishes prepared from them - shish kebab and kebab. Caucasian pickles are very good with lobio. Hominy “gomi” combined with “green” lobio and a dish of red beans is simply unique. A cold bean dish as an appetizer goes well with light Georgian wines and strong homemade chacha.

Today, Orthodox believers celebrate the beginning of Lent, which this year will last until April 11. As a huge lover of meat and dairy products, I can well imagine how difficult it is to abstain from these products for such a long period of time, and it is for this reason that, as a gift for my Orthodox friends who are going to fast, I decided to start publishing delicious and interesting Lenten recipes dishes - those that could diversify the menu of believers these days. I will try to apply as much of my knowledge as possible from various national cuisines so that those who are fasting can have a full and varied diet. I also introduced the tag #lenten_recipe on Instagram, under which any of you can join this idea.

Those who have been reading my blog for a long time (all these khinkali, khachapuri, satsivi) or have looked at the section know or guess that I was born and spent part of my childhood in Georgia, so when I talk about delicious food, I first of all mean Georgian cuisine . But Georgia is not just delicious food, Georgia is amazing centuries-old traditions and an amazing story about deeply religious people: nowhere else in the world, for example, have I seen all the passengers while driving a bus near some temple or church, let even located far from the road, somewhere on the top of a hill, they were baptized.

It is for this reason that I decided to start the Lenten menu with an authentic Georgian dish using lobio (beans); Today for lunch is real Georgian soup, which at home we call “Sheshamadi” / “Shechamadi” / “Shechamodi”.
Shashamadi is a very simple soup in its essence, in which the main ingredient is lobio - beans, and everything else is left to the discretion of the housewife who prepares it.

So, let's go!

Ingredients
red beans (lobio) - about 500 g (you can use dry or canned)
onion - 1 head
vegetable oil - 3 tbsp. l. (not during Lent, it’s better to cook with butter)
cilantro - one small bunch

Optional
khmeli-suneli - 0.5 tsp.
tomato paste - 2 tbsp. spoons
potatoes - 4 pcs.
garlic - 3-4 cloves
salt and black pepper to taste

Preparation

1.If you use dry beans, then the night before or a few hours before cooking, you need to soak them in cold water, then change the water and boil the beans until tender. To save time, I often use canned beans - in their own juice or in tomato sauce. Boiled or canned beans only need about 500 g (1 can) for 4 servings.
2. So, after you have dealt with the beans, you need to start on the onion - it should be chopped quite finely and sautéed in hot oil over low heat for about 10 minutes. Attention: the onion should not be fried, it should just become soft, almost transparent with a slight yellowish tint. That is why it should be sautéed over low heat. In general, already at this stage you can add beans to the prepared onions, then add spices and herbs, and this will be a wonderful independent dish.

3. Add potatoes cut into small pieces to the onion, pour in 100 ml. water, cover with a lid and cook until the potatoes are ready. This will take another 10-15 minutes.


4.After the potatoes are ready, add beans to them. If you use canned beans, then you need to put them in the pan along with the juice in which they were in the jar, but if boiled, then it is better not to use the water in which they were boiled, but pour plain water into the pan.
5. If desired, you can add a couple of tablespoons of tomato paste for a noble color, then cook the soup over medium heat for another 7-10 minutes. Add salt and pepper to taste.
6. In addition to salt and pepper, I also use suneli hops, thanks to which any bean becomes a real Georgian lobio. If you don’t have this seasoning, then simply add chopped garlic to the soup before serving (however, garlic must also be added when using khmeli-suneli).

The main thing in preparing lobio according to the classic recipe is the right type of bean. Red or variegated cream beans from the current year's harvest are best - they will have enough starch and at the same time they will not be too dry.

Place the beans in a large bowl and cover with water. The water is cold.
If some beans float to the surface, touch them with your fingers; they may be empty in the middle. These beans should be thrown away.
Leave the red beans to swell for 6-8 hours.

Then drain the water, place the beans in a deep saucepan and add fresh water so that the water completely covers the beans. Set the pan over high heat to bring to a boil.
As soon as the water boils, you need to get rid of it - pour it out and fill it with cold water again (a ratio of 1:4 would be ideal). Cook over medium to low heat, stirring occasionally, for 50 minutes to an hour and a half. The beans should become soft.

Mash some of the beans a little with a fork directly in the pan. Just don't overdo it; there should be a lot of whole beans in the dish.

Sort the nut kernels from the husks and shells. Nuts must not be rotten or spoiled.

Grind them in an accessible and convenient way for you - using a blender or meat grinder.

For lobio according to the classic recipe, take two large onions weighing approximately 180-190 grams or three medium-sized onions. They need to be peeled and cut into not very small cubes. The onion in the dish should be felt and visible.

Prepare a frying pan (preferably a large diameter one with high sides) – heat it up and pour in vegetable oil.
Spread the onion in an even layer and fry it over low heat on the stove burner until translucent, with a light golden color.

Blanch fresh tomatoes. First, wash the tomatoes well, make cross-shaped shallow cuts with a sharp knife near the stalk and on the opposite side and, lowering the tomatoes into boiling water, count to ten. You should not keep vegetables in boiling water for more than 10 seconds. If there is a bowl of ice nearby, you can instantly cool the tomatoes in it; if there is no ice, hold it under running cold water. Use the blade of a knife to pry the skin and remove it without much effort. That's it, our tomatoes are blanched.

Cut a bunch of cilantro with a knife. The greens should not be chopped very finely. Finely chop the garlic cloves into cubes. You can grind them through a press, but chopping them with a knife will still be more correct.

Add tomato cubes to the transparent onions, season with spices - suneli hops, black pepper, a small amount of dried red pepper. Control the amount of hot pepper to your taste. In principle, the dish should be spicy and piquant, but at the same time edible in its spiciness.

Add beans, nuts, cilantro, garlic and a little broth in which the beans were cooked to the onions and tomatoes. Add salt.

Stir and simmer for 3-4 minutes. If you see that the dish is a little dry, you can add more water from the beans.

If you serve lobio hot according to the classic recipe, then this is the main dish. And if it’s cold, it’s a snack.