Oriental cuisine, in its essence, is very harmonious. In it, the use of even very fatty meat is well balanced with a large variety of vegetables, and special culinary techniques (long-term stewing, or rather simmering in a cauldron) allow for maximum preservation of vitamins and minerals.
One of these dishes is called dimlama among the Tatars, damlyama among the Uzbeks, and other Turkic peoples have their own variations of the names of this dish, but the essence is always the same: it is a stew with vegetables laid in layers. Today we will prepare the Tatar version of dimlama; it allows the use of not only lamb, but any meat in general, including poultry. The recipe is accompanied by step-by-step photos, which will help you when you start preparing the dish yourself at home.
How to cook dimlama in a slow cooker
Today we have healthy and dietary turkey. Odorless vegetable oil for frying - only 2-3 tbsp. You need different and a lot of vegetables: onions, celery or other white roots, carrots, cabbage, tomatoes (or tomato), zucchini, eggplant. Since there were no fresh zucchini, eggplants and some roots, I had to use dried or frozen ones, but this will not affect the taste and vitamin content.
Dillama is sometimes called “the laziest dish of Eastern cuisine,” and there is something to that. All ingredients are cut or even torn into large pieces, laid in layers, set to simmer over low heat - and that’s it! True, traditionally dimlama is cooked on a grill in a huge cauldron, which is capable of maintaining a low temperature for a long time, but we can easily reproduce the same mode in a multicooker.
One more preliminary note. When laying products in layers, we must salt each layer and sprinkle with a mixture of spices; a ready-made dry mixture for lagman, which contains hot and sweet peppers, cumin, coriander and many other aromatic things, will work very well here. In a small bowl, mix the spice with coarse salt, and we will sprinkle this mixture on each layer placed in the multicooker.
Turn on the multicooker to the Fry mode, pour in a little vegetable oil and pour in the onion and white roots cut into fairly large half rings. Sprinkle with spice.
Cut the meat into pieces, approximately the size of a walnut. Lay out and sprinkle. We are not in a hurry, we cut the vegetables calmly and carefully, and so that no one pushes us, after the meat we switch the multicooker to the Stewing mode.
Depending on its thickness, carrots can be cut into wheels, half wheels, or, like ours, into quarters.
Zucchini and eggplant should also be coarsely chopped, but we don’t have these vegetables fresh, so we’ll use dried ones. Fill them with warm boiled water, let them soak and dump them along with the water in which they were soaked. Well, accordingly, sprinkle with spice.
An important aromatic element of dimlama is garlic. Take a large head of garlic into a large cauldron, wash it and, without peeling it, push it closer to the bottom. In a small slow cooker we will take 3-4 cloves, peel them and stick them into the thickness of the vegetables in the same way.
Cut the cabbage into large pieces. In general, when determining the size of the cut, we imagine that this dish will be eaten with a tablespoon, which means that the pieces should just fit on such a spoon.
My tomatoes are frozen, cherry. You don’t even need to defrost them much, just let them soften a little before cutting them into halves and quarters.
Coarsely shredded potatoes come on top. When dimlama is cooked in the summer on a grill in a cauldron, the top layer is laid out with whole young potatoes, not even peeled, but simply washed very well with a stiff brush. And we also salt this layer, sprinkle it with spices, close the lid, and set the stewing mode timer for 1.5 hours.
When cooking in a cauldron, the very top is covered with cabbage leaves torn into large pieces, creating a kind of lid under the lid so that all the valuable steam remains inside the dish. But the multicooker closes tightly enough, we can do without an additional lid.
If we were cooking, as expected, from lamb, then 1.5-2 hours is the standard cooking time, but with the turkey everything was stewed within an hour.
Now we can stir our dimlama and sprinkle with dill or parsley. But this is an urban presentation option. If you follow all the rules, then turn the contents of the cauldron, without stirring, onto a large deep dish, so that the meat, sprinkled with fried onions, is at the very top, and all layers are more or less preserved. Then everyone can take aim himself and choose the pieces that he likes.
We did not add a drop of additional liquid during the cooking process, but the living natural vegetable juice formed an amazingly tasty, thick, rich and very aromatic gravy. So even when served in an urban European way - on a plate, garnished with green onions - our dimlama is absolutely incomparable!
Cut the onion into half rings. Scald the tomatoes with boiling water, rinse with cold water, remove the skin and cut the pulp into thin half rings.
Peel the potatoes and cut into 2 parts, each carrot into 5-6 parts. Core the sweet pepper and cut into strips. Chop the greens.
Cut the head of cabbage into 8 pieces, removing the stalk. Remove the top layers of husk from the garlic, cut off the root part, leaving the heads whole.
Cut the meat into medium pieces. Heat the oil in a cauldron, fry the meat in it over high heat until golden brown. Add onion to meat and fry, stirring, until light yellow, 5 minutes.
Add tomatoes. While frying them, add the spice mixture and reduce the heat a little. Simmer the meat with onions and tomatoes for 5 minutes. Dip the garlic into the frying pan and simmer it there.
Next, layer carrots, bell peppers, and cabbage. Salt the cabbage, place a bay leaf and some of the greens on it, layer the potatoes and the remaining greens on top. Pour in 2 cups of boiled salted water and bring to a boil. Close the cauldron tightly with the lid. Reduce heat to low and simmer for 1.5 hours.
You can serve this dish in a large common dish or in portions, in casseroles, along with the resulting sauce. Remove the garlic and place on top. If serving in portions, you can divide the garlic in half and place it in a casser. Sprinkle fresh chopped herbs on top.
Today we will talk about how dimlama is prepared in Uzbek. The recipe for this classic oriental dish requires two essential ingredients - meat and white cabbage. And then you can safely fantasize and add your favorite vegetables and root vegetables to the dish.
1. Dimlama in Uzbek: recipe with photo
What makes this Uzbek dish unique? The whole secret of dimlama is that the vegetables are cooked in their own juice, but the meat is thoroughly fried because it is placed on the bottom of the cauldron. Shall we try?
1.1. Compound:
- 0.5 kg carrots;
- 1 kg of potatoes;
- 0.5 kg of white cabbage;
- 1 kg of lamb meat on ribs;
- 300 g fat tail;
- salt;
- ground pepper.
On a note! Instead of lamb, you can use beef, but only on the bone.
1.2. Preparation:
- Wash the lamb ribs and cut them if necessary.
- Place the fat tail and meat into the cauldron.
- Clean and rinse the onion. Let's cut it into rings.
- Place the onion on top of the lamb.
- Add salt and ground pepper.
- Peel and rinse carrot roots. Cut them into medium-sized cubes.
- Place the next layer of carrots in the cauldron.
- Peel the potato tubers and chop them into medium pieces (not too small!).
- We send the potatoes to the cauldron.
- Let's disassemble a head of cabbage into inflorescences.
- We will remove the damaged leaves.
- We spread the rest in a dense layer on top of all the products.
- Add a third of a glass of filtered water.
- Cover the cauldron and set the burner to the maximum level.
- After ten minutes, reduce the burner level. Cook the dimlama for forty minutes. We use cabbage leaves as a guide: when they become transparent, the dish is ready.
- You need to serve dimlama like this: take a large dish, put cabbage leaves on it, and then vegetables in the reverse order than when laying it. There will be lamb on top.
On a note! Recently, Uzbek-style dimlama has become quite a popular dish. The recipe from Anna Shatilova, which she shared while visiting Urgant, deserves your attention. It is simple: products are laid out in layers in a cauldron in the following sequence - onions, meat pulp, potato tubers, carrot roots, cabbage, apples and garlic cloves. All vegetables, as well as meat and apples, are cut into fairly large pieces. Dillama should be steamed without adding liquid.
2. Dimlama with assorted vegetables
Uzbek dimlama, as already mentioned, can be prepared with the addition of a variety of vegetables. They give the dish juiciness and additional bright flavor notes. The ideal choice would be tomatoes, bell peppers, zucchini and eggplant.
On a note! In some sources there is a slightly different name for this dish - dumlyama. All names are rooted in the Uzbek word “dumlyash”, which translated means “to steam”.
2.1. Compound:
- 0.6 kg lamb;
- 100 ml refined vegetable oil;
- 3 pcs. Luke;
- 3 tomatoes;
- 2 pcs. bell peppers;
- 2 carrot roots;
- zucchini;
- eggplant;
- 0.5 kg of white cabbage;
- 0.4 kg of potato tubers;
- 7-8 cloves of garlic;
- parsley;
- dill;
- hot pepper;
- dried herbs;
- salt;
- ground pepper.
2.2. Preparation:
- Wash the lamb thoroughly and dry it with kitchen napkins.
- Cut the meat into fairly large pieces.
- Pour the specified amount of refined vegetable oil into the cauldron.
- Lay out the lamb, add salt and ground pepper, stir.
- Peel the onion and chop it coarsely. Add onions to the cauldron.
- We wash the tomatoes and chop them into large pieces. Measure out half of the vegetables and place them in an even layer on top of the onion and lamb.
- Peel and rinse carrot roots. Shred them into thick circles.
- Place the carrots on top of the tomato layer. Add some ground pepper, dried herbs and salt.
- Separate the cabbage leaves from the head. Discard spoiled and limp leaves.
- Set aside three cabbage leaves.
- Coarsely chop the remaining leaves and place in a saucepan.
- Wash and dry the eggplant. Let's cut it into rings. Sprinkle the eggplant with salt and leave for ten minutes. Then carefully squeeze out the excess liquid. All the bitterness will go away with it.
- Place the eggplant in the cauldron.
- We clean the garlic cloves and cut them into several cloves. Add half the garlic to the rest of the ingredients.
- We clean the bell peppers from seeds and wash them. Chop them into large pieces.
- Place the pepper in the cauldron.
- We clean and wash the potato tubers. Cut the potatoes into large slices.
- Distribute it in the next layer. Again add salt, herbs and ground pepper.
- Wash the zucchini and cut into rings. Spread it over the potatoes.
- Add the remaining garlic cloves.
- Wash the hot pepper and cut it into several parts. If you like spicier dishes, don't scrape out the seeds.
- Place the pepper in the cauldron.
- Wash the sprigs of parsley and dill. Place them on top of the vegetables.
- Cover the dimlama with a few cabbage leaves. If you see that the vegetables are “peeking out” from the cauldron, lightly press them with the lid, and then all the ingredients will “settle”.
- Place the cauldron on the stove and set the burner to a high enough level.
- Cook the dimlama for twenty minutes.
- Then reduce the burner level by half.
- Simmer the dimlama for two hours. During this time, our vegetables will “settle” and give a lot of juice.
- Serve the dimlama hot, place it on a dish in reverse order. Ready!
On a note! Uzbek-style dimlama is prepared not only with vegetables. The recipe from Stalik Khankishiev is interesting because the cook adds quince to the dish. He also advises trying the option of making dimlama with pumpkin.
Ingredients:
- lamb - 800 gr
- potatoes - 800 gr
- carrots - 2 pieces
- onion - 4 pieces
- tomato – 400 gr
- sunflower oil - 150 g
- garlic - 2 pieces
- salt - 2 tablespoon
- cumin - 1 tablespoon
- greens - 2 bunch
- lamb fat - 400 gr
- green bell pepper - 4 pieces
- white cabbage – 500 gr
How to cook dimlama (smoke) in Uzbek:
To prepare smokeyma in Uzbek style, we will take all the products on the list.
The best way to prepare smoke in a cauldron is young lamb on the bone and fat tail fat, which is needed to prevent the dish from burning.
Then add the meat. Of course, the more meat, the tastier the smoke. It’s also good to combine the pulp and bones. Salt, pepper, sprinkle with spices.
The next layer is carrots and onions (the third part). Carrots can be cut into large rings, just like onions. If Uzbek style smoke is prepared in a large bowl, then the vegetables are added in even larger pieces. Each layer is sprinkled with salt and spices. You can put half of the total amount of garlic here.
Then coarsely chopped greens and thick eggplant rings are laid out. Don't forget to add salt and pepper.
Cut sweet tomatoes into large rings. If the vessel is large, then the tomatoes can be cut in half. Salt, pepper and add another layer of herbs and onions. Press down all the vegetables, tamping them lightly.
Then comes a layer of coarsely chopped potatoes along with spices and salt. It is advised not to peel the garlic completely.
And the last layer is cabbage. Its quantity is optional. The cabbage is cut very large and divided into fragments. It is laid as if covering all the vegetables with a lid of cabbage leaves.
Vegetables should be tightly covered. Wrap a wet towel over the top to prevent the liquid from escaping as steam. Everything is brought to a boil, and the fire is reduced to a minimum. In this closed form, the dish should simmer for about 2.5 hours. Therefore, all vegetables are put in large cuts. The smaller the dishes, the faster the smoke is cooked.
After the allotted time, we open the lid and see that the vegetables have sagged during cooking, this is normal. And the smell is mind-blowing. We put the vegetables on the dish in reverse order, first the cabbage, then the potatoes, and everything else. There should be liquid left at the bottom.
Serve Uzbek-style smokeyma cooked in a cauldron, sprinkled with fresh herbs. Bon appetit!
Dimlama, dumlama, dymlama - these are all the names of one dish of Uzbek cuisine. To be honest, I myself can’t really understand what exactly to call this dish... Having studied the Internet, I came to the conclusion that what I like most is Stalik Khankishiev’s version of preparing dimlama (by the way, he calls the dish dumlama).
I decided to cook and was not disappointed. Delicious, aromatic, filling! There are similar dishes in Azerbaijani, Turkmen, and Tajik cuisine.
I heard that cabbage and eggplants are added to dimlama, but since the recipe was from a specific author, I prepared it as suggested.
So, to prepare dimlama, let’s prepare the products according to the list.
Tomatoes. We have them all year round, cheap, and in February they are the most delicious. That's why I have fresh tomatoes. They need to be peeled. To do this, cut the tomatoes crosswise and pour boiling water over them. Set aside for about 5 minutes. After 5 minutes, the skin will come off very well.
If you don't have fresh tomatoes, you can use canned tomatoes, which are usually already peeled. But they need to be drained of liquid.
Cut the carrots coarsely and the onion into half rings.
Let's fry the lamb. Ideal if you have lamb neck! But I didn’t have one, so it is what it is. And yet, it is ideal to fry meat in fat or cottonseed oil. I didn’t have it either, so I used sunflower oil. So, fry the meat until a crust appears, then add cumin, salt and pepper, reduce the heat, cover the cauldron with a lid and simmer for another 5 minutes.
Add chopped vegetables to the meat. Fry, stirring, until the onion turns golden.
Then it's the turn of tomatoes. They were quite large, so I cut them in half. Mix. Add water. It took me two glasses.
It is advisable, of course, not to interrupt the process. That is, the cauldron should stand on the fire, and you gradually add all the ingredients.
Place coarsely chopped potatoes. If the potatoes themselves are not very large, then there is no need to cut them. We also send sweet peppers, seeded, and a head of garlic there. Salt and pepper to taste. Cover with a lid and simmer until the potatoes are soft. As soon as we saw that the potatoes were ready, the dish was ready.
This is such a fragrant beauty!
Serve the dimlama hot, sprinkled with herbs. Place meat and vegetables in the center of the plate, and potatoes in a circle.
Bon appetit!
