The Day I Made Khinkali

One typical evening in Ruisi, seven o’clock rolled around and my hungry alarms were going off. Luckly it seemed that my host family’s were too, as they looked to each other and asked: “What should we eat tonight?” After some discussion, it was decided that tonight would be our khinkali night.

In the most basic way, khinkali is the Georgian version of dumplings. But that fails to fully describe the beauty. They are delicious little pockets of juicy goodness, complete with a little dough knob that serves as both a handle and a way to number your conquests. Behold:

The process of making khinkali is not for the faint of heart. First you have to make the filling. Typically, this is  a mix of ground meat and various spices: we used fresh cilantro, coriander, peppers, and of course, salt.

Then you have to make the dough and work it till it’s though enough to hold in its tasty contents. The dough is then rolled out into Fruit Roll-Up sized circles

Next you get to put it all together. A heaping spoonful of meat mixture goes into one dough circle, and then you fold. The folding is a work of art. The best of the khinkali makers can get 18+ folds on one khinkali. I am not a professional, but I’m good enough to make sure that all the filling doesn’t get out. I’ve got my priorities. Nino and Nazi even taught me a fancy way to make them look like fish. It’s adorable and delicious!

After you’ve made a heaping pile of khinkalis, you’re ready to boil.

And in 7-9 minutes, they’re done! That is, 7-9 minutes in the water. At this point it had been nearly three hours and we were all starving. But luckily it was time to eat ourselves silly. The act of eating khinkali is one of the best parts. It’s so fun. You get a whole pile placed on the table, they get covered in pepper, and then it’s a frenzy.

At least, it’s a very organized frenzy, because there are some very specific rules about how you eat khinkali:

·         No forks allowed. You grab that khinkali by the nob and nom nomnom, but

·         Don’t drop any of the juice. It would be an offense to the cook. You take a bite, and then sip it like a gentleman/woman. (You can choose if you want pinkies out, that’s flexible.)

·         Don’t slurp it. This isn’t 7/11. (Can someone please send me a Slurpee though? That sounds amazing right now.)

·         Don’t eat the nobs. They’re not usually cooked all the way through, plus you want to pile them up and prove you can eat more than Giorgi over there.

There you go, now you and I are both khinkali experts! See you at the next supra!