Residents of megacities are accustomed to buying pickled tomatoes, baked eggplants, and sauerkraut in stores. Owners of dachas and vegetable gardens can preserve vegetables and process fruits. Women make vitamin-rich salads from fresh produce and serve Hungarian appetizers for the winter. In local cuisine recipes, chili peppers, paprika, cottage cheese, tomatoes, beans are used in large quantities, and many spices are added. In some dishes, vegetable oil is replaced with lard.
Features of preparing the Hungarian snack “Uncle Vanya” for the winter
To please your family with lecho, you need to choose juicy vegetables; the basis of the dish is multi-colored peppers, cut into slices. Tomatoes add a pleasant sourness to the Hungarian appetizer, while carrots make it piquant.
During the cooking process, vegetables retain minerals and organic acids and do not lose vitamins, which reduce vascular permeability and increase immunity.
The Hungarian snack is eaten with meat, fish, mashed potatoes and pasta.
How to select and prepare ingredients
To make the salad beautiful, use peppers of different colors. You will need ripe and fleshy tomatoes. Many appetizer recipes in Hungarian cuisine include carrots. The functions of a preservative are performed by vinegar - table, wine, apple. Vegetables are washed with cool water and chopped. The tomatoes are scalded with boiling water and the skins are removed.
Preparing containers
Before making a snack, select small glass jars without chips, nicks or cracks. Containers are washed from dust and dirt with soda, mustard powder, and disinfected:
- by boiling;
- in a steamer;
- in the oven;
- in a microwave oven.
During sterilization, microbes and fungi die, and the container does not explode, and the preserved food does not mold. Tin lids are disinfected in boiling water.
Snack recipes
Lecho always contains peppers and tomatoes, spices and seasonings. The composition of additional ingredients varies depending on the selected recipe.
Classic method with carrots
To give the Hungarian appetizer a sweetish taste, housewives sprinkle the vegetables with a glass of sugar. In addition to 2 kg of multi-colored peppers, 3 kilograms of tomatoes, you need to take:
- 500 g carrots;
- 1.5 l.table vinegar;
- 1 onion;
- 0.5 cups sunflower oil;
- garlic.
Washed tomatoes are scalded in boiling water, peeled, and chopped into pieces. The carrots are peeled and passed through a coarse grater. The onion and garlic are peeled and cut into strips.
The seeds are removed from the pepper, the stalks are removed, and the vegetable is turned into half rings. Place tomatoes in a saucepan and add half a glass of water. After the liquid boils, add carrots to the tomatoes and boil for 5 or 6 minutes.
Add chopped onion, chopped garlic cloves, half rings of pepper to the vegetable mass, add salt, add sugar and butter, boil for another quarter of an hour, season with vinegar. The hot preparation is filled into jars and sealed with tin lids.
With hot pepper
Hungarian lecho acquires a piquant and spicy taste if you add a pod of bitter paprika to the vegetables at the end of cooking. The spicy appetizer goes well with meat, served with barbecue, and eaten as a separate dish with bread.
With bean pods
To prevent vegetables from losing their natural flavor, odorless sunflower oil is used. You can add cilantro, dill, and parsley to lecho. For variety, the appetizer is prepared from 500 g of green beans and the same amount of pepper.
A kilogram of tomatoes is crushed and placed in a saucepan on the fire. Cut the onion into slices, place in tomato puree, pour in oil, and add seeded pepper. The vegetable mass is stewed for half an hour, and then seasoned:
- garlic;
- bay leaf;
- cloves and chili.
The appetizer is mixed, salted, sugar is poured in, boiled for several minutes, combined with vinegar, and transferred to jars.
Together with the pepper, green beans ripen, which are combined with various vegetables and added to salads.Pink or yellow tomatoes do not produce bright juice.
Boiled beets give a rich, beautiful hue. The root vegetable is placed in lecho when the vegetables are stewed.
Storage tips
This Hungarian appetizer is used in winter in soups and borscht, since it is prepared with vinegar, sealed in sterile jars, and can be kept in the pantry.
In regions where in the summer the air warms up in the shade to 30–35 °C, it is better to store lecho in a cellar or basement with good ventilation.
The appetizer with pepper does not lose its taste throughout the year. An open jar should be placed in the refrigerator; the contents of the container should be eaten within a few days or used to season first courses.
