Lecho: recipe with tomato paste for easy cooking

Hungarian cuisine is rich in recipes withusing paprika and tomatoes. They are added there literally in everything, except, perhaps, sweet dishes. Even the fish's ear and that is cooked with peppers and tomatoes. Absolutely in a special place is lecho - a self-sufficient dish in the form of pieces of pepper in tomato sauce. In the original recipe can be added smoked pork sausages, brisket, rice, mushrooms and everything that the soul desires fellow countrymen Count Dracula. To prepare lecho in Hungary even grow a special grade of paprika - white. But to taste it is not very different from the available in other countries colored peppers, so that spread lecho widely, throughout Europe. It is also known in Russia, but not in its original form, but as a preparation for the winter, a variant of vegetable stew, a cold snack or gravy to garnishes and in dishes where a recipe requires Bulgarian pepper. And Hungarians use lecho exclusively in a hot kind.

Let's try lech in Hungarian

Let's make ourselves a little easier to work in the kitchen: prepare lecho with tomato paste, it is still impossible to find such tomatoes in the northern regions of Russia, as in Hungary. Only paste we take good, Italian or from Central Asia. There tomatoes ripen under the hot sun, and they have a completely different taste. So, let's take:

Bulgarian sweet pepper - 1 kg
Tomato paste - 250 g
Water or any broth - 1 glass
Pork lard - about 100 g
A pair of large bulbs
Garlic to taste
Salt, black pepper, sugar, ground paprika
Semi-smoked sausage or sausages
Greenery

Pork lard cut into small cubes and indeep frying pan on a small fire fry cracklings until golden brown. They can be removed, and you can leave. Add the fire. Onion cut into half rings and fry in the melted fat until transparent. Pepper should be peeled off from the pedicels and seeds, cut into small pieces and placed in bowls, where the onions are fried. While stirring, hold it until the pepper becomes slightly soft. Add the tomato paste and add water or broth. The density of the sauce can be changed to taste, adding a little more or less liquid. Salt, pepper to taste, add sugar. If desired, you can fall asleep with half a glass of rice to cook with vegetables. Bring to a boil, reduce heat and allow boiling on the sly for about 20 minutes. Then season with garlic and greens. If the sauce is thin, you need to cook it a little with the lid open. Put in the lecho chopped sausages or sausage, bring to a boil and remove from heat. Leave it under the lid for 10 minutes. Serve with fresh white bread, sour cream as an independent dish or cook a garnish with fried potatoes or mashed potatoes. Enjoy your health! For variants of the main recipe, it is possible to mix several eggs, stirred with a fork, already removed from the fire. You can individually fry a fry or boil the egg poached and put on vegetables. Or replace the sausages with fried fresh mushrooms. Then for roasting vegetables and mushrooms it is better to take smoked bacon for giving the necessary aroma.

And if you roll in jars ...

That will get familiar to all the housewives harvesting onwinter. If you want a hot Hungarian lecho in winter, you will just have to warm up the contents of the jar in a microwave or in a frying pan, add the same sausages or smoked bacon, and there will be happiness. Prepare a vegetable base with tomato paste for lecho for the future, so that in the winter not to look for expensive imported peppers and do not waste time preparing the dish. Products that are needed:

Bulgarian pepper - 5 kg
Tomato paste - 1 kg
Onion - 2 kg
Carrots - 1-1,5 kg
Water - 1-1,5 l
Salt, sugar, pepper to taste
Garlic - two heads, but it's a matter of taste
Table vinegar - 1-2 tablespoons.

Prepare cans, rinsed and sterilized by anyway. Boil the lids. Cooking lecho will be in a large saucepan or better in a cauldron. First you need to prepare all the vegetables. Pepper is washed, peeled from the pedicels and seeds, cut into pieces or strips, not very finely. Peel onion, cut into rings. Carrots washed more carefully than others, cleaned. Cut into thin slices or straws, it is possible figuratively - for beauty. Stir tomato paste with water until necessary density and bring to a boil. Then put the prepared vegetables in the sauce. Carrot add first: it is firm and will be prepared for a little longer. Pour the vinegar, salt and sweeten with a little more than taste. Vegetables when cooking will take away excess salt and sugar. Season with pepper to taste. After 15 minutes throw pepper and onions. Let the boil and boil on low heat boil for about half an hour. Hot lecho pack on jars and roll up. Lecho impose approximately 1-1.5 cm below the neck of the can. Roll the jar right after filling. Turn it upside down on a flat surface and leave until completely cooled lecho. Then the jars must be taken to a cool place: a pantry or a cellar.

Recipe options

You can cook lecho with eggplant or zucchini. Let's take:

Pepper - 1 kg
Ketchach or eggplant - 1 kg
Bow - 0,5 kg
Tomato paste - 0,5 kg
Water - about 0.5 liters
Table vinegar - 1 tbsp.
Salt, sugar, pepper

Vegetables should be washed, brushed and cut. Dilute the tomato paste with water and allow to boil. Add vinegar, salt, pepper and sugar. Put the vegetables in boiling sauce, boil again and boil for 30 minutes. Hot spread out on the banks and roll up. For the recipe, lecho with beans will require:

Bulgarian pepper - 1 kg
Beans - 5 glasses
Carrots - 0,5 kg
Onion - 0,5 kg
Tomato paste - 0,5 kg
Vinegar - 1 tbsp.
Salt, sugar, pepper, garlic - to taste

Beans must be soaked in advance for several hours and boil until cooked. Then proceed as in the previous recipe. Easy cooking and a pleasant appetite!