How to make the perfect vinaigrette. Pickled beets, dense potatoes

Good evening, friends, I received quite a few commendable reviews for the article for those who cannot boast of a red diploma in home cooking. In other words, when it seems like it's too lazy to cook, it doesn't work out very well, but you still want tasty and healthy food. So you and I will prepare the right one today the vinaigrette! Why it is "correct" and how it prepares - read on.

Vinaigrette salad recipe

In fact, the vinaigrette is a lifesaver for any housewife (or householder, in my case) since the time of Peter the Great. The salad is not only extremely easy to prepare, but also has remarkable nutritional properties. For those who, and asks the question "in a vinaigrette?", I can answer - even flavored with oil, the vinaigrette remains low in calories, something around 40 kcal per 100 grams, depending on the recipe.

So let's figure out how to cook the vinaigrette- this old beetroot salad.

Vinaigrette - ingredients.

1. Of course, beet! One large tuber is sufficient.
2. Potato- 2-3 medium tubers.
3. Green peas- one can
4. Onion- 1 medium onion (you can also use red onion, it looks more unusual and is better for salads)
5. Sauerkraut- taste. If you buy a ready-made one, keep an eye on the expiration date! Even a bit stale cabbage already tastes disgusting!
6. Salted cucumbers- 3-4 medium cucumbers. The rule is the same as with cabbage - look at the shelf life and softness. The softer the cucumber, the worse.
7. Carrot- one good carrot is enough.

Preparation of the vinaigrette.

To prepare the vinaigrette, for starters, we need to boil vegetables. We put washed but not peeled potatoes, beets and carrots into one large saucepan. Cook all this for about an hour over low heat, checking the readiness with a fork. Beets take the longest to cook; if they become soft inside, remove from heat.

Next, we take out the boiled vegetables and set them to cool. Let's deal with the "cold" part for now. Cut the cucumbers into small cubes, chop the onions, open the jar of peas (by the way, there is very tasty juice there. I've been pouring it all my life, but today I realized how wrong I was.)

Gently peel the cooled vegetables and cut into cubes. There are two ways here - if you like vinaigrette uniform red color, then mix all the ingredients of the vinaigrette at once, at the same time, and then pour in vegetable and olive oil. If you want colorful salad- then the vinaigrette should be mixed without beets. And the beets themselves at this moment need to be mixed with oil, and only then added to the rest of the ingredients. Then the beet juice will not color everything else. By the way, you can make a vinaigrette without cabbage at all, but then its taste will not be so tart and salty. But, as they say, the taste and color - the markers are different. Here are some prefer

Hey!
I think everyone has tried a vinaigrette at least once in their life, but which one? Delicious vinaigrettes, as a rule, did not come across to me, usually the ingredients in vinaigrettes were colored with beets and had the same taste, as if you were eating a homogeneous mass. Over the years, I have developed my own recipe (like any housewife). To whom it is interesting - I share, plus I will add some useful tips (after all, SM is visited not only by mothers - good cooks, but also by novice housewives, it will suddenly come in handy).

What we need:
- a keg of sauerkraut with cranberries (I would say pickled)
- 3-4 pickled cucumbers (it is also delicious to make with sour, cold pickled (barrel) cucumbers)
- 2 potatoes
- 2 carrots
- 2 beets (you can have more, it tastes better)
- fresh dill, parsley, leeks (gives a certain aroma and taste)
- Red onion
- seasoning for Greek salad, olive oil, vinegar
- 1b. green peas
- 3-4 cloves of garlic (optional)

1. First, let's boil vegetables. Beets are usually cooked for at least an hour. Once cooked, place the beets under running cold water, the beets will become softer.
Right here advice, it will be much healthier and tastier not to cook vegetables, but to bake them in the oven or microwave. This will preserve more vitamins, taste and color of vegetables: wash the beets, pierce them with a fork several times and put them in a glass container with a lid in a micro setting at maximum mode for 5 minutes, then turn them over and again for 5 minutes. We also pierce potatoes and carrots, soak them in micro less than 2 times beets in time. With this method of cooking vegetables, they lose a little in volume than during cooking, but taste, color, aroma and vitamins compete with boiled ones in full.

2. Prepare the greens. If it is store-bought, then be sure to soak it in cold (salted) water, so the substances with which the greens were treated for long-term storage, dirt, and so on, will go away.

3. Sauerkraut with cranberries (cranberries add an original sour note). I tried to do it with different cabbage, I liked it most of all with this one.

Here is its composition.

4. Lay the salad in layers (with this method, all the ingredients retain their original color and are mixed only in your plate immediately before use): diced potatoes, diced carrots, cabbage, diced pickled cucumber, finely red onions (you can rinse the chopped onions with water to bitterness is gone), peas, leeks, diced beets, herbs. You can add crushed garlic, the smell of such a vinaigrette will not leave anyone indifferent. But I'm on a diet now, and I don't need extra secretion of gastric juice, so this time I did without garlic.

5. Dressing for vinaigrette. We fill only our portion before use. Otherwise, even if you seasoned the beets separately, and then the whole salad, after a while ALL the salad will be burgundy. I have seen such 100 times, there is a burgundy wrap in front of you on the wedding table, how cute)). Here I will add: 1) yes, I ate this drink at a home wedding a year ago, 2) I want each product to have its own color, I love to see what I eat. 3) there are no comrades for taste and color, love burgundy - love for health, but I don’t like it and gave advice to those who don’t love.
Usually salad is seasoned with just sunflower oil, sometimes vinegar or something else is added (there are many options). In my case, this salad dressing went very well.

Vinaigrette is considered a primordially Russian dish, although its name comes from the French word vinaigrette, meaning a sauce made from Provence oil, vinegar and salt. The same word is also used for a vegetable salad sprinkled with vinegar. The French call the vinaigrette "Russian salad", although no one knows who actually invented it. In Russia, vinaigrette appeared in the 19th century, and since then many recipes for its preparation have appeared. Red beets and sauerkraut remain unchanged in each of them.

A few words about the rules for preparing this salad. All products used must be cooled to room temperature. If this is not done, the vinaigrette will deteriorate very quickly. Its taste will be brighter if the beets are not boiled, but baked, and all the ingredients are cut as small as possible. And so that the beets do not stain all the other ingredients, they need to be cut and separately seasoned with vegetable oil, and only then added to the vinaigrette. For the same reason, it is not recommended to decorate the finished dish with beets: decorations cut out of it will color the food, which will not make the salad appetizing. And the last thing: first you need to salt and stir the vinaigrette, and only then season with oil, since the salt does not dissolve in it.

Classic vinaigrette

Boil one medium beet and carrots until tender, cool and cut into small cubes. Cut 1 pickled cucumber into the same cubes. Cut the onion into half rings, a small bunch of green onions into thin slices. Squeeze 100-150 g of sauerkraut from the brine or rinse in cold water if it tastes too sour. Combine all products and season with vegetable oil. Dressing with sour cream or mayonnaise is also allowed.

If desired, you can add boiled potatoes and pickled tomatoes to this vinaigrette, as well as replace pickled cucumbers with pickled or pickled mushrooms. Often, green peas, pieces of fish or boiled meat are added to a vegetable vinaigrette.

Special vinaigrette

Try this original way of making vinaigrette. Peel 2 potatoes and cut into slices. Grate one raw beet and one carrot on a coarse grater. Put the potatoes on the bottom of the pan, then the grated vegetables, add enough water to cover only the potatoes. Put the saucepan on the fire and simmer for 6-7 minutes after boiling the water. Then turn off the heat and let the vegetables steep under the lid for 10-15 minutes. When the vegetables have cooled, add one chopped onion, one pickled cucumber and sauerkraut to the vegetables. Pepper the salad, salt, mix and season with sunflower oil.

Products:
3 pcs. medium beets
2 pcs. carrots
12 pcs. small size or 5-6 pcs. medium potatoes
1 medium onion
6-7 small pickled cucumbers or 3 large
8 - 10 table. sauerkraut (to taste)
1 can of green peas (optional)
Salt, vegetable oil to taste.
Preparing the vinaigrette:

How to make a vinaigrette to make it tasty? There are several secrets.

But all in order:

First, boil vegetables: beets, potatoes, carrots

I always cook like this: beets in a separate saucepan, and potatoes and carrots together, otherwise the anthocyanins of the beets will quickly turn the rest of the vegetables into an incomprehensible brown mass.

Then you need to immerse the boiled vegetables in cold water for 5-7 minutes - this way it will be easier to clean them: the skin will come off easily and it is convenient to hold warm, not hot vegetables in your hands.

the next step is to clean vegetables: beets, carrots, potatoes, onions.

Second secret: the taste of the vinaigrette depends not only on the taste of its ingredients, but also on the cut. Chopped salad is said to be tastier. However, in everything you need to know when to stop. If the salad is cut too finely, it will turn into porridge and the vegetables will lose their uniqueness.

Once in our student years, we conducted an experiment: we made a vinaigrette by twisting its components on a rotary grater. My friends, that was terrible! It was the most tasteless vinaigrette in my life. This mash of incomprehensible taste and appearance from the same components did not have the right to be called the proud name of a vinaigrette!

Therefore, we cut all the vegetables into small cubes.

Beetroot:

First, we send the beets to the pan, pour over it with vegetable oil and stir actively. In this form, it will not quickly dye vegetables in its own color.

Cut carrots into cubes: Potatoes:

Pickled cucumbers or pickled cucumbers - it doesn't matter. Of course, they give a different shade of taste, but both are very tasty!

Cut into cubes:

Well, onions can be chopped finely so that it is evenly distributed throughout the vinaigrette. :

We put all this in a large saucepan one by one. By the way, it is better to take a pot for vinaigrette more than then, swearing, stir it with a spoon, catching on the fly pieces of vegetables falling out every now and then on the table.

Sauerkraut must be squeezed out of the juice, otherwise the salad will be wet.

We send to the pan:

Salt the vinaigrette to taste

We mix.

Add vegetable oil

Trying what is still missing for a harmonious taste, usually we have to additionally chop the pickled cucumber or add sauerkraut.

Finally, add canned green peas, after draining the liquid from the jar. In our family, this ingredient has not particularly taken root and is added personally to the plate for the lover of this green product.

That's all the delicious vinaigrette is ready!

We spread it on a plate with a slide, decorate with herbs:

And we serve lightly salted herring with onions to the wonderful vinaigrette!

The third secret (from personal observations): the vinaigrette acquires a harmonious taste when it stands for two hours cooked in a saucepan, the vegetables are soaked a little with each other's juices. Then the vinaigrette acquires its unique taste and aroma. The taste of onions, which was "barely audible" at first, when the vinaigrette was first prepared, opens after a while and permeates the entire salad. Therefore, be careful not to overdo it, because at first it may seem to you that one onion is not enough.

And one more thing: in order for the salad to be stored normally and not to turn sour the next day, all vegetables must be cooled before slicing, they must NOT be warm. Vegetables must be COLD!

Making a vinaigrette: How to make a vinaigrette to make it tasty? There are several secrets. But everything is in order. First, a little history. The name "Vinaigrette" was formed under unusual circumstances. During the reign of Alexander I, the famous French chef Antoine Karem worked in the royal kitchen. Once he saw Russian chefs preparing an unusual and unknown salad. While he was being seasoned with vinegar, the Frenchman asked: "vinaigre?" (translated from French as vinegar), the cooks thought that he had pronounced the name of the dish and began nodding their heads, but, in fact, the French chef wanted to clarify whether they were pouring vinegar. Soon, a new dish appeared on the royal menu - “ The vinaigrette". How this dish was called earlier remains a mystery.
After some time, they learned about this salad outside the palace. Ingredients greatly simplified, the recipe changed, the tsar's dish turned into ordinary Russian food. There are opinions that initially vinaigrette recipe appeared not in Russia, but in German or Scandinavian cuisines.

Recipe:
In the modern world, we are used to seeing a vinaigrette of potatoes, onions, beets, carrots, sauerkraut and pickles. Vinegar is practically not added anymore.
So my potato, do not clean, boil it to the stage when it is already soft, but still not falling apart. We take out, drain the water, let it cool, and then peel it. Cut into small cubes, put everything in a separate bowl.
Beet... It is brewed for a long time, also unclean. After cooking, clean, cut into small cubes, fill with oil so that the rest of the vegetables do not stain when mixing. We leave it all in a separate plate (or other dish).
Carrot cooked in the same way as other vegetables. Often, everyone boils vegetables together, in the same saucepan, however, gourmets advise to cook everything separately so as not to mix the flavors. Opponents of separate cooking say that the taste of neighboring vegetables does not penetrate through the peel. Decide for yourself how to cook, test different methods.
Salted cucumbers... Cut into cubes, leave in a separate bowl.
Onion chop finely, rinse with water through a sieve so that it is not bitter.
First, combine the chopped potatoes, carrots, onions, cucumbers and sauerkraut. Add oil and mix slightly again. Only after that add the beets, salt to taste, green peas.

The amount of vegetables is taken in approximately equal proportions. Many people add more potatoes, while reducing the amount of carrots.
On average, it turns out like this:
Potatoes - 2-3 pieces
Carrots 2 pcs
Bulb onion - 1 piece
Beets - 1 piece
Pickled cucumbers - 2-3 pieces
Salt and green peas to taste