Shashlik is a dish of the Turkic peoples of Central Asia and refers to a meat skewer. There are very different dishes of this name, with different types of meat, but also without any meat at all. Shashlik is usually marinated and then very often grilled.
But that is exactly how we don’t like it. What we do find delicious, however, is braised shashlik. Where we live, we know it mainly from traditional takeaways (as far as fast food chains have not pushed them out). It is also very suitable for these, because you can keep it warm at a low temperature for almost any length of time for immediate consumption, while it does not lose any of its quality, but on the contrary becomes even tastier.
The preparation is simple and the dish is guaranteed to succeed. Cooking takes time, but the amount of work involved is not much.
Since the meat is braised, it needs to be marbled. The cooking process converts the connective tissue into gelatine and everything becomes very soft and juicy. We only cook shashlik with pork and use the neck. We cut the meat into pieces about 3 cm long.
You could prepare the shashlik with just this meat, but adding a quarter of pork belly makes for an even juicier result. Remove the skin and cut the belly into large cubes.
Season with a mixture of salt, pepper, cumin, smoked paprika, dried thyme and curry powder, in equal parts. As always, you will find the exact quantities at the end of the recipe.
The pieces of meat are rubbed thoroughly with the spice mixture and marinated dry in the fridge for at least four hours, but we recommend doing this the evening before and only cooking the shashlik the next day. The difference in taste is enormous.
Peppers – we like to use red, green and yellow – are cut into pieces that are about the same size as the pieces of pork neck. We have explained a good (Chinese) cutting technique here.
Peel as large an onion as possible and also cut into pieces of the same size and fan out.
Finely chop all the leftover peppers and onions for later use.
The meat and vegetables are then skewered together to form colorful shashlik. You can use wooden or reusable metal skewers for this, they just need to be about 20 cm long.
Everyone can decide for themselves the exact composition, the only important thing is that there is always a piece of meat on the outside, vegetables would slide off the skewer when stewing.
As always with braising, the first step is to sear. Heat neutral vegetable oil (or olive oil) in a large frying pan on a high heat and sear the skewers on all sides until they are browned and roasting substances form at the bottom of the pan.
Then remove the skewers from the pan and sauté the leftover vegetables over a medium-high heat. As soon as they start to release liquid, add plenty of chopped garlic. You should not be sparing with this in this dish.
Everything is stirred well and after 1 – 2 minutes the garlic starts to become fragrant. Now add canned tomatoes and stir in well, then gently season with a little salt and pepper.
We now add ajvar to the pan, which is a delicious mixture of roasted peppers and eggplants that is prepared in the Balkans (note to ourselves: write a recipe for ajvar). It makes a huge difference to us in this dish. If you can buy ajvar, do so. There are mild, medium-hot and hot varieties. We recommend medium-hot for shashlik.
The sauce is thinned with a little vegetable stock, mixed well and then the prepared skewers are added. Preheat the oven to 150 degrees Celsius (without fan).
Then braise the skewers with the lid on for at least 90, but preferably 120 minutes. You can turn them once halfway through, but you don’t necessarily have to.
After this time, the meat is buttery tender and the sauce has enormous depth, we just season it to taste with salt, pepper, Worcestershire sauce and cayenne. If you want the sauce to be thicker, remove the skewers and reduce it a little more on the stove.
We serve it alongside a fresh roll to soak up the sauce and nothing else.
Enjoy.
And may the taste be with you.
Ingredients ( for 4 people):
For the meat:
600 g marbled pork – neck is very suitable
200 g pork belly, without skin
1 ½ tsp each salt, pepper, cumin, smoked paprika, dried thyme and curry powder
For the skewers:
8 long skewers, wooden or metal
One large red, green and yellow bell pepper each
1 large onion
For the sauce:
Some neutral vegetable oil or olive oil
4 cloves of garlic
400 g canned peeled tomatoes
4 tbsp ajvar
150 ml vegetable stock
Worcestershire sauce
Cayenne pepper
