Russia/Ukraine: Zrazi (Зразы)
Zrazi are one of my favorite dishes, but I certainly cannot claim that they are a light snack. These bad boys are potato dough, filled with delicious pulled, fried chicken. To eat - these are served slathered in sour cream, much like most of the Eastern European dishes.
WHat you will need:
2 Chicken Breasts
3 large potatoes
All purpose flour
1 egg
One medium onion
Salt/Pepper
Milk/Butter
Sour Cream (for serving)
STEP 1
To start, you will need to prep your ingredients. For this, you will need to create the dough and the filling.
Making the Dough
To create this dough, you will essentially need to first create mashed potatoes. So go ahead and peel your potatoes, cube them and throw into boiling water.
Mash your potatoes and feel free to add some butter or milk to this, but not too much. You do not want a runny consistency - it should be a bit on the dry side. Salt the potatoes to taste. Set aside and let cool.
Once the dough had cooled, you should mix in your egg and then add the flour gradually, making sure you are finding the right dryness and consistency of the dough. You do not want too much flour, but enough to bind it together. I would say that about 100g would do it.
*Cover your dough while you’re not working with it to make sure it does not dry out
Prepping the Chicken
Before we can go on to fry the chicken, you need you cook it. Take your chicken breasts and cut them into even larger cubes.
Put the chicken into boiling water and cook through until done.
Remove the chicken from water and place onto a cutting board. Use two forks to pull apart the chicken into strips (shred the chicken).
Step 2
Dice your onion and put some butter onto the frying pan.
Add the onion and then the shredded chicken to the pan and cook until the chicken gets a nice golden color. Salt and pepper the chicken to taste.
Set aside and let cool.
step 3
Once your chicken has cooled down to room temperature, it is time to assemble your zrazi!
Create the top and bottom portions of your zrazi, placing your chicken filling on one of the sides.
Gently cover the zrazi and connect the two pieces. Make sure you leave no holes.
Keep them on the side on a floured surface so they do not stick while you work. In the meantime, head up some olive oil (or unfiltered sunflower oil, if you want the really authentic taste) in a frying pan.
Step 4
Once the oil is nice and hot, place your zrazi into the pan. You do not need to cook these through, as most of your ingredients are already cooked.
This step is really to bring together your dough ingredients and to give it that delicious crispy flavor and texture.
Fry them on each side, turning once, and repeat with your whole batch.
Enjoy!
Of course, I would highly recommend eating these with plenty of sour cream.
Actually, I don’t even bother eating these without sour cream. Not because they are not delicious in their own right, but because if I will have this indulgent snack - I want the full flavor experience. Sour cream adds a really great balance, in my opinion.