My friends, this recipe is a MUST in our house and one of my staples in the kitchen. When our friends come to visit us, they always get a small jar of Special Hot Sauce Adjika as a welcome gift.

Ingredients

Abkhazian (Georgia) adjika is considered the queen of hot spices. It is a thick spicy paste, which includes hot peppers, salt, garlic, and herbs – basil, mint, fenugreek, parsley, saffron, marjoram, and others. The recipe has been passed down from generation to generation for centuries. And there is no exact recipe; each housewife combines the components in her way. And here you can try my preferred combination. Feel free to experiment with different herbs and additions such as bell peppers or tomatoes.

Usage Tip

Adjika is versatile and goes well with almost any dish. You can eat this spicy paste with cheese, vegetables, and grilled meat; add it to sauces and beans. Use Adjika as a seasoning in the preparation of soups, and marinades, as well as an additive to ready-made mixtures of spices in pickling and cooking meat/fish dishes and vegetable salads.

Try this Special Hot Sauce Adjika with my recipes:

Rich & Delicious Fish Soup

Sweet Potato Curry with Tofu

Pumpkin Stew with Kidney Beans

Pad Thai with Prawns

Dutch Split Pea Soup

The Legend About the Origin of Adjuka

According to legend, the Abkhazian shepherds went to the mountains in the spring to graze their flocks. Before going out to pastures, shepherds were given salt for their sheep. The more salt the sheep ate, the more they wanted to drink. And the more they wanted to drink, the more they wanted to pinch the juicy grass. Consequently, the sheep grew and gained weight.

But salt in those days was an expensive pleasure, and in order to prevent the shepherds from stealing salt, they began to add hot red pepper to it, but this did not produce the desired effect. Resourceful shepherds, adding various spices to this mixture, turned it into one of the seasonings.

Storage Tips

Store Adjika in a glass jar, tightly closed with a lid. Keep in the fridge for ten or eleven months. Ask why? The composition of the main components-conservatives: garlic and salt. If there is bell pepper in Adjika, then the shelf life is sharply reduced, no more than a month. And if a tomato is added, then only a week.