Lecho in tomato sauce: cooking secrets - how to make lecho with tomato sauce for the winter
Lecho is one of the most popular winter preparations. And this is not surprising, because when you open a jar of aromatic vegetable salad in winter, you plunge into an unforgettable summer! This preserved food is served as an independent dish, added to any side dishes, and even made into soup. In this article we want to reveal the secrets of cooking lecho in tomato sauce and offer the most interesting proven recipes.
Time to bookmark: Summer, Autumn
Content
The basis of the dish is tomato sauce
To prepare the tomato base, use fresh or canned tomatoes, ready-made tomato paste or sauce, packaged or homemade tomato juice.
If the sauce is made from tomatoes, then first wash the fruits and then scald them with boiling water. skin them.
Peeled fruits are ground through a sieve, rolled through a meat grinder or punched with a blender.
Some housewives claim that tomato skins do not interfere with the finished dish, and chop the tomatoes together with the skins.If this issue is also not important for you, then the fruits do not need to be peeled. It’s another matter if pickled tomatoes are used to prepare the sauce. In this case, the tomatoes must be peeled before chopping.
The base for lecho made from tomato paste or sauce is less labor-intensive. As the famous commercial says, “Just add water!” Water is added in accordance with the recipe, and the sauce is boiled for some time before adding vegetables.
Homemade tomato juice or a store-bought packaged version is used without additional dilution, as is. And if you don’t know how to preserve tomato juice for the winter, then our authors’ detailed recipes are just for you. Juice preservation With salt And without additives.
Options for a winter snack of vegetables in tomato sauce for the winter
Lecho with sweet peppers and tomatoes
Remove the skin from two kilograms of fresh tomatoes. The pulp is ground in any convenient way. Pour the tomato base into a bowl and add salt and sugar (2 tablespoons and 1 two-hundred-gram glass, respectively). Place the vegetable puree on the stove and bring to a boil.
Sweet pepper pods (3 kilograms) are cleaned of seeds, getting rid of the internal partitions along the way. You can choose any method for cutting the pods - half rings, cubes or strips. A kilogram of onion heads is peeled and cut into large cubes.
Add pepper and onion to boiling tomato sauce and add 1 cup of refined sunflower oil. It does little to prevent vegetables from sticking to the bottom of a basin or pan, and gives a more delicate taste to the dish.
Cook the lecho over low heat, stirring constantly.The cooking time is not strictly regulated, but on average it is: 3 minutes – just tomatoes with salt and sugar; 20 minutes – peppers and onions (depending on the size of the cut, the time can be adjusted). The end result is that the peppers should soften, but not become too loose. Otherwise, you may end up with a tasty vegetable porridge.
5 minutes before readiness, add 100 milliliters of 9% vinegar to the preparation. Bring the lecho to a boil and package it in small sterile containers. Options and methods for sterilizing containers here.
The lecho is screwed on with lids and put in a warm place to cool gradually. Do not forget that the peppers continue to cook in the hot sauce, so it is very important not to overcook the lecho.
Apples and herbs are an excellent addition to lecho. Watch the video from the “MasteRrr TV” channel with cooking details.
Zucchini lecho in tomato paste sauce
This version of lecho is quite unusual, but when served it goes off with a bang.
To prepare the sauce, use thick tomato paste (400 ml) and 2 liters of water. Combine the ingredients and put on the fire to boil for 10 minutes.
Zucchini, 2 kilograms, peeled and cut into cubes. Fresh green peas are cleaned from the shells. In total, take 1 glass of pea grains with a volume of 250 grams. It is best to take milky ripe peas so that they are still quite tender.
2 large carrots and 3 onions, peeled and chopped.
Add 100 grams of sugar, 1.5 tablespoons of coarse salt and half a glass of vegetable oil to a bowl of hot tomato sauce.
The first vegetables to be added to lecho are carrots, onions and green peas. After 30 minutes - zucchini. Boil the salad until the zucchini is ready.
At the end, add 2 tablespoons of 9% vinegar, boil for another minute, and put into jars.
Lecho with tomato juice without oil and vinegar
Place 2 liters of tomato juice on the fire and boil for 5 minutes.
2 kilograms of peeled bell pepper pods are chopped into strips or “checkers”. Boiling tomato sauce is flavored with 3/4 cup sugar and 2 tablespoons salt. No oil added!
Total cooking time is 30 minutes. A minute before turning off the stove, add 5 cloves of garlic, finely chopped with a knife, to the lecho.
Hot lecho, sealed in sterilized jars and wrapped in a warm winter jacket for a day.
“Find Your Recipe” is the name of a popular culinary video blog. Cucumber lecho in tomato sauce is the topic of today's video.
With store-bought tomato sauce
Today you can find a wide variety of ketchup sauces in retail outlets. For this recipe, you need to choose the manufacturer you trust most and whose products you appreciate the taste of. The main thing is that the sauce is as natural as possible and quite thick. To prepare lecho according to this recipe, use “Spicy” sauce. It will highlight the taste of the finished dish with a spicy note.
So, 700 grams of “Spicy” sauce is diluted with a glass of vegetable oil, a glass of sugar and 1.5 heaped tablespoons of salt are added. Pour the tomato mixture over the chopped vegetables:
- zucchini, 2 kilograms (cube);
- carrots, 1 large root (straws);
- bell pepper, 1 kilogram (large strips).
Place the mixture on the lowest heat and simmer for 10 minutes, stirring continuously. As soon as the vegetables release their juice, cover the container with a lid and leave it to simmer for an hour. During this time, stir the salad every 15 minutes.
The finished vegetable lecho is placed in sterilized jars.
Advice: Until the entire salad is packaged, do not turn off the burner, but only reduce the heat to a minimum. This will allow you to maintain a constant temperature of the dish so that the lecho does not spoil during storage.
With tomato juice
To 3 liters of juice (your own homemade or packaged store-bought juice) add ¼ cup granulated sugar, 1.5 tablespoons of salt, a glass of 6% strength vinegar, a glass of refined oil. The volume of the measuring cup is 250 milliliters. Place the base on the fire and bring to a boil.
At this time, sliced seasonal vegetables are prepared: bell pepper - 3.5 kilograms, onion - 1.5 kilograms. Onions and peppers are chopped as desired. As soon as the base boils, add the vegetables and cook over low heat for 30 minutes.
In our article you can familiarize yourself with the option of preparing delicious vegetable lecho with homemade tomato juice.
The Kromarenko family loves to cook, and is happy to share with you their video recipe for lecho with tomato juice sauce.
Storage of lecho
Canned vegetables based on tomato sauce do not require special storage conditions. Jars of salad can be kept both in the cellar and at room temperature. This is very convenient because you don’t have to go into the bins every time. Lecho, which goes with any side dish, should always be on hand for the housewife in the winter!