Dedicated to all of us who still cherish sweet memories of Chebureshnaya on Ploshad’ Nogina, Moscow circa 1970’s-1980’s…
A very simple idea – just a deep-fried meat pie, think samosa… but very hard to get it right, especially the filling that should stay loose w/o turning into a meatball encased in a dough… Very simple but i never had a successful cheburek even at restaurants in large russian diasporas, think Israel, or Brighton Beach…
So now equipped with a powerful deep-fryer and a dumpling press we decided to recreate a snack of our dreams at home.
With no time to make the dough we used Nasoya eggroll skins though they’re too thin and not elastic enough. We got the filling right fortunately.
3/4 lb of fatty lamb (shoulder) and 3/4 lb of sirloin grinded using a plate with large holes, 2 med white onions grinded, 3garlic cloves minced, 1/2 cup of parsley minced, a lot of kosher salt and coarse black pepper, 1/2 cup of ice water.
Used a 5" dumpling press to form chebureki. Deep fried them in 300F for about 6mins. Served with a lot of russian salad of tomatoes, kirby cukes, scallions, dill and sour cream. Heaven!
