Buzhenina Salad

Name: Buzhenina Salad with Quail Eggs, Corn and Lettuce
Prep time: 30 min
Cook time: 15 min
Total time: 45 min
Cuisine: European
Ingredients: Homemade buzhenina 150 g; Lettuce 1 bunch; Fresh cucumber 1; Carrot 1; Canned corn 3 tbsp (36 g); Quail eggs 8; Pickled gherkins 8; Salt, black pepper to taste; Ready-made mayonnaise, soured milk or yogurt 1-2 tbsp; Worcestershire sauce 1 tsp; Dijon mustard 1 tsp (5 g); Sugar 0.5 tsp (2 g); Black pepper to taste; Brine from the jar of gherkins 0.5-1 tsp (or a few drops of balsamic vinegar); Herbs, yolk of a hard-boiled egg optional

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45 mins

Unlike most familiar salads of our home cooking, we make this buzhenina salad with a fairly coarse cut of the ingredients, with quail eggs and green lettuce leaves, and without onion. For the dressing we use a light, low-fat homemade sauce. And one more thing: this appetizer is served in individual portions.

Most often, homemade buzhenina is made for some holiday. It isn’t hard, but it takes time. After the holidays there is usually meat left over, and it makes an excellent salad. You can also buy perfectly decent buzhenina in stores. The other ingredients for the salad don’t need long preparation and can be swapped to your taste.

Traditionally, buzhenina is a large piece of meat, mostly pork, baked whole. When we make it, we always soak a big piece of shoulder or leg in dark beer with spices and stud it with garlic cloves. Then the meat is wrapped in foil or plain dough and baked until done. So the meat doesn’t stew in its own juices, we cut a small slit in the bottom of the package, and all the liquid the pork releases during baking drains out through it.

Cooked and cooled, buzhenina is dense enough that it doesn’t fall apart when cut into cubes or strips. For the salad you first need to boil the eggs and a small carrot. To reduce the overall calories of the appetizer, we made a simple sauce similar to the one for homemade hamburgers. Its base is a small amount of mayonnaise or soured milk, with some pickle brine, spices and Dijon mustard.

If you don’t have buzhenina, you can replace it with ham, though it may be fattier. I think boiled pork is a good option. We deliberately left boiled potatoes out of the salad. They are hard to cut coarsely and crumble a lot, and the pieces don’t hold their shape. A baked or boiled carrot, on the other hand, works perfectly. As in Olivier salad with meat, we added canned corn and pickled cucumbers.

More with ham

Buzhenina – Pork Roast Baked in Foil

24 h

Meat Solyanka with Beef and Pork Broth

Ingredients

2 servings

For the salad
Homemade buzhenina 150 g
Lettuce 1 bunch
Fresh cucumber 1
Carrot 1
Canned corn 3 tbsp (36 g)
Quail eggs 8
Pickled gherkins 8
Salt, black pepper to taste
For the dressing
Ready-made mayonnaise, soured milk or yogurt 1-2 tbsp
Worcestershire sauce 1 tsp
Dijon mustard 1 tsp (5 g)
Sugar 0.5 tsp (2 g)
Black pepper to taste
Brine from the jar of gherkins 0.5-1 tsp (or a few drops of balsamic vinegar)
For garnish
Herbs, yolk of a hard-boiled egg optional

Step-by-step recipe

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Preparing the ingredients

So the dish doesn’t have too many calories, it’s better to take lean pork. It’s also worth trimming off the remaining fat along the edge, but that is optional.
Soak the lettuce leaves in cold water for a few hours beforehand, then pat dry.
Hard-boil the quail eggs: 3 minutes is enough, then let them cool. Boil or bake the carrot until soft and let it cool.

Cutting

Cut the buzhenina into sticks about 1 cm thick and of any length. We decided to make this appetizer with a coarse cut of the main ingredients, so the sticks came out more than 5 cm long. You don’t need to peel the fresh cucumber if it’s juicy. Cut the cucumber the same way as the meat. Put them in a mixing bowl and add the canned corn kernels.
Peel the carrot and cut it the same way. By the way, if the carrot was baked, it’s better to cut it half as thick. Cut the quail eggs in half. Finely chop the pickled gherkins, even mince them with a knife. Add all the prepared ingredients to the same bowl. Salt the salad and add a little black pepper.

Dressing

Prepare the salad dressing. In a small bowl, mix 1-2 tbsp of ready-made mayonnaise (14–29 g), or better, soured milk or yogurt, as you prefer. Add 1 tsp of Worcestershire sauce. Add pepper, 1 tsp of Dijon mustard (5 g) and 0.5 tsp of sugar (2 g). Mix the sauce thoroughly. If it seems to lack sharpness, add more pepper. For a tangier, more aromatic sauce, add 0.5-1 tsp of brine from the gherkin jar or a few drops of balsamic vinegar.
Toss the salad with the dressing. Don’t add too much sauce: an appetizer with buzhenina should be a little “dry”. Put the bowl of salad in the refrigerator while you prepare the leaves.

Serving

Arrange the salad on the leaves. Tear the washed and dried lettuce into pieces with your fingers, discarding all the coarse parts of the leaf. Spread the pieces in an even layer on large serving plates. Put the mixed ingredients on top in a mound. Alternatively, use a pastry ring 8-10 cm in diameter to shape the salad into a cylinder. The salad is ready to serve.
If you can, garnish the appetizer with halves of quail eggs, slices of buzhenina, vegetables and herbs. The salad looks colorful sprinkled with the yolk of a hard-boiled egg.

Calories and macros

310 kcal

Serving ≈ 350 g

Protein20 g27% of kcal
Fat19 g57% of kcal
Carbs12 g16% of kcal

100 g88 kcalProtein 5.7 gFat 5.4 gCarbs 3.5 g

Calculated from the recipe ingredients, excluding salt and spices. Data: USDA and Matvaretabellen.

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