Whole mushroom caps baked sizzling in a small clay ketsi pan with sulguni cheese and butter until bubbling and golden. A beloved Georgian tavern starter.
This dish takes its name from the ketsi, the small earthenware skillet that has cooked Georgian food over coals for generations. Filling mushroom caps with the country's stretchy sulguni cheese and baking them in the ketsi turned a humble forest find into a sizzling tavern favorite served straight from the hot pan.
The mushrooms turn meaty and juicy, pooling savory liquor in their caps, while the sulguni stretches into salty, molten strings. Butter ties it together with richness and the coriander cuts through clean. Eaten bubbling-hot, it is pure comfort.
The clay ketsi retains and radiates intense even heat, concentrating the mushrooms' moisture into savory juices while browning the cheese, and the fat from butter and sulguni carries and melds the flavors.
Variations
With or without cheese; garlic-butter version; mixed wild mushrooms; a sprinkle of chili.
On the Palate
Where Kakhetian Soko Ketsze (Mushrooms in Clay) sits in the Georgian flavor cloud
Ingredients
Serves 4How it's made
8 steps · 15 min
- 18 min
Clean mushrooms and trim the stems, keeping the caps whole and hollow-side up.
- 22 min
Rub the caps with butter and a little salt.
- 33 min
Grate or slice sulguni cheese to fill the caps.
- 42 min
Arrange the filled caps in a clay ketsi pan or small ovenproof skillet.
- 52 min
Dot with more butter and place in a hot oven (or over coals).
- 68 min
Bake until the mushrooms release their juices and the cheese melts and bubbles.
Watch outBake until the mushrooms give up their juices and the cheese melts and bubbles — that pooling liquid and molten sulguni is the dish coming together.
- 73 min
Continue until the tops are golden and the edges sizzle.
Watch outTake it to golden tops with the edges sizzling — you want browned cheese and audibly bubbling fat, the sign the clay is radiating full heat.
- 82 min
Scatter with fresh coriander and serve at once in the hot pan.
