Bitok (food)
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
Bitok is a Franco-Russian savoury dish of minced meat formed into patties and fried. The most frequently used meats are beef and veal. Bitok is frequently served with sour cream sauce, but there are many other possible accompaniments. The word is a bilingual corruption of the English "beefsteak".
The Russian term bitok (plural bitki) is derived ultimately from the English "beefsteak".[1] In eighteenth century France the English word was corrupted to "beeft Stek" which by the nineteenth century had become "biffteck" and is now bifteck.[2] Russian chefs took bifteck haché – minced beef – and made it into patties to be shallow-fried or deep-fried; they rendered the French biftek as bitok. That dish was introduced to France in about 1920 and subsequently appeared on French menus in several varying forms either called bitok or bifteck à la russe.[3]
Content
Minced meat – originally beef, but according to Larousse Gastronomique the meat can also be mutton, pork, veal, chicken, rabbit etc.[4] – is mixed with milk-soaked bread and finely chopped onion (either raw or lightly fried) and the mixture is put through the mincer again for smoothness. The mixture is shaped into small round cakes (Larousse), dumplings (Hering's Dictionary)[5] or patties (Pierre Franey)[1] about 1½ inches (3.8 cm) thick. A variant is to shape the mixture into small balls.[6] They may be deep-fried or shallow fried; if the former they may be served with a sauce of sour cream or double cream with paprika; if the latter they are customarily fried in butter and then simmered briefly in sour cream.[1]