Sbiten

The old Russian folk drink sbiten in modern times is undeservedly forgotten, in principle, like many other culinary traditions of our ancestors. Although, we should pay tribute and learn the ability of our forefathers to invent simple methods of treatment with the help of the gifts of Mother Nature. A hot sbiten drink was made on honey, adding spices and necessarily healing herbs or infusions.

Sbiten is similar in its composition and method of preparation to mead, but these are two different drinks. The first mention of the drink dates back to the 12th century. Already in those distant times, the Slavic people knew and applied in practice the useful properties of a warming and generally strengthening drink. Moreover, there were several types of sbiten - hot, cold, alcoholic and non-alcoholic, as well as sbiten kvass.

Hot sbiten was consumed mainly in the cold season, and a cold drink perfectly quenched thirst in summer heat. Hop or homemade wine was added to the sbiten. The sbiten got its original name from the Old Russian word to knock down, i. e. mix. The thing is that the ingredients for the bitten were in two vessels. In one, herbs were infused, and in the second, honey, before consumption, both vessels were mixed in the same jug, as a result, sbiten was obtained. What is noteworthy, up to the appearance of tea in Russia, sbiten was prepared in samovars, and it was this drink that for a long time remained beloved and most consumed by Rusichs.

Benefits of sbitnya

The benefits of sbitnya lie in the composition of the initial ingredients that are required to prepare the drink. For example, honey is one of the most useful and vitamin-rich foods known to humans since primitive times. Honey is mixed with an herbal infusion of St. John's wort, ginger, cloves, nutmeg, sage, cinnamon, mint and bay leaf, as a result, the benefits of sbitnya increase several times and become simple unique.

There are several old recipes and methods for making bitten, but the main and unchanged ingredient of the drink has always been and remains natural bee honey. According to the cooking method, sbitni is divided into simple and custard. In order to cook simple sbiten at home, you need to dissolve honey in hot water, and then add spices and spices to taste in a sweet solution.

Then you need to boil the sbiten on a small fire for about 30 minutes. Herbal decoction can be added to the finished sbiten. Custard sbiten takes a lot of time and effort. To begin with, braga was prepared from honey, molasses and wort, to which spices were added. Sliten roamed for about two weeks, then an herbal infusion was added to it and the drink was ready for consumption. Until the beginning of the 20th century, sbiten remained a drink of mass consumption. However, later the folk healing drink sbiten lost its position to tea, coffee, cocoa and hot chocolate.