Mix the kefir, salt and flour in a large bowl and knead the mixture into elastic dough with your hands.

Prepare the filling. For khychins filled with potato and cheese, take the boiled potatoes, mash them with a fork, grate the cheese, and add softened butter. Mix thoroughly. For those with a meat filling, cut the herbs and onion thinly, crush the garlic clove, and mix everything with the mincemeat. Salt to taste.

Roll the dough into a string, then cut into portions.

Take a piece of dough, make it into a ball, then flatten with the palm of your hand.

Roll the filling into a ball. The proportions are one unit of dough for 1.5 units of filling.

Put the filling in the center of the dough and wrap as tightly as possible. Be extra careful, you may not be able to do this correctly the first time.

You will end up with a ball of dough with the filling inside. Flatten it with your hands and roll with a rolling pin. The Balkar khychins are around 3 mm thick; while the Karachai ones are much thicker, nearly 1 cm.

Put the ready khychin aside and make more with the remaining dough.

Heat a frying pan. If you decided to make Karachai khychins, melt 50 g of butter in it. Fry the khychins and stack them on a plate. Cover each khychin in a coat of butter, and pay special attention to the edges.

Make sure you invite guests to enjoy your khychins. Eating by yourself would be a terrible breach of ancient Caucasus tradition!